Thursday, October 27, 2011

Two blogs two many

We have now reverted to using the News section of the E-creation website for blog updates. Running two blogs seemed to be a bit unnecessary!

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Design and development of file sharing applications that integrate social media

Looking to share documents, audio files or video but do not have an FTP server or other facility to upload and share information?

The answer is 3rd party file sharing websites. With increasing availability of marketing materials in multimedia format, file sharing is a requirement E-creation is asked about on a regular basis, where client's want to make their content and documents available to the public over the Internet. Whilst it is possible to write custom file sharing applications, this can be cost prohibitive for some clients, so here is an experiment we have done at E-creation to test file sharing from within Blogger and a 3rd party file sharing website http://www.filesavr.com. The client simply uploads their file directly off of their computer onto http://www.filesavr.com and copies the automatically generated 'embed' code into their Blogger post.


The example we have provided is a proposal for a file sharing application that integrate social media. One of the key issues for many clients may be the perceived professionalism of a file sharing facility that has 'advertising' in it - but sometimes, that is the price of low-cost development routes. To design and develop a basic self-managed file management and sharing application would typically cost around £2,000 with limitations on the monthly bandwidth. This is due to the charges incurred at E-creation when we exceed our bandwidth restrictions.

If clients are looking to use video content, then we often suggest the use of YouTube to reduce bandwidth demands and to make their content available to a wider audience. Blogger itself has facility to integrate video content, although the format made available can be less accessible.

Video in Blogger Example

Friday, July 30, 2010

New multimedia presentation CD-ROM and website animation copy

E-creation is producing a three minute interactive multimedia presentation about our services and have produced a first draft of copy for the introduction sequence for the multimedia presentation CD-ROM and website animation. We would welcome your feedback ...

Intelligent multimedia speaks for itself.

By integrating multimedia into your website, CD-ROM, exhibition materials or e-mail marketing, you create a better experience for prospective customers. E-creation makes it simple to enhance marketing using audio, animation, 3D and interactivity, bringing your message and products to life. With over 10 years of experience, E-creation produces some of the best multimedia and digital marketing in the world for clients such as 3Com, IBM, City & Guilds, London Underground, Unisys and Slough Borough Council. But as a smaller digital design agency, E-creation is affordable and effective for businesses of all sizes. Using multimedia, we can:
  • increase sales
  • create interest
  • reduce costs
  • influence opinion
  • manage relationships 
But for now, we’ll let the multimedia speak for itself.

... which will then go onto 90 second of interactive demos of the best of our multimedia design and production.

Monday, June 21, 2010

How does a budget website design & development project breakdown?

How does a typical budget website design & development project breakdown?

Many businesses taking there businesses online are confused by the offer of £500 e-commerce website design packages, which 95% of the time simply do not deliver on their promise to generate value to a business. A complete e-commerce website design & development process from E-creation typically starts at £5,000, ten times the cost of the budget £500 website design package you might see offered in the advertising panels in the right of Google - but offers better value for money. Why? Because of the time spent on initial thinking, design and coding together with the unique experience going into making the best value website:


• Consultancy - define objectives, content & navigation for clarity
• Design – create engaging design & experience for website visitors
• Coding – convert design into HTML code & add CMS
• Create new cart – improve the shopping experience
• Applying social media – linking to branded Twitter

The new website typically addresses the common design & structural issues that are found with most budget website designs.

• Simplify content & make the site easier to navigate
• Make content appropriate to local market, therefore faster and easier to process for visitors
• Improve on overall design & brand image, creating more trust in the transaction process
• Delivery of content more effectively into search engines, for higher volume, more targeted traffic
• Employ social media as integral part of website design, bringing 'qudos' to the website
• Make content updates easy via ‘Blogger’ CMS, encouraging regular updates and more accurate content

Basic site re-design, re-coding & e-commerce integration can be achieved for as little as £5,000 + VAT

1 to 2 days – consultancy & documentation

Work with the client to to define the digital business objectives for website (with a half day face-to-face meeting), document how E-creation will technically achieve this and rationalise content (including advice on best ways to write content for website targeting top search engine placements.

2 to 5 days – re-design website

Redesign the look & feel of website, improve navigation & overall ‘experience’ for visitors with potential for homepage animated element.

2 to 4 days – re-code website

Creation of navigation & HTML pages with meta-tags for SEO. Websites usually would consist of around 20 content pages (1 hr per page to code).

2 to 3 days – new shopping cart

The simplest cost-effective approach is Google Checkout cart (see demo site - http://checkout.google.com/seller/gsc/v2/demo/index.html). Google Checkout does not require initial registration, making shopping easier and orders can be directed to UK.

Additional recommended elements – around £2,000 + VAT

1 to 3 days – add ‘Blogger’ CMS to site (optional)

Incorporating Blogger enables the client to easily add content in branded PR and news areas of the website, including photos, videos and links. Because Blogger is owned by Google, content is more rapidly seen in search engines, maximizing marketing impact.

1 to 2 days - branded Twitter page and ‘feed’ (optional)

Design a branded Twitter page with a unique, content related domain name with code to ‘sync’ animated Twitter posts to the homepage.

Monday, June 14, 2010

Award-winning online marketing & web agency for brochures, print, multimedia CD-ROM, e-commerce web design, sales presentations & online marketing

E-creation is an award-winning online marketing and web design agency that combines creativity, technical knowledge & marketing experience to generate astonishing business results. We design & develop marketing & communications products with strategic business advice including:

• Brochures & innovative print materials
• Interactive multimedia CD-ROMs & DVDs
• Websites & e-commerce sites
• Sales presentations & exhibition materials
• Intranet & content management systems
SEO campaigns & online marketing

E-creation produces digital marketing products that not only look amazing but that put the client in charge of their own content; websites with #1 placements in search engine that create valuable enquiries, CD-ROM and digital presentations that can be updated remotely to keep the information up to date & online marketing that automatically organises content to optimise it for maximum traffic. Our clients ranging from small businesses through to large corporations including:

IBM, Unisys, City & Guilds, BP, Cisco, 3Com, London Underground, Royal Bank of Scotland, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Lastminute.com, the NHS & FluencyVoice

E-creation provides free quotes and initial recommendations, so if you are thinking about ‘doing something digital’ speak to the true digital experts on 01202 853685 and find out how E-creation can make your marketing materials, website, multimedia CD-ROM, presentation or online marketing the best it can be.


Professional website design for accountancy & professional services firms

Professional website design for accountancy & professional services firms

CLIENT
Rouse & Co

PROJECT
Design & coding of corporate website with content management system & SEO

BUDGET
£20,000

TECHNOLOGY
Website was built using ASP, SQL & HTML

The Rouse & Co website is a fantastic example of how professional services companies, like accountancy firms, can use professional website design & development to create new business from the web and improve relationships with clients.

Using personalisation to build better relationships with potential customers

The key communication objective E-creation applied in the design process of the website was the concept of ‘personal service accounting’. To deliver this in an interactive and engaging way, E-creation built an interactive ‘appointment’ request form on the homepage.

Visitors are asked when they would like an appointment and what their preferred beverage is. An image (taken from a half day photoshoot E-creation did in their offices) of the appropriate drink with steam or condensation animation and personal welcome message.

Receptionists receive an email each morning with name, time and beverage request of all appointments for the day, for preparation 3 minutes before appointment’s arrival. This takes the sense of personal detail through from the website all the way to the moment the potential client walks in the door.

Content management & SEO

All key areas of the website are hooked into an easy-to use, custom-built content management system where Rouse & Co (now Vantis) can add & manage:

• News articles (including metatags)
• Newsletters & PDF documents
• Key staff members

This detail in content management, enables Rouse & Co (Vantis) to manage their positions in search engines by constantly improving and updating of site content without the need to come back to E-creation for updates.

Complete professional brand, stationary & website design plus development for under £4,000

Complete professional brand, stationary & website design plus development for under £4,000

CLIENT
Berlingual

PROJECT SCOPE
Brand, stationary & website design

BUDGET
£1,500 for branding & stationary, £4,000 for website design / programming

TECHNOLOGY
Website built using HTML with multilingual elements in Flash

International business appeal

E-creation was provided with a blank slate – come up with a memorable company name that communicates ‘professional English training provided from Berlin’. Berlingual was the resulting brand name and E-creation delivered:

• Concepts and design of company logo and stationary
• Design & development of website & online marketing

At the heart of the design, E-creation demonstrates that ‘business communication is not just translation’ using common English business metaphors with literal German translations, demonstrating the complexity of business English.

Using language road signs for International business

As with all design E-creation’s design, deep thinking was applied on every level, even in the selection of the corporate font – using Berlin based H. Berthold’s Akzidenz Gratesque.

In order to communicate effectively and perform well in search engines, E-creation created ‘German language road signs’ throughout the site – areas where key paragraphs were translated and discretely integrated into the design.

E-creation put together an online marketing campaign with a budget of less than £100 per month that delivers over £1,000 of new business each month – an exceptional ROI.

Complete professional website design & development for under £2,500

SneakerSeeker.co.uk – an online museum for trainer culture

CLIENT:
Slough Borough Council

PROJECT:
Brand consultancy & professional website design

BUDGET:
£2,500 for interactive museum micro site

TECHNOLOGY:
Combination of Flash, CSS & HTML with a MySQL & PHP CMS & user contribution component.

Created for a three week museum exhibition, E-creation had a short time frame (7 working days) to complete site design & programming for this National Lottery funded project. In order to reduce the administrative burden of creating site content, the website is driven by user content which uploaded and commented on. This enabled the website to be populated rapidly and with the very latest relevant content for young people. Basic DHTML brings the site to life with some basic animation and key to the site's success has been top 10 search engine placements for key terms in Google.

The design itself was produced in under 48 hrs from scratch, providing an excellent example of what can be achieved within budget website design projects (under £1,000 for the design element).

Please visit the site www.sneakerseeker.co.uk to see the result achieved by a professional design design agency like E-creation creating a complete, fully functional website for a budget of less than £2,500.

Achieving the best search engine (SEO) placements in Google with a 5 minute 'Blogger and Realtime Google' masterclass

Achieving the best search engine (SEO) placements in Google with a 5 minute 'Blogger and Realtime Google' masterclass

Guaranteed #1 placements in Google is impossible yet it is something that at E-creation we are asked about on a regular basis. So we've put together a 5 minute master class on how to get the best from search engines and Google in particular. Information of achieving top placements in Google is a massively popular subject, you can find lots of more detailed information online, so we will keep our masterclass short, sweet and focused on how to use Blogger and Google's realtime indexing to maximise your position in Google.

Google recently shifted to some some pretty amazing realtime indexing technology, largely driven by Twitter, Facebook and news websites where information changes rapidly and needed a way to be found at the appropriate time. As a result, the days of waiting weeks or months to see the results of modification of page content are gone BUT you need to use the correct technologies to achieve this. A key element is to use Blogger (which is owned by Google, surprise, surprise) as your CMS to achieve top search engine placements with continual improvement and adjustment of content. The www.e-creation.eu site integrates Blogger discreetly in its news and blog section - and our approach enables us to place new content into Google in as little as 3 MINUTES(!) of posting content.

In fact, for our Google SEO masterclass, I will start a timer and post an update on how long it takes for this post to be indexed by Google (under the term 'blogger and realtime google masterclass' - 9 minutes and counting so far ... isn't technology fun - RESULT - 11 minutes and achieving number 5 position for 'Google Masterclass' as well).

So how does this rapid indexing of content help your business and website? People tend to be driven by fashion and peer behaviour, so if a particular business topic or subject suddenly has masses of traffic, it makes sense for a business to utilise the 'spike' for business purposes. People are hungry for information on that topic and if it resolves a technical, business or marketing issue, then your timely advice is massively valuable.

For example, as part of a online marketing & Google optimisation campaign for an online support client, E-creation keeps an eye on new bugs & IT issues released by Microsoft, as well as trawling through IT discussion forums, looking for popular subjects. If a known bug is being discussed or problems due to updates to operating systems or server platforms, together with the client, E-creation writes a micro blog that is posted via a Blogger CMS we built. As the Blogger element is integrated seamlessly into the website, relevant traffic flows to the website within 5 minutes of posting the information, helping to position the company at the forefront of expert advice for an topical subjects (and creating key revenue for the client).

The term 'to Google it' is a reflection of the ease with which people can find information online using Google and therefore, if you know that a particular subject is popular, the window of opportunity to leverage that moment may be short. Often it's best to be the first rather than the 'best' (and we are not just talking about where you rank in search engine, but rather how early you make 'first contact' from a brand perspective).

So back to topic, using Blogger to achieve #1 positions in Google. With Google's realtime indexing of content, once you know what content is topical, you can post, repost and refine your postings infinitely with realtime feedback on each iteration. (I describe website content pages as postings, because the technology behind the content pages is blogging technology - but what visitors experience are standard content pages within a website). This ability to continually refine the postings and see resulting search engine placements means you have the power to tune the posting (web page) content in realtime. E-creation will adjust this post itself, looking at the type of traffic that is generated, assessing the type of business that can be built from that traffic and of course, establishing the value of the information we are providing for free online.

Of course, it is absolutely essential that you have something useful and topical to say. Content is still the key pull for websites but using technologies such as Blogger and realtime Google indexing are key to leveraging that content. The ability to apply a design style to a Blogger feed, as well as the ability to use your unique URL (e.g. news.e-creation.eu) ensures brand integrity.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Website design & technology case studies for 2010

E-creation website design case studies

E-creation has been busy designing websites - so busy, it has taken slightly longer than anticipated but E-creation's 2010 website design case studies PDF is now available online. We have added several new website design projects, including XTM International (a complete branding & website design exercise with some pretty amazing 3D Flash work), Berlingual (a small website with international aspirations attracting large corporate clients) & UrbanMediaGallery (part of E-creation's 'making Slough cool' campaign) as well as shortening some of the existing case studies.

Please take a moment to view the website case studies (click here) to get an idea of typical project costs, design features, unique functionality and ROI website design projects.

With case studies coverage in publications by the Design Council, the Times, Design Week and New Media Age, you can get the inside track on the latest projects E-creation has been working on.


Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Stunning Flash animation & design using 3D technology

Stunning Flash animation using 3D technology

Once again, E-creation has been pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved using Flash as a technology, creating a Flash animation integrating realtime 3D rendering, parallax camera panning and dynamic integration of XML feeds into the 3D environment.

In a highly complex series of animations for XMT International, E-creation produced 3D Flash animations over 30 seconds in length with file sizes under 170k! Leon worked on the project for over 13 days to produce the animations (his notes can be seen above) from an original concept based around movement of arrows (see notes below):




Monday, February 8, 2010

Busy weekend working in augmented reality demo for Kraft

Yet another weekend lost to the pleasures (or pains) of work, depending on your point of view. Actually, we have been working on some very interesting fusion of augmented reality and social media - to be more precise, the creation of an augmented reality monitor that runs of live Twitter ticker feed.

We can edit and adjust the content of the augmented reality file using Twitter, which is pretty cool. Hopefully, we will be creating a new version of the www.augmentedrealitydesign.com site next week where users will be able to enter their own Twitter name and the application will automatically create a unique augmented reality Twitter feed that they can send to friends and colleagues, getting the viral wire buzzing.

It's a pretty cool application, so thank you Paul for working so hard over the weekend to meet our deadline for Kraft in the USA. Fingers crossed that Kraft will be taking on E-creation's augmented reality design creativity and applying it to their packaging.

Visit www.augmentedrealitydesign.com to interact with E-creation's augmented reality Twitter ticker - it's pretty cool!

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Ben New Year New Start 2010

It has been a busy start to 2010 for E-creation.
So far, I have investigated hairdressers, restaurants and takeaways in the Bournemouth and Poole area.

We created a series of free marketing fact sheets for these industries filled with useful tips to enhance their business.

I researched appropriate local businesses to send this information too and assembled the marketing packs complete with E-creation’s funky business card.

We know that times are difficult for small businesses, so the team have been trying to come up with low cost ways to help them generate business. An example of this has been the £95 Facebook Business page. Using Facebook as a technical platform enables E-creation is very quickly create a webpage that is indexed by Google and has lots of cool functionality. For restaurants, for example, it’s possible to upload videos, link to GoogleMap page, allow customers to upload & share their photos and even incorporate a video of the restaurant. Social media is a hot topic right now and is very cost effective within specific sectors.

Where E-creation can help is setting up the content in the page to maximise the impact of social media and to make sure that all the relevant content and links are in place. It seems like a simple thing, and it is, but it takes experience to do well. However, that’s how for £95, the team are able to offer a unique and really effective way to market a business. Of course we have no idea at this point how many smaller businesses will actually be interested in using social media, even with such a low cost of entry - so fingers crossed.

We looked into the opportunity of redesigning the front-end of Facebook for businesses, as you can do within MySpace – but unfortunately, this is no longer possible. So the Facebook Business pages have to keep their Facebook style, but with images around the edge to help give the right impression. Still, it keeps the development costs low, so perhaps it’s actually a bonus in terms of opportunity.

Please check out the marketing fact sheets on our website.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Cool new business cards for Future Culture

E-creation's graphic designers produce cool new cards for Future Culture

The team at E-creation are always looking for ways for businesses to really differentiate themselves from the minute they enter into a potential client's consciousness.

Thats why we think business cards so so very incredibly important. It provides an immediate and credible overview of the professionalism and attitude of an company. E-creation's business cards are famous! You might be thinking that we are exaggerating, yet time and time again, when networking, going into meetings or talking with journalists, when we hand over our business card, we are greeted with 'ah, we've heard about you and your business cards'. That's because they are really cool - but do not have a high unit cost or a gimmick factor - they are simply yet well designed, integrating all the brand values of E-creation.

For Future Culture, the youth oriented focus of the business is reflected in the style whilst still appealing to the cold, hard business drivers that their clients require. For their business card design, we used a spot UV (a kind of shiny ink) to highlight a hidden story on the back of the card that is initially felt before it become obvious. We examined the possibility of using UV reactive clear inks that would change from clear to a deep purple but unfortunately, this was a cost prohibitive approach.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Ben “Odds and Jobs” – Thursday 10th December.

Ben “Odds and Jobs” – Thursday 10th December.

Spent the first thing this morning in a design meeting with Chris, discussing another project E-creation is running.

I have been working on a press release and learnt about focusing on the 5 W’s of journalism when writing an article: The “Who, What, Where, When, Why and How?” in no particular order.
This is to get a reader’s attention. To do this you have to write the article in a concise and interesting manner. In the hope that the journalist will choose to publish yours over the hundreds of others they receive everyday from companies.
It is imperative you make the first paragraph really count and provide a summary of the article. For some useful advice on writing a press release check out: http://www.pressdispensary.co.uk/how_to_write_a_press_release.php

Being printed in a newspaper is beneficial for a company as it gets the message out about their products to people besides using direct advertising. Once I was happy with my draught I sent it to Laura-Jayne a journalist, so that she could provide me with some feedback on what I had written.

I heard back from Universal Music with regards to obtaining the rights for galvanize for the online marketing presentation. The cost for doing so was £1750. This is prohibitively expensive considering the site is unlikely to have more than a 100 hits a month. I think this time round E-creation will be leaving that one.

Monday, December 7, 2009

JP - Tired, annoyed about not being shortlisted, Flash 3D challenges and super cool 'bling' Facebook goes live - XTM International, Slough Council

Tired, annoyed about not being shortlisted, Flash 3D challenges and super cool 'bling' Facebook goes live ...

All businesses have to run multiple projects to grow but when you have to juggle chickens, tired, milk bottles and scarves it becomes a bit of a pain. Okay, that's a fairly confusing way of saying that there is just too much going on right now, so I am having to prioritise pre-Christmas delivery projects (meaning E-creation might miss the Christmas market with some of it's own projects).

XTM International

The team made the final breakthrough (see left image) on the website designs last week after E-creation presented three design concepts. The website design is now looking awesome - hitting all the key objectives in the correct tone - 'professional, friendly, international, fresh, technical & easy to code!' Really key here is 'easy to code' as we will not be doing the coding ourselves but rather leading the internal development team at XTM International, so the visual assets and guides need to be absolutely spot on.

Leon has been working on the Flash animations that will be applied in the top corner and doing some experiment using realtime 3D to help reduce file sizes. On previous projects, we have had to face the challenge of truly amazing animations created as loops in After Effects which ended being integrated as film loops in the background of the Flash file. This can be seriously inefficient, so now, we try to make things as 3D objects where perspective effects are required. This has helped us to reduce the original file sizes of 3,000k for XTM International (impossibly large!) down to 28k (improbably small!) for effectively the same effect.

Slough Children's and Young Person's Directory

This project is finally coming towards closure after we had agreement on the image selection for the website. It always surprises me that no matter how 'rigorous' we are about explaining to clients that the written and image assets for projects is likely to be the bottle neck in any project, it's the last thing we end up doing, often months after a design process is complete. The risk is dilution of the 'creative essence' that is very dense during the design process, when the design team is totally immersed in the project and mind space, as other design projects with different design objectives and guidelines float around - keeping project specific mood boards on the wall seems to help ...

Bid for Shepway Find Your Talent Website

I found out this morning that we haven't been short listed for this project, which is a pity, as I really thought we were very ideally placed to deliver the creative and technical requirements of the project. That said, I only had 48 hrs to put together a very complex proposal with elements such as our equal employment statements, 3 years of financial data, creative treatments and more!

Have a peak at the visual idea to the left that we cobbled together in 4 hrs for the proposal. It's pretty amazing what you can come up with when under pressure.

Incidentally, www.urbanmediagallery.com is now up and running, our 'super bling' version of Facebook, so check it out and feel free to give us feedback - it's still early days, so any ideas are readily welcomed!

Friday, December 4, 2009

Ben “Munkying around” – Looking into T-shirt manufacturers.


Ben “Munkying around” – Looking into T-shirt manufacturers.

Today I went with Jan to investigate the viability of manufacturing customised t-shirts for one of our clients. We visited Munky UK, a custom T-shirt maker based in Southampton.
They use a special vinyl which is cut with to a design using the digital vinyl cutter. They can produce personalised designs. The vinyl is weeded; they pick out what is unnecessary from the design. This is then heat pressed onto a t-shirt.

The vinyl is very flexible it comes in a variety of colours and textures including flock, which has a velour like texture. It is very durable and will most likely outlast the life of the t-shirt.
We left with some prototype designs. It was not exactly what we were looking for but it produced some useful ideas.
Check them out at http://www.munkyuk.com/

Got back to the office and had a conference call with a client. I did some test shots of the T-shirts to see how they might look online and dealt with some emails. I packaged the t-shirts up and took them off to be posted to the client, so could see what they looked like.

Monday, November 30, 2009

Ben “Teleconferencing ...” – Follow up session for client

“Teleconferencing ...” – Follow up session for client

We conducted a skype conference call with the client, George and Jan-Erik about the initial design session from Monday morning.
The two concepts of Mr Men and Push the button were discussed for the hour. The challenges faced were trying to get the client to commit to a particular path. Certain difficulties arose as they were not entirely clear what they wished to say from a marketing perspective. As a development Simon a copywriter, at E-creation has been brought in to help clarify the marketing message. Copywriting is the use of words to promote a person, business, opinion or idea.

After the meeting had finished, I quickly typed up the notes and ideas that had been discussed and sent them to everyone involved.

I left at lunchtime as I had to go to the Dentist for a filling. Oh what a joyous afternoon that was.

UPDATE: Both the above ideas were scrapped and the concept has moved on again. This is how the design process evolves.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Ben “SYMBOLS” – Looking into trademarks and design rights

“DAY 2” – Looking into trademarks and design rights

I followed up on the EMI music rights for the galvanize track. I was told in an email that EMI music rights do not hold the copyright but UNIVERSAL music rights do. The wild goose chase begins. Hopefully I will get the golden egg at the end of all this!

The majority of my time today was involved with researching the use of trademarks and design rights on the Intellectual Property Office website available at http://www.ipo.gov.uk/.

It appears that trademarks are distinctive symbols for goods and services. It is recognisable as a sign that differentiates goods or service as different from another company’s. I think is important to know they are not registrable if they:
• describe goods or services or any characteristics of them, for example, marks which show the quality, quantity, purpose, value or geographical origin of goods or services
• have become customary in the line of trade
• are not distinctive
• are three dimensional shapes - the shape is typical of the goods you are interested in (or part of them), has a function or adds value to the goods
• are specially protected emblems
• are offensive

It costs £200 to register a trademark and this is valid for 10 years.
Check out the ‘spot the trademark game’ if you have some free time at http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/tm/t-about/t-spotthetm.htm

As an aside, it is interesting to note that the term ‘Hoover’ is now both a noun and trademark used to classify the company that makes vacuum cleaners and also a verb, according to the Cambridge online dictionary (http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=37868&dict=CALD). Nowadays, Hoover has lost the exclusive right to use it solely as a brand name.

This illustrates how we can use a trademark term to say other things for example ‘have you googled him?’ to ask have you searched him on the internet/ to use a search engine. Google is not at all happy about this debranding of their name to describe general actions and has called in the language police. For further information see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3006486.stm.

Design Rights take two forms. Firstly a registered design gives stronger protection and involves applying to the Intellectual Property Office. Unregistered Design Rights gives weaker but automatic protection without the need to register the design.

A registered design is a legal right which protects the overall visual appearance of a product. To be registrable, a design must:
• be new
• have individual character.
Individual character means that the appearance of the design (known as the overall impression) is different from the appearance of other established designs.
It costs £60 per design right application and this lasts for 5 years and then it will need to be renewed.

I hope this brief summary has proved useful, for further information look at the Intellectual Property Office website available at http://www.ipo.gov.uk/.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Ben “Gettin in the press” BERLINGUAL PRESS RELEASE notes

“Gettin in the press” - BERLINGUAL PRESS RELEASE notes

I have been asked to work on press release for the Berlingual project. As part of this I need to obtain a project quote from Leo Waters, MD of Berlingual. Berlingual is a Berlin based English language training company. Check out their website http://www.berlingual.com/

The press release will focus on the unique characteristics within the company’s logo, stationary and website. It is interesting to see how many different routes there are for E-creation to raise its profile using the internet, blogs such as this, and the press.

Along with these tasks is the usual constant assault of phone calls and e-mails to deal with. Modern day living at its multi- tasking best!

Cheers