Design a key factor for company stability

Published | 12.43, 15th of January 2009, by Chris van Aurich | Design

As I have said many times on this blog, the use of design can have a dramatic impact on a business and how well it fairs in its market place. The design council have published research that only enforces that argument:

 When times are tough and revenues are falling there may be a temptation for business to cut ‘discretionary’ budgets - money allocated to activities such as design, perhaps.

But design is a powerful tool in a downturn.
Our research shows that more than half of the UK’s businesses:

.... are looking to design their way out of downturn
Over half (54%) of the firms in our survey thought design would contribute to a large or great extent in helping maintain their competitive edge in the current economic climate.

.... think design is more important now
Similarly, 53% thought that design had become more important in helping the firm to achieve its business objectives over the last three years.

.... think design is integral to the economic performance of the UK
The same number agreed or strongly agreed that design is integral to the country’s future economic performance.

read the full article here

The use of design can be critical in giving you the edge over your competitors.

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Arena CMS - progress

Published | 13.21, 8th of January 2009, by Jay Vincent | Technical

For about a month now, I've been developing a custom content management system, which I've have named 'Arena', and I thought I would share my progress.

In a nutshell, its a multi-user, multiple-permissions, multi-function, ajax-based content management system. It consists of various modules which behave independently of each other, so only relevant modules need be included at configuration. These modules are:

1. Arena Access
   This module manages the users of the arena system and their permissions
2. Asset Management
   Handles the upload and management of user-uploaded images, videos, audio and documents. Can also dynamically resize images.
3. News
   This module manages the posting of news articles.
4. Case Studies
   This module manages the posting and ordering of case studies.
5. Pages
   The most in depth module, this manages the creation of, editing of and deleting of static pages, aswell as the structure of the website navigation.

I have other modules planned (like ecommerce and statistics modules) but for now, I think I've got enough to work on.

Arena's first deployment will be the re-launch of software company website, who's web editors are currently struggling to cope with the wordpress system installed. The relaunch will happen Spring 2009.

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Search engine optimisation, education is key

Published | 20.45, 7th of January 2009, by Chris van Aurich | SEO

Search engine optimisation (SEO), can be  a baffling subject at first. What is true is that there are many aspects to an SEO campaign and the success, ROI you can receive,

So what is SEO: Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results or the higher it "ranks", the more searchers will visit that site.

Why is education so important? For us the most important part of any discussion with a client regarding SEO, is that they understand what they should be getting for their investment. All the technical terms such as On Page SEO, Off Page SEO, Keyword Efficiency Indexing (KEI), Latent Semantic Indexing & Link Building Campaigns,  etc, should be explained so you have a a full understanding of what we do and why we do it. Even if a client decides not to use us, we are happy in the knowledge that you understand its purpose and what you should be getting when discussing these kind of projects with professionals.

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Design linked to growth

Published | 07.44, 3rd of January 2009, by Chris van Aurich | Design

Growing companies are using design to drive their businesses forward. The link between success and design has never been clearer, and the performance gap between design-aware businesses and the rest has never been wider.

"Design Council research suggests strongly that, compared to the broad mass of businesses, successful companies are more likely to value design as a strategic business tool, use it in important areas of their operation and recognise its impact on their performance.

Nine out of ten businesses which had experienced rapid growth in the preceding 12 months regarded design as being integral to the firm’s operation or said it had a significant role to play. Only 40% of moderately growing businesses and 26% of static or shrinking ones said the same."

This should ring alarm bells for under-performing businesses, anybody, in fact, who has an interest in fostering increased competitiveness and prosperity. Those who fully exploit design and innovation are reaping clear rewards, too many organisations are failing to harness that power to help achieve their full potential.

Whatever size your business may be and whatever sector it may operate in, growth and the use of design go hand in hand.

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Fun logo design variations

Published | 17.21, 8th of December 2008, by Jay Vincent | Design

I was having a play with our company logo today (during lunch-break of course...) and came up with these funky-looking examples. Give the thumbnail a click to view larger and feel free to comment :)

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