Client: Project7 Consultancy
Case Study: Web Design and Web Development
Project7 is a leading professional services consultancy who specialise in Lean Manufacturing and Lean Leadership Training & Consultancy on a global scale. The company came to us with a specific brief which required a complete overhaul of their existing website – providing a more dynamic system that would allow easy updating and maintaining of site content. (more…)
Case Study: Magazine / Magalogue Design Project. Prinovis, Liverpool
Prinovis, Liverpool is part of the largest printing group in Europe; the company prints catalogues, magazines and brochures for many of the leading high street names. We have worked with Prinovis on a number of projects in the past, such as motion graphics videos and on a similar magazine catalogue design projects titled ‘The Catalogue’. (more…)
We've done quite a few pull up banners recently. These ones we did were for a local company here in Liverpool to use at a specific event. Keepoint are a virtual office support company who deal with small business back office duties, and more.
Keepoint came to us with a design brief; to create 2 pull up banners, both sharing a similar design style and theme, but with 2 totally different messages.
Graphic design projects like this which involve marketing collateral materials, we find that the best place to start is by looking at current designs used on websites or in a brochure.
For this client we used the company colour palette, then utilised some elements and shapes from their website. Our main objective was to create a design which was consistent in look and feel and would complement/enhance existing promotional materials that they have.
Professionally designed pull up banners are a great way to create an impact at any event, particularly when you want to make a great first impression.
Not only that; these banners are great for presentations, trade shows, small exhibitions and office reception areas – pretty much anywhere that you want to get noticed.
Most companies use these types of banners to support particular campaigns or focus on simple messages, such as a new product launch or service offer.
They’re also quite durable and easily kept clean as the main banner area is PVC.
But the best thing is about these portable stands (we think anyway), are they are just that – portable. You can set one up in under 30 seconds (sounds like a challenge). So there’s really no excuse to turn up at an event un-branded.
Even the cost of these types of banners will make you want to smile. You can get them for around £60 (Design fee extra). Lay the right design onto them and you have yourself a highly visible and very cost effective promotional tool.
We recently completed another custom label design project for our client who is a speciality fine food manufacturer. The Label is part of a series of 7 custom food labels which will form part of the new Grim Reaper chilli sauces range.
Customers choose us for their custom label design projects because of our extensive knowledge of packaging design formats and labelling requirements. This puts us in a perfect position to create packaging solutions for a wide range of retail sectors such as food, drink and general retail goods.
Having a professionally designed label will not ‘break the bank’ but can sometimes be the difference between making the sale or not. Packaging with shelf appeal can transform a product from a ‘me too’ range into something with serious impact.
The Grim Reaper Alchemy Sweet Chilli sauces labels were made using a vector illustrated image of the Grim Reaper, surrounded by flames whilst holding a potion bottle. The potion bottle is to signify the product contents, and on the final print version, the yellow spot colour was replaced with a gold coloured foil, creating a simple but unique bottle label.
This label design for the Grim Reaper Sauces fits alongside the rest of the Grim Reaper products, including Organic Chocolate and Chilli Oils. We utilised elements from previous designs to create an instantly recognisable brand with a consistent message.
When taking-on any label design project there is no one size fits all with regards to labelling requirements – this changes depending on the type of product. There are legal requirements which need to be taken into consideration for some products more than others, such as food.
Any information that is included on retail labels must not be misleading – providing false or misleading information in an offence. Our experience within the food labelling sector means that we can help our customers to create the right label first time, prior to be submitting to the relevant bodies for approval.
Make Information Security a Reality. Client: USS, Liverpool.
Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) is the principal pension scheme provided by Universities, Higher Education and other associated institutions for their employees. The company approached Studiowide with a design brief for an upcoming campaign, aimed at highlighting the importance of Information Security to employees within their business.
The purpose of the campaign is to raise awareness of the risks associated with the potential mishandling of important company information. USS requested a 6 poster campaign, including a 16 page booklet – used to support the communication in each of the posters.
The first engagement for us on any campaign of this nature is to conduct a strategy review meeting with the client. The purpose of the meeting is to discuss the brief and to brainstorm initial ideas. Following this meeting we submitted two strong concepts. Of the two ideas we put forward, the ‘Make Information Security a Reality’ concept was chosen.
The idea behind our ‘Make Information Security a Reality’ concept is that the campaign features a non-conforming cartoon world – a cartoon world that lives outside of ‘reality’. In the non-conforming cartoon world, characters (wrongly) choose whether or not to conform to any information security policies (they don’t have to conform because the cartoon characters and scenes are not ‘real’ – they perceive there is no ‘real’ risk).
We then highlighted across all 6 posters: as a result of this non-conformance or neglect of data, there are a number of ‘incidents’ which occur, due to data/information being carelessly abandoned or left unguarded (in the non-conforming cartoon world).
The real world images are used to highlight the ‘reality and risk’ and the consequences of what can happen as a result of a security breach when data has been obtained, stumbled upon, stolen etc.
The campaign message is translated across all of the security themes. Each poster depicts a different scene and a different risk. To illustrate each scenario we manipulated a number of photo images and placed these into a cartoon environment. The final composition of illustration and imagery make up a scenario which is aligned with each security topic.
Our inspiration for this style is a reverse format of Roger Rabbit: instead of a cartoon character in the real world, we are working with real characters in a cartoon world.
The Information Security booklet and poster campaign was produced within 4 weeks. The client is very pleased both with the overall creative concept and the final design pieces that we have submitted.
TESTIMONIAL
"We commissioned Studiowide to help design and produce a series of posters to highlight the key risks in relation to information security and to support this with a pocket guide for staff summarising some of the key messages.
We knew the themes and messages we needed to get across, but what we didn’t have was the creative skills to design a campaign that would convey these messages in the most effective way. The staff at Studiowide were always approachable and would listen to our ideas, but more importantly they brought their own ideas to the table, using their experience and creative skills to help produce an original theme for the campaign.
This was the first time we had launched an internal campaign like this and a key consideration was always going to be timeframes and costs, to this end Studiowide were very professional and where possible worked to our schedule, they were also very clear about costs and any decisions which could of impacted costs were always discussed with us up front.
The effectiveness of the campaign will only tell over time, but early feedback from those staff who have received the booklet has been very positive with staff reporting that the key messages have been achieved.
We believe that with the excellent work from Studiowide and the quality and clarity of the final material they have produced for us we have given ourselves the very best chance of achieving the goals of our campaign. I would not hesitate to use them again and would certainly recommend them to other organisations".
Robert Lee, Data Manager, USS Ltd. Liverpool.
Client: CryoClinics, London.
One of our latest advertising campaigns is due to be launched in the executive and professional sports magazine: AtTheMatch. The publication runs cutting edge features, articles and interviews across a wide range of topics, from within the business and sporting sectors.
CryoClinics, who are based out of BMI The Garden Hospital in London, came to us with a requirement to produce an integrated advertising campaign. The aim of which was to promote Whole Body Cryotherapy, in particular, the companies Cryotherapy chambers.
The campaign is to be published in the quarterly magazine: AtTheMatch and is to run over 4 editions. Furthermore, the promotion is to be supported with relevant website landing pages and accompanying literature inserts.
Whole Body Cryotherapy is the exposure of the entire body to extreme cold, usually between -80 to -120 degrees Celsius. The treatment stimulates the body’s natural response to decrease inflammation, pain, spasms, and consequently promotes faster healing. The company has featured recently on national TV and the treatment is favoured by major football and Rugby clubs in the UK.
Following a strategic review with CryoClinics, we set about producing the overall design and communication message for the campaign. The target market for the magazine is passionate professionals and executives involved in the sporting world.
The campaign is supported by A5 inserts which would also be part of the magazine; this allowed our creative team to get quite abstract with the communication. We decided on a simple but impactful image with the message; Relight Your Fire.
The magazine advertisement campaign is linked to the website landing page with a QR code. The landing page holds the details of the services which CryoClinics are promoting, along with a call to action; to contact for a free consultation and trial.
Studiowide provided strategic marketing advice to CryoClinics on this project. Our in-house marketing, graphics and web development teams worked in unison to deliver an effective campaign, meeting and exceeding the expectations of our client.
"I would like to extend my thanks to Studiowide for their work recently. CryoClinics offers a very unique service, but this did not deter the team at Studiowide – they probed with numerous questions and in my opinion grasped what it is I offer and how it can benefit people very quickly. With this knowledge they were able to provide me with some great ideas and developed a campaign to grasp people’s attention and ensure they acted upon it. I will definitely be using Studiowide again and would not hesitate in recommending them."
Iain Casey – Managing Director CryoClinics Ltd.
The Sefton Insulation scheme is funded by Sefton Council and E.ON, and administered by Energy Projects Plus. Studiowide were approached by Energy Projects Plus and commissioned to develop a dynamic website, including Content Management System, to be used as part of their home Insulation campaign.
This is our third home insulation marketing project that we’ve been involved with in the last 6 months. We’re getting to be quite the experts even if we do say so ourselves. Our previous projects were for Guardwarm (Isothane Ltd) and Warmer Wirral (Wirral Council). Both of these projects also included similar requests for us to provide web development services, along with video production, graphic design and direct marketing.
Stage 1 for any of our website design and development projects consists of detailing the brief with the client. We build up a picture as to exactly what the site requirements are as part of our initial tender/quotation discussions. This makes it easy for us to transfer the information into a formal brief document once the project commences.
Once the brief is agreed we set about producing a masterplan schedule, highlighting all of the important stage gates within the project. The client receives a copy of the masterplan. This acts as the roadmap for the rest of the project.
At this point we begin working on some design mock-up ideas for the home page. The homepage is the most important page on a website – getting more page views than any other page. Of course, users don't always enter a website from the homepage: a website is like a house in which every window is also a door.
The Sefton Insulation project was designed to fit around the marketing brochures which are currently used in the campaign. We lifted the colour palette from the brochures and adapted some other elements which we felt would work really well on the website.
Once the design mock-ups are completed we begin wireframing. This is the process of creating a basic visual guide to depict the layout of a website, its navigational properties and how each of its pages interacts with one another.
As soon as the mock-up and wireframe have been signed off we set about mocking up the inside pages of the site. Our web development team then began setting up the back-end content management system.
We use a number of content management systems depending on the functionality of the website and whether or not eCommerce will be a feature of not.
Sefton Insulation website project was built using the popular WordPress content management system (CMS). This open source software is extremely easy to use and has well documented guides all over the web on how to get the most out of using WordPress as a CMS.
Once the back-end of the site had been developed we moved over to the front-end. This process begins with the slicing up of graphics from the mock-ups and is where the first stages of a functioning website come together.
Once we have set-up the CMS and adding the functionality across the pages, we then begin the process of adding content. The Sefton Insulation site was a brand new website, so in this instance there was no previous content to use. Our client issued us with the content and we transferred this into the website.
As this project is only running for a limited period, the only interaction required is the facility to apply now! Blogs and social feeds were not required. The apply now function is handled by a standard form which posts the contents to Sefton Insulation ready for processing.
We really like this site because of its simplicity and ease of use. The message is clear and the information contained within it is just enough to guide the consumer along the decision making journey, when choosing a home insulation scheme.
View the Sefton Insulation live site
St Helens Concert Band recently won lottery funding in order to document, film and promote the history of the band, tracing back to its roots in 1874. Studiowide tendered for this project and we were delighted to be selected as the video production and marketing, chosen supplier.
The St Helens Concert Band project focuses on the history of the band since its formation and involves recorded and videoed interviews. These will be carried out with current and past members of the band as well as family members.
As part of the project we were commissioned to design and develop a new website, complete with a Content Management System. This would allow the band members to be able to update the website with images, stories and further videos. The band also took the opportunity to update their logo at the same time as re-doing their website. We also provided the new logo which they love.
The new website includes an integrated dynamic events calendar which allows the band manager to add upcoming events and information. Each band member can go online and check the schedule of the next performance. (View the new site here)
The website was produced using the open source WordPress Content Management System (CMS). There are many benefits of a CMS website, the main being YOU are in control. A CMS gives you direct control over the content on your web site.
Sites that change and update their content on a regular basis not only give their business or service the appearance of being alive and more active, but search engines give higher emphasis on fresh content.
Also, we find when reviewing websites with clients; once they have a content management system set up, they are more likely to add more content to the website because it's now so much easier. The result is a much more robust site with more pages than before.
The bottom line with a CMS website is that the client saves money. Plain and simple, in the long run our clients save money versus paying a 3rd party provider to make all changes and updates by hand. This is why all of the websites that we build are fully dynamic sites built using a variety of content management systems, depending on the complexity of the website.
The overall project has been finished in stages. The website is now complete and the next stage is the design and printing of brochures, whilst the documentary and filming process goes on in the background. The client is extremely pleased with the progress to date and is looking forward to the final DVD product.
Containers direct, based in Garston, Liverpool, supply a wide range of new and second-hand shipping containers, site cabins and site offices across the UK. They came to us recently for assistance with their mascot design as well as a logo and website redesign.
As this was a rebranding project, the client was open to suggestions. This included change of colour theme, illustrations, icons, fonts, etc, In fact, a whole new identity - naturally, we saw this as a brilliant design opportunity!
We are huge fans of using characters in web design; they can work really well if utilised in the correct way; not only do they work for visual impact, they can also steer an audience in the right direction and provide a deeper connection.
Mascot design and illustration is not just limited to the gaming community. Businesses of all types are reaching out to illustrators to provide them with their own mascot – making them stand out from the crowd. A good mascot design icon can help make your business friendly and approachable, and like our little chap with wide eyes and a cheeky smile, this can appeal to a lot of people.
However, some companies get the use of mascot design in their projects all wrong. Some end up taking the easy option by going down the stock image route. The end result is a mascot which is rarely a hit – it’s impossible to create a memorable and recognisable brand if the images are not unique to the company.
Containers Direct did originally have a mascot on their webpage. It was our remit to redesign him and give him a makeover. The plan was to have the mascot to appear in each of the 8 homepage slideshow banners of the new website.
On projects like these, the majority of work goes into planning and sketching out ideas. This helps to create the simple shapes. We then build the form and composition to get the feel for the character.
Once we’re happy with the final sketch, it’s then over to Adobe Illustrator where we begin building up the layers using vector shapes. To finish off, we add smaller detailed assets and gradients to create depth and make the mascot come to life.
The aim of this mascot was to not detract too much from the main brand identity. We had to compliment the design and allow the mascot to be worked into on-going promotions and information boards. To achieve this, we gave him a smart uniformed look, dressing him in a black t-shirt with the rebranded logo on his chest.
Studiowide provided all graphic design services on this project, including mascot design, logo and website design. On this occasion we worked with our client’s web host package provider, who then placed our design into the current website template.
Overall, the customer was extremely happy with this rebrand project, especially the mascot design!
Guardwarm Home Insulation is a new consumer brand from leading polyurethane manufacture, Isothane Ltd. We were successful in securing an exciting project earlier this year. This involved the creation of a new consumer division with the company.
Part of the brief required us to work alongside the Isothane senior team to come up with a new identity for their consumer home insulation service. Included in this brief was website design and development, in addition to the following; Logo, cases studies, data sheets, Leaflets, brochures, business cards, letterheads, identity cards and appointment cards.
One of the critical factors for this project was the ability to turn a website project around in 4 weeks and the whole project in under 2 months. We love challenges, so off we went, burning the midnight oil to come up with a completely new brand.
We opted for a micro website as ultimately we would be promoting only one aspect of the Isothane business. Isothane have a main website which contains all company and product range information. The home insulation brand was purely product specific and business to consumer oriented, as opposed to the main site which is business to business; this therefore suited the style of a standalone Micro Website.
While there’s certainly a place for complex websites – with advanced features, flash animation and complex navigation – many businesses are starting to realise the benefits of micro sites. These are relatively simple websites which can be used for many purposes and can be highly optimised for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
Micro websites are small sites, often with around 5 -10 pages – sometimes less. As they sit outside of the normal website you can get quite creative with ideas. And whilst some people would argue that micro sites have limited functionality, in fact, it’s their simplicity that makes them so versatile.
The name that was chosen by the team to move forward with was ‘Guardwarm’. The agreed theme was ‘Feather Your Nest’ and included a vibrant line-up of feathers, bringing a burst of colour to the design. As we had already created this imagery for the direct mail leaflets, it was a simple choice to then carry this across to the website homepage.
The client preferred bold imagery taking up the majority of the home page, rather than heavy text. We set about illustrating an additional 4 more images to graphically represent each benefit of the Guardwarm insulation system; repairing wall tie damage; protecting from wind driven rain; protecting from windstorms; securing against flood risk. Our in-house graphic design team worked alongside our in-house web developers to create the perfect gallery of homepage images.
The Micro Website was delivered within the required timescales and the client was extremely happy with the result! View Guardwarm micro website
"Studiowide have designed and produced a marketing identity for our brand new division. This is from name, logo, colour scheme, right through to multiple literature pieces, co-ordinated with a great website. All in under two months – with a very down-to-earth attitude and a commitment to both excellence, and the schedule!"
Craig Treanor –Technical Marketing Manager, Isothane Ltd, Accrington
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