Wednesday 24 November 2010

Google TV... the future?

Well, it's almost upon us... well actually it's been around a while, with Apple TV, Boxee, and even Microsoft Media Center etc. we've been able to get web content on that glowing eye magnet in the living room for quite some time.

But the rumors are that Google TV is going to make it mainstream.

Part of me thinks that they won't, because they seem to terminally fail at mainstream because of their lack of finesse in everything they do, Android included. It may be more feature laden and 'open' (ooooooh!), but it doesn't feel as nice as the iPhone, I'm sorry, but it's true. It's the stuff of geeks.

Search is search, they got that right, and shaped how we search moving forward. But that's not consumer-land... TV is.

So, slickness aside what will it actually mean?

I think one of two things:

1) It will open up a number of new things to do in your front room, quickly search for stuff, add apps to enhance your viewing, browse the web and more and it will be a TV revolution even greater than the BBC iPlayer OR...

2) It will throw normal viewing habits into disarray as you go from (albeit increasingly unstructured and poorly produced) professionally created content with some real gems there for you when you need them, to total un-organised chaos. Gone are the days when people were home at 7.00pm to watch Corrie, that comfort or life order has already ebbed away, and this could finish it off for good.

Will we all become 'randomers' because of it?

Will quality broadcasting be killed by rubbish web based content, just like journalism has been harmed by amateur blogs?

I don't know. But I'd rather have the TV programmes I have now and a Boxee Box or an Apple TV or my PS3 for the other stuff I think. The examples seem to suggest Google have actually employed a designer for the UI for once on Google TV! But I have a feeling that slickness is just smoke and mirrors, Google aren't slick. And they aren't Apple. But boy do they want to be!

Apple should make an iToilet for a laugh, Google would be on it in an instance (no pun intended)!

Friday 5 November 2010

Preston Guild 2012 win for ID!


We've just heard we've been awarded the contract for the next phase of the Preston Guild 2012 website. Our proposals included some amazing social media integration, mobile sites and a excellent utilisation of the Guild 2012 brand developed by The Chase to make the most of the flexible and beautifully executed work they've done.

It was a competitive pitch which was thrown a googly by our Creative Director John having to speed home to his expecting wife who'd gone into labor! So it turned out to be a one man pitch, but it was great fun and we demonstrated our thorough understanding of the brief and bought new ideas and strategy to the table, as well as some beautiful calculated creative.

It's a tight schedule but we're committed to delivering the project and will all get behind it 100%.

More details will follow, and a proper release instead of this elated joyous 'just found out' type one!

Friday 29 October 2010

Brazil mini site for Bodycote


As Bodycote (an ID client for some 15 years now) expands into new territories we support them with mini sites to announce the capabilities from Bodycote.com and to publicise the capability in the host country.

We've just released a small site for their Brazil business expansion, it's live on http://brazil.bodycote.com.

Tuesday 28 September 2010

The global leaders in renewable energy solutions practise what they preach



ENER-G (www.energ.co.uk) based in Manchester, designs, develops and finances energy efficient and renewable solutions on a business-to-business basis globally. They deliver a comprehensive end-to-end service – from energy procurement and efficiency expertise through to renewable and low carbon technologies and services.

ID, the Preston based digital agency, have been working with ENER-G for over 5 years now and with their rebrand on the horizon and new requirements for the site it was time to re-scope and re-develop. Or so we all thought.

ENER-G had already invested in the initial website and CMS so the approach was planned to recycle the CMS and just develop new templates to represent and support the new brand. So in terms of renewable solutions this project delivered that promise always made when clients are looking at website development which is rarely delivered against. The site you buy will be able to be redesigned without having to buy a new website or starting from scratch.

There's been new features added to enhance the online presence for ENER-G like a jQuery hero area on the home page:


...and a deep linking SEO type footer which acts as a method of navigation when at the base of the page and highlights where the user is in the site. And obligatory social media sharing options handled by an AddThis widget:


A lovely jQuery based map of Europe helps promote their growing international portfolio via the CMS without getting caught in the messy Flash map scenario getting in the way of SEO and updatability:


And because this was ID's CMS in the first place coupled with our excellent development skills it didn't mean the system hindered the evolution of the site, which can happen with some CMS products. ENER-G could have exactly what they wanted.

ID created the online design after Happy Creative (www.happy-creative.co.uk) in Blackpool did an excellent job with the rebrand, having worked many times with 3rd party branding agencies and extending the clients brand online for the likes of United Utilities and BAE Systems this was an ideal project for Interactive Dimension.

"This is a demonstration of how important long term relationships are these days. 2nd and 3rd generation websites for clients is great for all involved, no need to get another agency up to speed and maximum cost effectiveness for the client and repeat revenue for the agency, it's a win-win situation for all.

"To top it all off, we're very happy with the site and feel it works well in our portfolio, they have a great team over there at ENER-G", said Jonny Wilde at ID.

You can have a look at the site on www.energ.co.uk.

Thursday 9 September 2010

New website from ID turns the spotlight on Preston



A new website promoting Preston as a modern, creative, innovative European city has gone live.

www.prestonvision.co.uk features links with popular social media such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr, allowing Preston people to get involved in discussions about the planned transformation of their city over the next decade.

As well as expressing their views on current projects and initiatives featured on the site, the public can contribute videos and photographs which celebrate the area’s beauty, heritage and personality to help raise the city’s profile as part of the bid to attract investment.

The fresh, sleek, clean website was designed by Preston creative agency ID and commissioned by Preston Vision Ltd, the regeneration company which is driving forward proposals to transform the city.

Preston Vision’s head of marketing and communications Emma Blackman said: “The website is a key part of our strategy to market Preston in a comprehensive and far-reaching way, bringing together the city’s best attributes and proudly showing them off.

“Preston is a vibrant, compact city with fantastic transport links and a lot of personality, this website will give Preston a new platform to stand alongside it’s European counterparts, showcase development opportunities and highlight Preston’s strengths in sectors such as advanced manufacturing , knowledge and design.

“The website is fully integrated in terms of social media so that Preston people feel part of it and, most importantly, can contribute towards telling the world what a great place it is to live, work or visit - it’s a celebration of Preston. Feedback from local people about our proposals now and as the projects are rolled out is also crucial.

“These are potentially very exciting times for Preston and its people as the city positions itself as a 21st century centre of knowledge and innovation.

“We were delighted to find the creativity and technological expertise needed for our website right here in Preston with the ID creative agency.”

Strategic Account Director at ID Jonny Wilde said: “It’s been a privilege to work on such an important site for the City of Preston. The new brand was easy to work with, and the client was great!

“Integrating so much social media into the site means the community can contribute and that’s something we’re interested in observing, to see how the social media and website channels blend - it should be very interesting.

“We’re very pleased with the final product and have enjoyed the follow-on opportunities with Preston Vision such as exhibition systems and email marketing, it’s a great relationship, and one I’m confident will only grow over time as we work closely moving forward.”

The site was developed using ID’s content management system (CMS) with several enhancements such as:

- Social media integration, including Twitter (both account and search related feeds), Facebook, Flickr (particularly the header on the ‘Preston is Evolving’ page which is made up of images drawn from Preston photographers), YouTube, Delicious and LinkedIn

- Pages tailored in terms of colour and style according to the user journey

- RSS feeds from tourism and property sites are to be integrated making the site a hub of information for the whole of Preston

- Site map footer which acts as the breadcrumb trail highlighting where the user is on the site, and delivering great linking into the content of the site

- Newsletter subscription which feeds directly into the email marketing platform

The site is built with search engine optimisation (SEO) in mind and features SEO tools in the CMS and rich keywords all over the site giving natural search success, especially relevant to the recently launched Google Instant.

You can visit the site on www.prestonvision.co.uk.

Tuesday 10 August 2010

Mayes, more than accountants



Mayes Business Partnership Ltd, the Accrington based chartered certified accountants and registered auditors who serve the entire Northwest are in the midst of a rebrand and refocus exercise.Experiencing great success in the provision of business services which confirm their moniker as Added Value Accountants they felt they wanted to evolve their brand to leverage the Mayes name, clarify their offerings and bring their image right up to date for the bright future ahead.

Appointing Preston digital agency Interactive Dimension (www.interactivedimension.com) to develop their brand and website, a thorough blueprint phase was undertaken which helped both parties focus on their customers and aspirations. Taking this step back, deep breath approach has rewarded Mayes with a fresh new, modern and unique look and feel to the company identity, one which will be followed though in all their marketing and communication materials over the next few months.

A detail of the logos bespoke type treatment:


"One thing which stood out to us was the need to leverage the great Mayes name and clarify what they do, but with a novel way to show they do so much more. Our creative team developed a clean, stylish and sophisticated brand that introduces the 'more than' concept which will be applied across their service portfolio. We're very pleased with the results and look forward to seeing it work hard for the client. We particularly wanted to boil the identity down to 'Mayes' as everyone knows them as that. They are an accountancy firm with a great personality, not a machine and we wanted that to be the focus." said Jonny Wilde from ID.
"It was something we'd all wanted to do for some time. It's a big step but we felt the timing was right; the future for Mayes is about focusing on what we do best to deliver great results for our clients, we simply do more. We can't wait for the full transformation to be complete and we're very excited about the future for us as a practice. This new brand identity spells it out for our existing clients and prospects alike." said Anne Parkinson, Managing Director at Mayes.
Moving forward Mayes will continue to provide the best possible value business development services for their clients, focused on accountancy, tax, audit and other financial services.

ID are in the process of developing Mayes’ new site which will showcase their services and host a number of value added tools for their clients leveraging web based technologies and systems integration with Mayes’ back-office systems. The project is perfect for ID with their creative, build and integration capabilities which have been homed and proven over the last 15 years the agency has been delivering digital solutions.

Why not catch their old website now on www.mbpacc.co.uk before it's replaced by www.mayesaccountants.co.uk which is currently in development.

Friday 23 July 2010

Preston Carers come to ID

Preston Carers support carers in the Preston area. They offer a host of information, advice, services, support and activities for carers.

They have selected Interactive Dimension the Preston based digital agency to support them with their new website design and build.

We'll be bringing the site up to date with an improved structure, design and content management system so they can edit the site themselves moving forward.

We're proud to support such a worthy organisation and increase our support for Preston as a whole. This, along with our Preston Vision win increases our local portfolio and we're very happy about that.

Keep an eye out for the new site, the current one is here: http://www.prestoncarers.org.uk/

Wednesday 21 July 2010

Were you at WordCampUK?

Last weekend Louis from ID attended WordCampUK, an "informal annual gathering of WordPress publishers, designers and developers based in the United Kingdom, held at a different location around the country each year". The event was a fantastic mixture of geeks, lead developers, plugin authors, theme designers and complete beginners to the WordPress platform. Louis has been using WordPress as a blogging platform for over 5 years, but in recent years WP has turned into something that Louis and ID use for full websites, not just blogs.

The event was held at the Metropolitan Business School in Manchester over the weekend 17th-18th July.

Saturday started off with a talk by Michael Kimb Jones 'How WordPress Themes Changed the World' (slides) which was a great insight into the very profitable arena of theme development for WordPress. Some of his own sites were featured which highlighted the very versatile nature of the latest WordPress platform.

Also on Saturday 'Wonderflux' was revealed. This is a framework which "bridges the gap between developer and designer enabling the creation of powerful WordPress themes & functionality" A great session by Jonnya gave us the basics of framework possibilities. Louis came out of this session feeling excited, particularly how versatile this framework could make his and our existing WordPress sites.

The quality of the content from all the speakers on both Saturday & Sunday was fantastic and catered for all WordPress users from beginners to hardcore fanatics. It wasn't just all talk though, there were several 'tracks' and activities to choose from as well as some superb Q/A sessions and some 'Site Doctor' arenas.

If you wanted to go but couldn't, there is good news! A lot of the slides from the speakers presentations are now available online, and the whole weekend was captured on video by the lovely folks at Orange Coconut this footage will soon be available on wordpress.tv.

Overall Louis got a tremendous amount out of WordCampUK 2010. He met some great approachable people who we're sure we'll be working with in the future on upcoming Wordpress projects. WordPress has now evolved! If you think WordPress is just for blogs, think again! ID think you will be surprised which sites you visit everyday are actually running on WordPress!

Many thanks to all who helped organise WordCampUK 2010 it was a truly great weekend!

Tuesday 20 July 2010

Always nice to hear about clients success!

Just had a nice sit down with a client who let us know they had reached their KPI for 'new business via their website for the year' within 3 months of it being live!

Really good to hear things like that, it confirms approach, reasoning, strategy and all those creative juices were all on-point.

In today's climate marketing spend has to be effective. Else it erodes the business and can quickly prove to be a burden rather than an investment. Talk to Interactive Dimension, the creative digital agency in Preston about your fears, aspirations, requirements around your website, intranet, branding, print or exhibition media. We're sure we can help. Today just proved it again!

Wednesday 14 July 2010

Kenta is coming!








Digital agency Interactive Dimension in Preston are in the process of finishing an app which will allow Private, Public and 3rd sector organisations to benefit from being able to manage their intangible resources and increase efficiency in ways they never thought possible.

The app build is going well. It will be ready to beta very soon. ID are in the process of recruiting pilot clients at the moment and the demand is really pleasing to see.

It's is exactly what large organisations need to navigate the uncertain paths ahead and transform the way they do business.

We call it Kenta. And it's an exciting venture between Interactive Dimension and Bodyproject. Interactive Dimension bringing our extensive branding, web design and website development skills to the partnership and Body Project driving a consultancy methodology which is truly revolutionary.



Watch this space... oh, and do 'like' it if you like the sound of it. That way your organisation could benefit from it too as you'll be kept up to date by our Facebook page.




P.S. Thanks to you all Liking our Facebook page we now have the username URL of http://www.facebook.com/mykenta secured. Thanks!

Wednesday 7 July 2010

Fresh Fish Sold Here Today!

One of the best lessons learned throughout 20 years in design, marketing and communications was taught to me, not exclusively of course, by a truly inspiring old-school agency guy named 'Granville Jagger'.

Now Granville wore a bow tie every single day, and was always on-point and up-to-date with the latest equipment, software and techniques. What was most remarkable about Granville was that he was past retirement age, yet had one of the sharpest minds I've ever had the pleasure to be associated and involved with.

Anyway... Granville dropped 'Fresh Fish Sold Here Today' on me while we were working on a new brochure for Bodycote, one of his clients, now our client since he stepped down and we secured them after pitching against a number of agencies.

The cover needed to express the service offering without clouding it in frills, bumf and unnecessary words that could have made the subject matter dull and overly technical.

Obviously this isn't a unique or exclusive approach, lots of people know the story and I'm sure lots of people apply it to their design/marketing/comms approach. There isn't a book in it.

I just wanted to share it, I use it every few days myself still to this day and it's probably one of the best techniques to boil things down to their essence. Something that is critical in everything we do day-in day-out to gain clarity in a message, focus to an advert and the most relevant these days is probably cutting the crap away when delivering messages online. It's a 'known' fact that people don't read every word of your content online, they scan for points of interest, nuggets of interest and then progress until they find what they want, or lose interest and go and try elsewhere.

I say 'known' because truthfully we don't know, we assume, guess, make it up and base it on previous experience most of the time. It would be great to test and try everything with every client to know the facts about their users, but most clients don't want to spend money on that.

You probably know the story but here goes anyway:

A guy, walking past a fish shop, saw a sign that reads,

“Fresh Fish Sold Here Today”

Guy: I see you have quite some fish there.
Merchant: Yes, they are fresh from the dock early this morning. Would you like to buy some?
Guy: No, thank you, I’m just walking by, but I have some advice on your sign.
Merchant: Please share. I’d love to make it better.
Guy: Well, you don’t need to say ‘sold’. You’re a shop right?
Merchant: You’re right. (Erases the word).
Guy: Actually, I didn’t think you were selling it tomorrow, so I’d erase ‘today’, too.
Merchant: That’s true. (Erases).
Guy: While you’re at it, I’d also erase ‘here’ since you’re not selling it over there, are you?
Merchant: Err… right. (Erases that too).
Guy: You surely wouldn’t sell non-fresh fish, either, so ‘fresh’ has to go, too.
Merchant: Ok. (Erases).
Guy: Well, frankly, anyone can see that you’re selling fish, or are they fruit?
Merchant: (Erases). But wait…

Basically what this is telling us is:

No element should be in your design or message without reasons for its existence.

Of course there are arguments to be had, for example you could have changes 'Fresh' to 'The Freshest' to differentiate yourself if you were on a street packed with fish shops.

And you may introduce a picture of a fish on your sign to attract shoppers on a busy shopping strip easily.

These are all factors around the environment in which you are trying to promote yourself.

But the essence of the lesson remains. Keep it simple and the message will work. They will understand.

Friday 11 June 2010

The relationship grows!

Dead chuffed we're growing our scope of work with Preston Vision since they selected us for their website (ID have Vision). We're now working on advertising and exhibition materials for them.

As ever with ID it's about relationships which are mutually beneficial.

We want to win clients, not projects... and this once again proves our approach works.

Friday 7 May 2010

One-page-site SEO success!

The one-page-site we did for Northern Stock Auditors (http://www.northernstockauditors.co.uk/) has only been live for a few weeks and already it tops Google.co.uk for their key phrase 'stock auditors preston'. No mad science or witchcraft, no PPC, just good content. Very happy.

See the results here - till they change of course ;-)
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=stock+auditors+preston

Friday 30 April 2010

ID Have Vision




Preston Vision are joining forces with ID to create a new website to support their initiatives and projects elevating Preston in the minds of potential investors, residents and visitors.

It’s a strategically important project for Preston itself and we’re looking forward to creating a vibrant dynamic site which announces the new brand and leverages many exciting social media channels to involve the community and spark debate.

The website will come alive with images and comments from Preston’s residents and will empower Preston Vision to communicate project news and updates and engage the users of the site with the powerful IDCMS.

The pitch was open to the leading agencies in Preston and ID is proud to have been selected by the Preston Vision team.

Emma, Head of Marketing and Communications at Preston Vision commented: “Preston Vision felt that ID have exactly the right qualities and experience to help us to launch our first website, and we are delighted to be working with them”.

It’s going to be a lovely site and we’ll be pulling out all the stops to get it launched as soon as possible!

Thursday 29 April 2010

ID hit the nail on the head!



We've just launched the new site for The Nails Place, a nail and beauty salon who came to us for a fresh new look to go with their fresh new salon.

The site is stylish, fun and glossy and suits the personality of the staff and owners perfectly!

Eventually the site will integrate an online booking feature and a PayPal backed online shop, becoming more of a revenue generator for the salon and point of contact and comms for the customers, the booking system will SMS appointment reminders and automatically assign appointment times moving The Nails Place ahead of the competition by leaps and bounds.

Happy client, happy ID, great fun!

Friday 16 April 2010

Need help quitting smoking?



We’ve just worked on a project along with The Hub on an exciting Quit Smoking campaign they are delivering. We developed a blog based website for them which helps explain the different types of ‘quitter’ and what’s available to help and support soon to be ex-smokers through the process.

We delivered a multi-journal based site, with a bespoke ‘quiz’ which determines the user’s ‘quitter type’ and then gives them more info relevant to them, news, hints & tips, etc and all controllable by the client. And open for comments from the public to help generate engagement and interaction.

Great fun working with The Hub (www.socialmarketinghub.co.uk), nice little project.

Check it out here – http://www.takesallsorts.co.uk.

New site for NSAL



Northern Stock Auditors Limited needed to expand their reach, and yet are only a small company without the 'deep pockets' of (some of) our other clients so we wanted to give them something which had maximum impact but was fast to produce and brimming with value.

The result was http://www.northernstockauditors.co.uk/

They needed a brand and a web presence.

We started off developing them a lovely little identity and then a one page poster style site which tells the prospective customers everything they need to know. We used a bit of jQuery, Typekit and even a Wufoo form to get the job done.

Wednesday 10 March 2010

Happy Anniversary Craig and Amy!


2 years today... Congrats to Craig and Amy on their Wedding Anniversary. Here's to many more!

Remember the big day > http://weareid.blogspot.com/2008_03_01_archive.html

Tuesday 2 March 2010

No rest for the wicked!

Going to be a busy month with 4 new websites, seo clients and a major new intranet release to get cracking on.

We also really want to make some time to improve our own site, the current one doesn't truly represent all the services we can provide, like social media strategy, online campaigns, digital marketing, SEM, SEO and PPC and it also doesn't fully explain our UX lead approach which ensures your project fully satisfies your users requirements.

We're also driving forward on the business development front too. Making new relationships and attracting interest from places we never imagined we would.

Above all, we'll be there when our clients need us with superb customer service, without that it's all pointless!

We must have been very naughty!

Monday 15 February 2010

By popular demand...



Here's the recipe for the AMAZING Oreo Truffles:

2 Packets of Oreo cookies, vanilla flavour
400g cream cheese
400g of milk chocolate
400g white chocolate (for the mottled effect, otherwise just use 800g of milk chocolate)
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 teaspoon instant coffee

1. Place the oreos in the large sandwich bag, grab a rolling pin and on a nice firm surface give them a good bash up, the ideal mixture is somewhat small crumbs, rather than a powder.
2. In a large mixing bowl add the oreo crumbs, vanilla essence, instant coffee and the cream cheese , mix with a large spoon until they are well blended.
3. Place a very small amount of vegetable oil on your hands (helps stop them sticking to you) and take a small amount of mix, roll into a ball and place on a tin foil lined baking tray
4. Pop these into the fridge for at least an hour – preferably longer
5. if you have a double boiler – now is the time to break it out from the back of the cupboard, otherwise place a large pan on the hob with approximately ½” of water in the bottom
6. bring this to the boil and then back the heat right off to a mild simmer, place a large preferably pyrex glass bowl (as they can stand the heat) into the pan (but not so it is touching the water, we want to use the steam) place the chocolate broken up into chunks into the bowl, if you want the marble effect place them in a ½ and ½ within the bowl so they stay somewhat separate.
7. Once the chocolate has melted turn the heat to minimum and with 2 spoons grab the oreo balls, roll them in the chocolate and place back on the tin foil baking trays, repeat until all are covered, keep a close eye on the chocolate, it its heated to much it will thicken and be very difficult to work with, if in doubt remove (carefully!) the bowl from the heat and simply place it back if the chocolate gets to cold.
8. Once all the balls are covered in chocolate place back into the fridge for approximately an hour, they are then ready to enjoy! (as is the bowl with the bits of chocolate left in it- yum)

*Possible variations are very easy with this e.g simply substitute regular oreo’s for mint ones and remove the coffee for minty flavour instead!

**Warning, these will not last long, not because they go off quickly, more because everyone will want one!

Friday 12 February 2010

Treats in the office today



Craig made some Oreo Truffles today, they are going down a treat in the office.

Friday's are truly a joy!

Monday 8 February 2010

RARing to go!



ID were recommended on the Recommended Agency Register earlier this month meaning we can be found by clients searching for the following services:

Business to Business
Food and drink
Public sector
FMCG
Financial
Retail
Leisure
Travel
Charity
IT
Industrial
Healthcare
Media
Construction
Professional Service
Education
Arts
Utilities
Fashion
Tourism

We’ve been recommended by our clients for our digital, design and printed work and are now able to display the RAR logo on our site - which we are rebuilding at the moment so we’ll probably wait till the next release, you know what it’s like!

Friday 29 January 2010

New brochures for Bodycote!



We've just got the Bodycote Vital Link brochure back from print and we're very happy with it.

The brochure explains Bodycote's role in their client's supply chain, spelling out how they can enhance their efficiency and product integrity by saving costs and improving material properties.

Now the courier has to get them to Singapore before the 2nd!

Tuesday 19 January 2010

Maz joins ID for a few weeks!

Marianne is spending a couple of weeks with us. She's studying photography and has been shortlisted in the War On Want Photography Award. You can see her entry here - http://www.waronwant.org/news/events/events/latest-events/16755-document-photography-award-2010.

Here's one of Maz's shots:



Some more info on the award can be seen here - http://www.documentphotoaward.org/

Marianne will find out on Thursday how she did... fingers crossed.

While Marianne is with us she's looking at effective website design and usability, finding more out about the digital channels and what steps are involved in building great websites.

Wednesday 13 January 2010