Favourite Albums of 2013

Forgive me for this anorak type behaviour, but I see it as my solemn duty to compile a list of my favourite albums from the last twelve months to assist those who may have missed out.

So, in no particular order....

1) Immunity by Jon Hopkins

2) Tell Where I Lie by Fossil Collective

3) Light Up Gold by Parquet Courts

4) Inform - Educate - Entertain by Public Service Broadcasting

5) Holy Fire by Foals

6) The Shadow of Heaven by MONEY

7) Arc by Everything Everything

8) Amok by Atoms for Peace

9) AM by Arctic Monkeys

10) Overgrown by James Blake


... also, Glass Animals have no album out yet, but their three EP's are jolly good.

If you want, you can see what I liked this time last year...

Humble Bee Films

This week has seen the launch of the redesigned Humble Bee Films website. They may be in Argentina filming parrots this week, but that hasn't stopped us doing the final tweaks and launching.

Their website has had a facelift, but the main objective was to showcase some video clips from their programmes. Included are four clips of David Attenborough's Natural Curiosities series, plus individual clips from BBC's Natural World.

Younger users prefer Twitter.... and some tweaks to the Facebook news feed

An interesting bit of market data on age groups using various social media platforms in the US has been published by Mashable and Statista. This is based on desktop usage in October 2013 (and so it does not include mobile usage).

In summary - younger users prefer Twitter, but once you get to 44, more use Facebook.

You can see the chart produced by Statista here.

Mashable also published an article about changes Facebook are making to the algorithms that generate content in news feeds. It seems that news and story links will be given more prominence, especially if friends comment on them; so encouraging further conversation.

Mashable reports that Facebook's strategy is to challenge Twitter as the place to go for news consumption.

Saul Leiter

Saul Leiter, photographer, passed away last week.

Recognition of his talent and influence came late in his life. However, he was someone who seemed not to care either way. He said in the recent documentary film about him, 'No Great Hurry': "What makes anyone think that I'm any good?"

I cannot remember how I discovered Saul Leiter, but find him I did. I was immediately struck by his atmospheric, painterly images. I discovered that he had a book called Early Colour but that it was out of print. Fortunately, the publishers, Steidl, released a second edition. The book is now on its third edition and has sold out.

Early Colour is possibly my favourite photo book. I can return to his photographs time and time again. Photos contain a story or a question about the subjects. The compositions may be framed by canopies; contain misted or reflected views through windows; or evocative blocks of colour. They may show just a hand, a foot, a shoe, or an umbrella while the rest of the subject is out of the frame. Many are abstract, but are of course grounded in reality. It's fun to work out how he achieves such a composition. 

I have no doubt that he will be recognised as one of the great photographers of the twentieth century. I am pleased that I knew of his work while he was still alive and that I had the opportunity to help back (in a small way), a film about him. It is called 'In No Great Hurry, 13 Lessons in Life With Saul Leiter' and it is being shown at the Bath Film Festival tomorrow evening.

Here is a link to some of his photos and here is his obituary in The Guardian. 

I hope you get as much out of these photographs as I do.

Working with video

Short videos can be a particularly effective way to promote your business online. It can be entertaining, visually appealing and engaging. It is also a very good way of showing your individual personality. 

I have had the good fortune of working with Land Rovers UK for some years and the man who started and runs the business, Andy Hayes, is so passionate about Land Rover Defenders it is impossible not to be swept along by his enthusiasm.

Given that many of their US customers order and pay for their custom Defenders by phone and email, trust and authenticity is key. 

We felt the best way to show their potential US customers the amount of care and attention that is spent on transforming a 25 year old Defender into something very special and very unique was by filming Mr Hayes in full, enthusiastic flow. Here is the result of week one (each week we will be filming Joe's progress):

... and do you want to know one key fact about Defenders that always amazes me? Well, 70% of all Defenders ever built are still on the road.

17% of web traffic is now on mobile phones....

... better get that website mobile friendly then ...

Working with long standing clients

One of the things I pride myself on is developing long term relationships with my clients. Seeing their businesses flourish and working alongside them to help it happen is most satisfying.

For the last couple of months, I have been working on two redesigns. This week, I have had the pleasure of relaunching both.

The first was for Berkeley Castle. I started working with them in 2007.

This has been the first major redesign since then and helps bring the look more up to date. The new website also helps to refocus on the Castle as a tourist attraction now that they have a separate weddings website (which I also built).

The second website to have been relaunched this week is Land Rovers UK.

They are the UK's leading independent Land Rover dealer and I also started working with them in 2007.

I met Andy, their MD, when I sold him a sofa on eBay (the variety of ways that I meet new clients always amazes me)! Initially, I built a basic five page brochure website. Six years later, we are on their 5th website which allows them to sell Defenders all around the world.

I am proud of the work we have done on both websites and look forward to continue working with them for many years to come!

I hope you like them too.

Mobile web or app?

There is no doubt that more and more people are using their smartphones to access the web.

Many of the websites I manage have at least 10% of their hits from an iPhone... Mobile search has grown 500% in the last two years according to Google... 75% of mobile users use their mobile device for shopping

So, is it time to have a mobile friendly website or a mobile app? If you are a retailer, restaurant, a tourist destination or have an online shop, then yes, it probably is. But which one should you choose?

Generally, I would suggest a mobile friendly website as it means you have one web address and so benefits your search engine rankings. It is generally a more cost effective solution and easier to be compatible across most devices and platforms.

An app can have advantages if you have specific functions that a customer would like to be able to do on their mobile. However, they can be expensive and you have to build one for the iPhone, for Android, for Windows and for Blackberry if you are to cover all of your potential customer base.

If you would like some help in creating a mobile friendly version of your website, please do contact me - it would be a pleasure to help!



Formal degree vs. self taught - infographic created by WebdesignerDepot

Copyright on photos

Occassionally, some of my newer clients ask me to include images on their websites that they have found on the internet. They see appropriate photos on, for example, Google Images and think they are free to use.

However, this is rarely the case. Most images on the internet are subject to copyright and it is always worth checking before you decide to use them.

An article by Peta Pixel neatly summarises 10 misconceptions of photo copyright on the web. You can read it here.

The best SEO? Good content.

Search Engine Land writes about a recent change in the Google Webmaster Help documentation on search engine rankings. 

This is what Google said before:

"In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages."

... and this is what they say now: 

"In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by creating high-quality sites that users will want to use and share."

... so link building is not as important as writing good content. 

My advice? Focus on your user and the search engine rankings will follow. Do it the other way around (by stuffing your website with keywords and links) and you are likely to have a website that users find less useful and will ultimately lose you business.

You can read the full article here.

Interesting stories from the past week

Yesterday was a day of interesting news stories which I thought worthy of sharing:

Firstly, an article about how businesses can improve their social media engagement.... and where so many seem to be getting it so wrong. It's simple really and can be summed up by the following quote from the article:

"The snag is that customers do not generally just want to interact with marketers. They also want to interact with product designers, customer service, technical support and others who make a difference to their product experience."

The full article can be read here (and it's not a long one).

Secondly, Instagram now includes the ability to shoot videos. 

I tried my first Instagram video on the mornings dog walk (watch it here). Once I realised that you had to hold down the icon for the video to shoot, it worked a treat. It seems to be far more fun to use than my limited experience of its big rival from Twitter, Vine, offers. It has filters and it seems easier to control what you shoot.

Here is a link to a Mashable article on why Instagram video beats Vine...

Some articles of interest

Here are three articles that have caught my eye recently.

The first, by Paul Boag, discusses whether news articles should be given such prominence on your website.

The accepted wisdom is that news articles provide interest to your visitors, show that your website is 'alive' and that it is good for SEO (the search engines like proof that your website is regularly updated).

However, this articles challenges these presumptions. It questions how much news articles are being read and whether they are helping your site visitors achieve their objectives when visiting your website.

Please click here to read 'Do users care about your latest news?' by Paul Boag.

The next two articles were discovered by me good friends at from you to me.

The first article has some surprising information about what you cannot do to market your business using Facebook Pages.

The second article has 13 great tips on how to write a tweet so that it engages your audience.

I hope you find these articles useful.

Inspiration in Milan

I visited Milan a couple of weeks ago and took the opportunity to do two things which I found to be most inspirational. As a designer, it is important to look far and wide for inspiration and to take an interest in how and why great works of art or architecture achieve such greatness.

Milan is home to one of Leonardo Da Vinci's great masterpieces 'The Last Super.' It was painted as a mural on the wall of a refectory in the fifteenth century. It is a special painting to visit because it is only one of two works of art that can be seen at this location.

Unlike other great works of art which invariably hang in a gallery, competing with many other artworks and jostling crowds; this one has your undivided attention.

I spent a wonderful fifteen minutes admiring the perfect composition, piecing together the story and understanding why this painting is so important in the development of our culture.

Moreover, I was sharing this experience with only 20 other people and a guide who spoke in Italian so the painting really was my only focus at that time. It is so rare in these days of global checklist tourism that one gets the chance to give such works such undivided attention.

My second inspirational experience was a climb up the winding stairs to the rooftop of the Duomo in Milan. The Duomo is a beautiful building which I have visited a couple of times before. However, until I watched the excellent Italy Unpacked on BBC2 a couple of weeks before my trip, I was unaware that you could go on the roof.

From there, you not only see wonderful vistas of Milan, but you can also appreciate the beauty of the statues at close quarters. They are indeed heavenly!