As ever, it’s always good to receive recognition for the effort of so many (client and agency side). So it thrills me to say that the site We Love designed and developed for Sony Ericsson’s Mobile World Congress last month has been received so well by our peers within the industry. Peaking at number 4 in the Design Charts, Site of the Day on Design Licks, Being reviewed in Creative Review as well as being listed in many other ‘hot pick’ sites…
CSS3 has amazing potential to give your sites that awe and wonder factor. At first glance, CSS3 gave you rounded corners, image borders and shadows. Ok, thats good news for all those developers that had to use ugly workarounds for every modern browser and IE6. But you then look a little deeper and find the animation ability. Check it out:
Well it’s that time of the year again. Time for the Xmas party – to celebrate another successful year at We Love… great work, new clients and new staff.
Each year a different member of staff has to organise an extravaganza. This year it was my turn. The pressure was on the Hoskinator (I really hate that name)… We can do what ever we want as long as it comes under budget (Mark’s Law) And this year after the serious stress of planning, organising and maths we all met up at the office at 5.15am and headed off to Monte Carlo for the day in search of some Winter Sun and to mingle with the seriously wealthy.
A day full of ice skating, ferris wheels, Christmas markets, Casino, £15 beers, good food, big boats and fast cars… (BUT NO HELICOPTER TRANSFER ‘COS I SCREWED UP) and lots of women draped lazily across the bow of the boats… (OK the last bit was a lie).
What a day!!! Considering the early start and late return… So whoever gets the job of organising the Xmas next year… Beat that!!
Smashing Magazine entered Dripping in Fat as one of the stores that make the showcase of online t-shirt stores & Web designs, all of which serves as a great source of inspiration for Web designers, graphic designers and even illustrators.
This is what they said:
“Dripping in Fat is a store dedicated to creating t-shirts with a distinct message, all designed by some of the best designers around the globe! The modern, colorful design evokes a clothesline, with some awesome Flash animations”Check it out >>>
Creo Productions’ official video of event planner Rob Bliss’ 2009 ArtPrize entry, “100,000 Paper Airplanes and Melodies Over Monroe.” On September 27, 2009, over 20,000 people flooded downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan to play the main melody of Sigur Rós’ “Olsen Olsen.” The paper airplanes were 100 percent post-consumer and were picked up by children, participants and a professional cleaning crew. The event seems a little pointless, however magically brings the people of Monroe together and I guess its something you don’t see everyday!
A few months back you may remember reading on our blog that Mark, our CD, had been invited to the Design Off in .NET magazine. Well now you can witness his works, thoughts and direction in response to the fictitious brief of a redesign of a theatre site in November’s issue. We believe it to be the best of the bunch… but why don’t you judge for yourself and see if Mark has still got his mojo…
And if you rush out and buy a .Net November issue you can also see his piccy… which he most adamantly claims has had no retouching what so ever… well, we will leave you to make up your own mind on that one…
The Brief:
Mock up the homepage of a theatre site. Visitors should get excited about attending a production and have no trouble finding out what’s on and how to buy tickets. The page should also reflect the atmosphere and personality of the theatre. Consider including social networking features and video.
Last Friday We Love were honored to have the esteemed Patrick Collister – ex-Executive Creative Director of Ogilvy and creator of some of the best known and loved advertising in our industry – visit our studio and spend a couple of hours to discuss what is making him tick in todays fast moving and forever changing Advertising landscape.
He gave us great insight as to how the industry has changed in the last 10-20 years. How Brands MUST re-establish and learn to love themselves again, deliver on their promises and live up to their values in a much more educated and savvy marketplace. How that if they do not accept change and rely on the old and tested methods of days gone by then they are doomed to fail, to become dinosaurs of the modern age. Just keeping up and treading the same path is not good enough. Best practise means what everyone else is doing – until someone does it better… so make sure you do it better.
He pointed out that within the last 6 months a number of major brands have died on their feet. They have ceased to exist, and yes there is a pattern to their failure. A pattern of apathy and resistance to risk, of reliance on the statistical data and marketing methodology of yesteryear, of not going with gut feeling, and not utilising the vast amount of data that we have available to us… and finally… to NOT have or BELIEVE IN, the IDEA!!
We are all inspired here at the We Love manor… so together let’s re-install the value of the brand to the consumer. Let’s not be happy with just a small % increase in market share or the status quo… let’s tread upon unknown territory, take the risks and prove that ROI actually stands for Return of Idea – not investment…
We live and work in a creative industry… It is not a science. Be prepared to do battle for the idea that you know is a winner. Battle for it within a marketplace, and with technology that many fail to understand, or where return of idea is near impossible to prove.
With any financial downturn comes a shortage of creativity, where agency and client alike fall back on the tried and tested to sell their product or service in order to protect their job or position. Its a safe option and one that always adopted during hard times, even though we know that in reality it should be the reverse (look at BMW in the ’80’s – ’90’s – Doubled their marketing spend and took over the world) – we should be playing smarter and harder to distinguish our clients from their competition.
So knowing that we are due an influx of rubbishy adverts that include cute animals, hot women, stupid cartoons we present Nando’s latest offering… the only thing… I sort of like it
