The Harleys Design Award is back for its 12th year in a partnership between Harleys and the City of Bristol College. This year’s client is the West of England Sport Trust (Wesport).
Forming a module of the college’s FdA in Graphic Design with Interactive Multimedia course, the award gives students the opportunity to experience and respond to a live client brief. The project is mutually beneficial, providing value for the organisation as well as the students.
This April, Wesport will be launching a new initiative called Talent Hubs, designed to support and inspire talented sportspeople between the ages of 12 and 15. Through weekly training sessions, the scheme aims to provide them with the core skills necessary to help them move forward in their chosen discipline.
The task allotted to the college design students is to develop a strong, creative identity for the Talent Hubs campaign using a range of promotional materials, from posters and business cards to t-shirts and water bottles. If successful, the new brand will be used to promote the scheme across the South West.
“The Harleys Design Award is a great opportunity for the students to build on their creative skills within a professional context,” explains Ken Hale, Creative Director at Harleys. “It enables them to apply the design principles they’ve learnt to a corporate identity, whilst at the same time making a valuable contribution to a worthwhile cause.”
“The previous students set a high standard in 2011, and we are very much looking forward to seeing what is produced this year.”
Christmas already seems like a long time ago, but we’ve just finished adding up the scores of all the entries to our festive competition.
Clients, suppliers and friends alike were invited to have a go at our interactive seasonal game, designed by the Harleys team and based on the world-famous British Christmas Dinner. Entrants were then asked to send us a screen grab of their score.
Some of the more ‘creative’ entries included photoshopped screen grabs with astronomical scores – but genuine winner Inga Mills, Marketing Communication Manager at Saab, has a bottle of champagne on its way to her.
If you missed out on the chance to enter, let us know, and we’ll add you to the list for next time. And if you want to relive the festive spirit, you can still have a go at the game here – no more prizes though!
Waterstone’s (or Waterstones) has dropped its apostrophe to make it more compatible with the online world, prompting outrage from twittering apostrophe-lovers – and apathy from everyone else.
“It’s just plain wrong,” said an angry John Richards, chairman of the Apostrophe Protection Society. “A bookshop is the last place to be so slapdash with English.”
He is not alone. On Twitter, one user believes that the apostrophe was dropped “to facilitate morons”, whilst another user labelled ‘highly influential’ describes it as “one more reason not to shop in Waterstone(‘)s.” Others are righteously calling out to “protect our language from decay.”
But Waterstones aren’t the first to face the apostrophe dilemma. While Sainsbury’s and McDonald’s have both retained theirs, Clarks, Currys, Harrods and Selfridges have all said goodbye to pesky punctuation.
James Daunt, the managing director of Waterstones, defends the decision as one of common sense and practicality: “Waterstones without an apostrophe is, in a digital world of URLs and email addresses, a more versatile and practical spelling.” He has a point.
Tim Waterstone, the founder of Waterstones, has had nothing to do with the company since 1993. But while some believe that the removal of the comma is insulting to the founder, Daunt insists that the change “reflects an altogether truer picture of our business today which, while created by one, is now built on the continued contribution of thousands of individual booksellers.”
So does it really matter that Waterstones has dropped its apostrophe? Are its customers going to stop buying books there as a result? Our guess: probably not.
It’s January once again. People are getting back to work and filling in their calendars for the coming months. Here are some things you may (or may not) want to include in yours:
It’s that time of year again, and the Christmas ads are back on our screens. Over the years we’ve seen good ones and bad ones – and this year is no exception. Companies and businesses regularly throw millions of pounds at their Christmas campaigns, but how do viewers really feel about them?
Some can inspire some quite dramatic reactions. This year, the Littlewoods take on a school nativity play has received particularly negative feedback. “I rage every time it comes on,” comments one online forum user. “They should take it off air and burn the footage.”
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has received over 450 complaints claiming that the ad shatters the illusion of Christmas by revealing that parents are in fact responsible for delivering presents.
On the other hand, this year’s John Lewis advert has already had over 3 million hits on YouTube, and inspired such Facebook groups as ‘The John Lewis Christmas Ad Made Me Cry’. In contrast to Littlewoods, John Lewis does not advocate products so much as it does good values and kindness. Now isn’t that more important than a new iPad?
Here are some of our past favourites to get you in the Christmas spirit:
Woolworths – A Happy Christmas ShoppingSpree (1981)
Harleys is proud to be the main sponsor of the AC Bristol football club. The club were newly-formed this year, and play in the Bristol Regional Sunday League 4th Division. With two of our employees on the team, we are somewhat personally invested in their success.
The team recently donated their old football gear to Afrikit – an initiative which provides sports shirts, kit and equipment to some of the poorest areas in Africa.
“Thanks to securing our new home kit sponsorship with Harleys, we had a spare kit that was less than a season old,” explains Paul Martin, team manager and Head of Design at Harleys. “Rather than have it gathering dust in the kitbag we thought that some less fortunate people could make use of it.”
Following a successful pre-season campaign, the team are now halfway through the league campaign and have won five out of their last six games. In a recent match they beat the division leaders 3-2, and were the first team to do so this season. Their top scorer has scored 26 goals in just 9 games.
The club home ground is Backwell School in Bristol, and their use of the facilities there provides much-needed funding for the school.
“I’m delighted that a small club like ours can help other communities and promote the sport of football around the world,” says Paul.
The team currently stand at 4th in the league table, and have qualified for the semi finals of the Gloucester FA Sunday Minor Cup.
Google has recently launched a fun new feature called the Search Stories Video Creator. The name pretty much speaks for itself. You can choose 5-7 search terms, testing out different search types to get the results you’re after. Then you select a backing track, and the tool creates a neat little video of your journey within a matter of seconds. It’s that simple.
Here’s our effort:
It’s more than just a bit of fun though. Search Stories can be used to tell countless tales about what individuals and businesses plan and do. In that way it demonstrates just how huge search has become. Our Search Story is about developing our identity, and optimising it online. Have a go yourself, and let us know what you think.
Anyone who spends a reasonable amount of time browsing the internet will at some point have encountered error 404. It’s the standard response to the server not being able to find what was requested. How can websites deflect the resulting frustration?
There are two main reasons for landing on a 404 page. Either the URL is misspelt or non-existent, or the link is outdated and the content has been moved or deleted. A good 404 will suggest ways of getting back on track, including alternative links and search boxes designed to encourage the user to remain on the site. A great 404 will do the same thing – but with flair.
A well-designed 404 page not only allows you to gloss over failure, it can also add brand personality. The user may be put-out at not finding what they wanted, but it is possible to placate them with kittens. Kitten-based 404 pages seem to have become something of a trend, perhaps because they appeal to a ‘softer side’ that makes users less inclined to get angry. Most opt for conversational or witty text alongside a striking illustration or character. It’s a way of saying ‘yes, something did go wrong, but let’s enjoy the ride’.
Of course, a well-maintained website should offer rare occasion for 404. But on the off-chance that it happens, why not do something different? No-one wants to look at a blank screen.
On Saturday 15 October, a man living in New York Cityposted the following message on a site called MacRumors: “Divorcing wife. Thanks iPhone 4S and Find My Friends”. Thanks to the GPS tracking app he had installed on her phone, he had been able to track her location to somewhere entirely different to where she had claimed to be going that evening.
These apps are not exclusive to the iPhone. BlackBerry users can get similar functionality from LiveTracker. The idea is that you’re able to find your family or friends more easily. Once they have the app downloaded, their location becomes visible on the map. Great if you’re meeting a friend for dinner or checking that the kids got home safely.
Then there is MobiStealth. This goes one step further. It deliberately targets paranoid partners in its advertising, claiming that if you “want to find out if he/she is telling the truth…then MobiStealth cell phone spyware is a perfect solution for you”. With this software you can also listen into calls, read messages and view call history, in addition to tracking someone’s location. And it’s not the only app that can do so.
How far is too far? Should we really have to rely on applications such as this to know whether our partners are being unfaithful?
Of course, GPS has plenty of useful applications. Companies are becoming keen to encourage the social media phenomenon known as ‘checking in’. People can use GPS to tell their friends where they are, where they’ve been or where they’re going, via their news feeds. By enabling check-in at their locations, businesses can encourage customers, employees or anyone else to let people know about their visits. This builds brand equity – at no cost at all.
But perhaps it’s worth taking time to consider who you’re sharing your location with. There’ll be no more pretending you’re “on your way” once your spouse learns the art of stealth.
An inspirational figure, Steve Jobs envisioned modern computer features like mouse controllers and clickable icons before the first PCs existed. He and Steve Wozniak launched Apple in 1976 to deliver on his vision.
Recently he was best-known for leading the development of revolutionary electronic products such as the iPhone and the iPad. Here are some things that you might not have known about him:
