Hi from the team at Mediamojo, we have been very very busy in the last month or so! We have welcomed a number of new clients and have been working on some great graphic design projects (mostly local from the Noosa area but plenty from interstate as well) plenty of brochures, fantastic looking business cards and display folders and not to mention the ever growing request to build trendy looking websites.
But as we progress so does technology and its very important for us to stay abreast of it all. With the recent launch of the i-Pad we may be needing to take a step back in the world of Flash development as the guys at Apple are taking serious concern that Flash is sometimes “unsecure” and can cause bugs in some of Apples browsing functions. ( find more at http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/24731/ )
This doesnt mean that we will curb our Flash design and interactivity, it just means that when it comes time to develop your site, we need to consider your audience with greater scrutiny – who is browsing on i-Pad’s or i-Phones!? At Mediamojo we really want to create something for you and your businesses future.
We are currently taking a look at various J-Query (javascript based) plugins and testing out a few to see whats really cutting edge and what can help with interactivity, design and functionality.
In our next post we will visually display some of our latest work and you can try out a couple of funky web interactive elements and let us know what you think!!
Looking forward to working on your next project, whether it be big or small!!
We often get asked for advice from customers when it comes to supplying their text for different projects so we have decided to put together a few points to help you out.
What we are going to look at is simplifying terminology, cutting out cliches and how different mediums should display your content.
Simplify terminology
You should really take a good look at your readability and use a more inviting approach, for example:
…Instead of “We thrive on assisting your business” use “We would love to help you out” Also, another great tip is dont use “internal language” it can be seen as condescending and limits the readers understanding.
Cut out the cliches
Buzzwords are annoying and someitmes look cheap. Just because some other business is using it, doesnt mean you should, it certainly wont make you an “Industry Leader” or “Cutting Edge”, nor will it improve your “customer-focused integration.”
Business cards are different in size to an A5 brochure and websites are different to 6 page catalogues. Each one serves a purpose to deliver specific amounts of content, here is a rough guide:
Business Cards – Name, Slogan, Email, Location, Contact Details… remember it fits in your palm and not everyone has the best eyesight.
Websites - Short sharp paragraphs of USEFUL content… remember WHY your visitor is there in the first place.
Email Signature – Name, Slogan, Email, Address optional… remember its purpose and the speed one flicks through emails.
Cataloguesand brochures are used to display more detailed information, but once again being reader friendly is the key.
We are always happy to discuss any issues you may have with content for design, feel free to call us and we can evaluate your content for your next big project.
Because a logo design needs to cover a number of key aspects for successful delivery as we will explore in todays entry.
At Mediamojo we understand that a logo is the first point of visual contact for your customers, but we also keep in mind how its going to be used across different mediums. Before we tackle any graphic design project, careful consideration is given to the following aspects: reproducability, colours, reversability, complex simplicity, font and versatility.
The initial idea…
This is where the target audience is identified, relevant symbolism applied, sketches are made and the main idea conveyed in a few final concepts…
Reproducability
It is very important to think about where the logo is going to appear, what is it going to be printed on and how can it be reproduced to suit other media such as signage and packaging. Aspects we consider are: how much detail to add to your logo design. Lots of small shapes and skinny lines should be avoided as they could disappear or print very broken and rough when reduced to small sizes. We also look at the eveness of white negative or white spacing and carefully consider any gradients which may be used to colourise your logo. As a client you may be very easily tempted to get carried away with your design and add cool or funky effects, but the bottom line is “does it make the design better, or does it make it worse.” When in doubt, leave it out.
Reversability
This is process where your logo should be able to look outstanding on a black background, usually in muted shades of black, grey and white.
Colours
Colour is one of the most emotive elements at your disposal and can vary from warm, cool, neutral, vivid, complimentary, analogous, soft, light, dark, bright and saturated. Colour unfortunately is bound by ethics and morals so subject matter can never be overlooked when applying colour… for example a butchers would not be painted red, red is alarming and can symbolize blood – in the same way wrong combinations of colours can alter the message such as: primary colours used for a deep and serious Law Firm, reds, yellows and blues symbolise variety and happiness. There are some colours that will convey a message more successfully than others.
Complex simplicity
This could be looked at as bit of an artform at turning something very simple into something interesting by making a couple of graphical adjustments to create a bit of visual flare and excitement. Overly complex logos are a no no as when reduced for business card or letterhead format some of the intricate detail can be lost or filled in by printer inks.
Font
In the careful design process, we choose a font that is appropriate and looks great alongside your logo, often customising the type to appear as to be part of the logo. Often, a logo is simply stylised text so its very important to choose fonts appropriate to the message being conveyed, similar to choosing colour palettes. An important aspect of font is its readability and the simple rule applies once again – funky things like drop shadows and 3d effects can make things a little hard to read and reproduce, so when in doubt, leave it out.
At the end of the day, your logo should be “stretchy” in the way that it should cover all the above aspects and if it is, then your branding for further collateral, websites etc.. will come together very nicely.
We hope this helps and gives you an insight as to how we do things and if you like, let us know! We look forward to working with you on your next big project!
The recent months has seen us working on engaging projects from a series of both new and valued clients. Below you can read up on brief excerpts and see what we came up with – from the team at Mediamojo, please enjoy!
Easts Leagues Foundation – Community Benefit Fund
To design a logo that reflects community spirit and the idea of giving back to the community. The logo must jump off the page and generate an emotional reponse
to the viewer.
Pomegranate Marketing
To create branding for a marketing company called Pomegranate Marekting. Utilize strong colours, fresh ideas and create a contemporary and appealing logo.
1300 Cruise
To create a website which focuses on ‘best value deals and personalised service’ for ocean cruises.
BreakinWind
To create visual branding for a company called BreakinWind who produce beach accessories such as towels and wind breakers. The ideals include fresh, funky, naughty and appealing to a 18-30 year old market.
Log in to your WordPress Administration Panel (Dashboard).
Click the Posts tab.
Click the Add New Sub Tab
Start filling in the blanks.
As needed, select a category, add tags, and make other selections from the sections below the post. Each of these sections is explained below.
When you are ready, click Publish.
Check out the video below for a more indepth visual guide
Descriptions of Post Fields
WordPress Admin Writing Post Advanced Panel – Top of Page
Title
The title of your post. You can use any words or phrases. Avoid using the same title twice as that will cause problems. You can use commas, apostrophes, quotes, hypens/dashes, and other typical symbols in the post like “My Site – Here’s Lookin’ at You, Kid.” WordPress will clean it up for the link to the post, called the post-slug.
Post Editing Area
The blank box where you enter your writing, links, links to images, and any information you want to display on your site. You can use either the Visual or the HTML view to compose your posts. For more on the HTML view, see the section below, Visual Versus HTML View.
Preview button
Allows you to view the post before officially publishing it.
Publish box
Contains buttons that control the state of your post. The main states are Published, Pending Review, and Draft. A Published status means the post has been published on your blog for all to see. Pending Review means the draft is waiting for review by an editor prior to publication. Draft means the post has not been published and remains a draft for you. If you select a specific publish status and click the update post or Publish button, that status is applied to the post. For example, to save a post in the Pending Review status, select Pending Review from the Publish Status drop-down box, and click Save As Pending. (You will see all posts organized by status by going to Posts > Edit). To schedule a post for publication on a future time or date, click “Edit” in the Publish area next to the words “Publish immediately”. Change the settings to the desired time and date. You must also hit the “Publish” button when you have completed the post to publish at the desired time and date.
Publish box
Visibility – This determines how your post appears to the world. Public posts will be visible by all website visitors once published. Password Protected posts are published to all, but visitors must know the password to view the post content. Private posts are visible only to you (and to other editors or admins within your site)
Permalink
After you save your post, the Permalink below the title shows the potential URL for the post, as long as you have permalinks enabled. (To enable permalinks, go to Settings > Permalinks.) The URL is generated from your title. In previous versions of WordPress, this was referred to as the “page-slug.” The commas, quotes, apostrophes, and other non-HTML favorable characters are changed and a dash is put between each word. If your title is “My Site – Here’s Lookin’ at You, Kid”, it will be cleaned up to be “my-site-heres-lookin-at-you-kid” as the title. You can manually change this, maybe shortening it to “my-site-lookin-at-you-kid”.
Save
Allows you to save your post as a draft / pending review rather than immediately publishing it. To return to your drafts later, visit Posts – Edit in the menu bar, then select your post from the list.
Publish
Publishes your post on the site. You can edit the time when the post is published by clicking the Edit link above the Publish button and specifying the time you want the post to be published. By default, at the time the post is first auto-saved, that will be the date and time of the post within the database.
Post Tags
Refers to micro-categories for your blog, similar to including index entries for a page. Posts with similar tags are linked together when a user clicks one of the tags. Tags have to be enabled with the right code in your theme for them to appear in your post. Add new tags to the post by typing the tag into the box and clicking “Add”.
Categories
The general topic the post can be classified in. Generally, bloggers have 7-10 categories for their content. Readers can browse specific categories to see all posts in the category. To add a new category, click the +Add New Category link in this section. You can manage your categories by going to Posts > Categories.
Excerpt
A summary or brief teaser of your posts featured on the front page of your site as well as on the category, archives, and search non-single post pages. Note that the Excerpt does not usually appear by default. It only appears in your post if you have changed the index.php template file to display the Excerpt instead of the full Content of a post. If so, WordPress will automatically use the first 55 words of your post as the Excerpt or up until the use of the More Quicktag mark. If you use an Explicit Excerpt, this will be used no matter what.
Send Trackbacks
A way to notify legacy blog systems that you’ve linked to them. If you link other WordPress blogs, they’ll be notified automatically using pingbacks. No other action is necessary. For those blogs that don’t recognize pingbacks, you can send a trackback to the blog by entering the website address(es) in this box, separating each one by a space.
Custom Fields
Custom_Fields offer a way to add information to your site. In conjunction with extra code in your template files or plugins, Custom Fields can modify the way a post is displayed. These are primarily used by plugins, but you can manually edit that information in this section.
Discussion
Options to enable interactivity and notification of your posts. This section hosts two check boxes: Allow Comments on this post and Allow trackbacks and pingbacks on this post. If Allowing Comments is unchecked, no one can post comments to this particular post. If Allowing Pings is unchecked, no one can post pingbacks or trackbacks to this particular post.
Password Protect This Post
To password protect a post, click Edit next to Visibility in the Publish area to the top right, then click Password Protected, click Ok, and enter a password. Then click OK. Note – Editor and Admin users can see password protected or private posts in the edit view without knowing the password.
Post Author
A list of all blog authors you can select from to attribute as the post author. This section only shows if you have multiple users with authoring rights in your blog. To view your list of users, see Users tab on the far right.
Note: You can set basic options for writing, such as the size of the post box, how smiley tags are converted, and other details by going to Settings > Writing.
When it comes to putting together a website, one of the most crucial aspects is getting your content wording right and selecting relevant keywords.
It’s not a difficult process at all and involves just a little bit of thought. This will help you to help us in making your site search engine friendly. So how should you go about coming up with keyword/ phrases?
Here’s a couple of useful steps…
Talk to your target audience and ask them how they would search for your particular product or service. Some businesses spend thousands on market research of this nature, so if you want to be a formidable business you should definitely have a similar plan of attack. Gather what they say, then head to Google Adwords:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal - this will help you find new keyword ideas and allow you to see how many hits different words get. The higher the hit, the more popular and the harder it is for your site to be found.
Then what?
When it comes to programming and applying keywords/phrases we often get asked where do they go? Well, they are embedded into the backend of your pages and are seen and read by search engines. You can actually see these phrases in action on Google:
This makes up part of Search Engine Optimisation, a process where we can help you make your site more visible in todays competetive online world!
If you would like to discuss further how to prepare yourself before handing over a project, feel free to contact either John or Vinny on (07) 5455 5058
Good luck and we look forward to working with you on your next project!
Greetings from the team at Mediamojo. As we enter the new year we are eagerly consolidating a whole stack of fresh visual and marketing solutions.
We have spent the latter part of last year researching the most cutting edge and user friendly web management systems to bring you a more enhanced and tailored service when it comes to web design. Of course, we are constantly revising our approach to graphic design, keeping up to date with all the latest trends and styles to keep you looking your best. Our print design work, including brochures, stationery and publications is still an important facet of our business and we are very happy to provide honest and professional printing services to all our clients.
This year we will be expanding our online design systems by improving programming and administration systems, allowing us to streamline our design and customer service processes. There have been many enhancements to Content Management Systems in the past few months, especially to our workhorse known as Wordpress and we intend to combine its best features with a tailored approach to offer customised services to meet your individual business requirements. With Wordpress we can deliver a website with fully customised design elements, practical content management systems you can control and effective functionality, while achieving high search engine rankings. We will be creating a number of packages with selectable elements to “lay out” all the available options within a certain budget, making it easier for you to select the right web solution for your business. We want you to understand how a website in 2010 works, so we are offering a service where you can come in and learn how to maintain your website.
Printing prices have become very competitive in recent times and Mediamojo is proud to offer a premium printing service at realistic prices. Gone are the days of waiting weeks for designs then again for the actual printed work. With Mediamojo you can expect to receive speedy service and effective designs,l as we treat every project with the respect, dedication and urgency it requires. To discuss your printing needs in person call us on 07 5455 5058, we will be happy to provide you with a unique and professional solution – start your marketing year off fresh, we know how to make you look good!
Design wise we will be offering a professional standard across all medias, focusing on corporate and business requirements in particular. We have also added technical and traditional Illustration, Flash animation and interactive design, all which we can happily offer to you – so don’t be afraid to ask us what we can do!
We hope your coming year is one of joy, success and memorable achievements.
All the best from Mediamojo
P.S. Keep an eye out for a up and coming “helpful tips” and “how to” blog entries.
Welcome to our relaunch of our site. We have spent many hours researching the best components of the web and put them together to produce a site which is both visually exciting and functional. We look forward to communicating with you and providing you a great visual solution.
