So where to from here? Will the internet remain the clunky, PC-based experience it’s always been, or will it become more ‘Grandma friendly’ and integrate seamlessly into our living rooms? Well … yes.

We’re seeing the first signs of Youtube integrated televisions now and home video consoles are doing their best to use the power of the internet to deliver multiplayer gaming and on-demand movies. But what does this mean to the average business owner and how can they get in on the action? It’s a little soon in the evolution process but it is inevitable that within the next few years we’ll start seeing what I call ‘true digital’ TV: on-demand television that is viewed using a menu system (kind of like ninemsn.com.au) with your TV’s remote control. This will be a completely on-line experience that will enable seamless integration between traditional TV viewing and the internet.

For instance, if you choose to watch a sports program, a targeted advertisement for Adidas might be displayed featuring a live link to a website – to a local business’s website - which will be instantly viewable at home on TV. The program will pause while you browse the website (and possibly email an enquiry) and will resume when you’re done shopping.

This will finally realize the potential for every business, great or small to be centre stage in everyone’s living room, at the click of a button… The commercial television stations must be running scared.

As an example of designing a marketing package to work across print and web, take the ‘Cruiser Cashback’ promotion Graphic Media recently designed for Kawasaki Motors Australia. As with many of the promotions we develop for Kawasaki, this needed to work as a fully detailed magazine advertisement and A2 poster and then be adapted across variously-sized website banners.

The challenge with the smaller web banners is of course working out how much information can (and must) be sacrificed while still retaining the gist of the message. You see it’s not just the area of the web banner that’s limiting – even with today’s higher broadband speeds many commercial websites set prohibitively small file size limits on their advertising space, so even if you can physically fit an extra word on your banner, the extra few kilobytes it adds might push you over the limit!

So, rather than try to convey the whole story, our goal is simply to say enough to ‘make them click’ … and once you’ve landed the viewer on your own web page you can go into the detail you need to.

 

Graphic Design is not just about making things ‘look good’. It’s about creating an effective communication and marketing piece that also looks good. It’s important for Graphic Designers to never forget that their clients’ primary concern is selling their product and turning a profit. The websites, brochures, flyers, magazine and newspaper advertisements we develop are not ‘pieces of art’, but vehicles for achieving that goal.

It is important that the integrity of their branding is maintained, but a good graphic designer will take that as a given and will focus their attention on understanding the client’s product and their market to create a communication piece that clearly and unambiguously gives that market an impetus to buy.

Why am I ranting about this? Because thinking artistically and thinking practically are at odds with each other, and the mark of a truly great designer is the ability to seamlessly marry the two. And that’s something that is often unappreciated and should never be taken for granted.

 

Ok this is not our newest logo design, but it’s a good example of taking an existing brand and updating it for today’s market without losing the essence of what made the brand recognizable in the first place.

The OZtrail brand has been around for a while and has become a mainstay in the Australian camping industry and while their products have modernized their logo had not changed since their early days. The updated logo keeps the most recognizable feature – the diamond - plus a modified version of the ‘stroke’ to evoke enough of the old logo to not alienate existing clientele.

The new logo has been kept intentionally simple to allow easy reproduction across a range of mediums and has since been reproduced millions of times on nylon and canvas tents and across a multitude of camping accessories such as sleeping bags, hiking packs, chairs and furniture.

Keep an eye out at your local market for an OZtrail Gazebo. I guarantee you’ll find one!

 

Yes, it was a no doubt overdue, but we’ve finally completed our new website. Using the Joomla Content Management System platform, our new website now offers the flexibility and updatability required to keep it fresh and relevant with minimal fuss.

If you’re thinking about a developing a new website, it’s hard to go past the Joomla platform. It’s open-source, which means no huge licence fees, and it is highly customizable and expandable with excellent features such as e-commerce and shopping cart facilities, forums and chat software, blog pages, email newsletters and of course the ability to update and edit content without dedicated software or web development knowledge.

For more information on developing a Joomla content managed website, contact us today