I was pondering over the disasterous Greggs Christmas campaign where they replaced Jesus in a nativity scene with a sausage roll. I was quite taken with the range of outrage to what was at worse a poor call of judgment. On one hand right wing groups are calling for a boycott because they are, of ... Read More
It’s a little fun folks. Graphic designers know full well the pig that is Microsoft Publisher. It’s an awful con job. It makes people think that they are designers because they can poke their way around the software. Sadly the same ethos is ever present for MS Word users. The shocking thing is the amount ... Read More
I was pondering about contextual branding today. Looking at Pinterest, I note a range of exciting design solutions that are artistically vibrant and visually engaging, but there is a ‘but’. These designs, from all over the World, are crafted for their given marketplace. Each marketplace allows for different levels of accepted style based upon a ... Read More
OK, you got to a point in your business where you all your ducks are aligned. You’ve got the perfect product, great staff, logistics in place and a rock solid marketing strategy. That’s great. So, let’s say your marketing strategy calls for you to think about your brand. There are many things that branding offers. ... Read More
The humble old turnip has never had the appeal of a carrot. The carrot is bright, individual and easily identifiable and one dangling in front of you is considered a means to tantalise you in a certain direction. The carrot dangling idiom proposes the carrot is used to draw the mule forward on the premise ... Read More
Hmm, less said the better. This is what I mean when I talked about design illiteracy. When you don’t know what your doing it’s as obvious as a pimple on your nose. Most of the time it’s not what you can do with DIY design – it’s what you shouldn’t do. I had a client ... Read More
Best practice in design is to sketch your ideas even in as rough a form possible. These pages never see the light of day as far as the client is concerned but, like a sculptor each revised idea gets honed into a thing of beauty that eventually gets presented to the client. Sometimes this is ... Read More
I recently had cause to check bus times from Omagh to Belfast. I can’t imagine the logic of either Ulsterbus’s ‘Journey Planner’ or indeed their timetable page. If you click on timetables your are offered 451 PDFs that you have to download in order to read. Most timetables work on a simple table basis which ... Read More
MY EYES! My Eyes! We can’t take it anymore. For all that’s good in humanity we have to acknowledge the dark side. We feel compelled to highlight some of the things wrong with DIY design in the 21st century. We always chortle to ourselves that rarely does anyone ‘have a go’ at being a dentist ... Read More
