As the title states you are officially a graphic design geek if you put your hand up and admit to one of the following characteristic. You can’t hide it people, your inner geek should be embraced!

- You had a favourite font in primary school (minus points if that was comic sans)

- You are drinking your ninth expresso from a pantone mug

- You understand that Ajax isn’t a cleaning fluid

- You’ve asked yourself “If I was a browser, which browser would I be?” (Safari - clearly)

- You’ve ‘Apple / Control - Z’ to undo knocking over your coffee mug

- You write posts about being a graphic design geek

I’m proud to say I can admit to all 6 - and I ‘Apple - Z’ several times a day! My favourite font in school was Lucida Sans - purely because the name was so close to my own.

Any more graphic design geek characteristics that can be added to the list?

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Millmerran are a group of polymer engineering specialists, highly experienced in the extrusion industry, particularly in the fields of product and process development. The company is based in Newton Abbot, South Devon and at the beginning of the year we were invited to design a website for Millmerran.

The client required a professional looking website to showcase their expertise and products. After meeting with the client we researched their target markets and industry. The client requested that some elements of silver were used in the website to reflect the gradient of the logo. They also requested that the header image was somewhat longer as their machinery is taller rather than wider.

We started by creating wireframes for key pages of the website.

The client was happy with the proposed layout of the website so we moved onto the design. We wanted to keep the silver elements very light so not to draw attention away from the logo - we felt that mass amounts of silver look more like gradients of grey (which really they are) rather than silver. We used a faint graph paper texture behind blocks of colour to give the site some depth and subtly indicate it’s industry.

We were happy with the homepage, however there was a lot of blank space to the left of the products on the subsequent pages and felt that this was a bad use of space. We therefore re-visited the layout and moved the navigation further down so it was parallel to the content.

The client preferred the latter visual, so we started the website build.

The client requested a content managed website, and I’m sure you all know by now that Wordpress is our first choice for a CMS website. We always start with Starkers - the totally nude Wordpress theme. This theme allows us to build the site from scratch.

The Millmerran website utilises a couple of neat little plugins. One of which is “Fast Secure Contact Form“, which is a super easy to use contact form which blocks spammers. The site also uses multiple slideshows in the header, this is managed via the “Meteor Slides” plugin.

Once the website was built the client felt that the header was just too deep and it wasn’t allowing enough information to sit ‘above the fold’. So we reduced the header size and used cropped images of machinery rather than full images.

We believe the Millmerran website is clean, professional and easy to use. But what do you think of the design of the Millmerran website - www.millmerran.co.uk? Are you using Wordpress as a CMS? Are there any further plugins you’d recommend?

You may also be interested in:

• Back to School - Again!
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As you may well be aware this time last year we were invited by the DLP to design websites for a group of schools in the Dawlish area. The four school websites went live at the end of 2012 and you can read all about the process here.

Since the school websites went live there has been interest from more schools under the DLP umbrella and we are busy at working on other school websites. We aim to get the sites live in the next couple of months and look forward to sharing them with you.

You may also be interested in:

• Look back as well as forward
• Design and Development of Millmerran Website
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• Back to School!
• Design and Development of the Papillon Bleu Partners Website

We recently received our new Super Hub from Virgin Media. A particularly inconspicuous box arrived, however we were pleasantly surprised when we opened it up.

The inside of the sturday cardboard box was printed red with a large welcome message and a ‘Get Started’ leaflet.

When I opened the leaflet it gave clear instructions on the red side how to dis-connect your old modem.

On the reverse the background was white and gave further instructions on how to install your new modem.

The vector illustrations on the leaflet were simple and clear. The layout allowed the reader to follow the instructions with ease.

The following day we received a brochure about after your installation, nicely timed but a little bit disappointed with the design. I was hoping it might be a little more illiustration based, similar to the ‘Get Started’ leaflet.

When a product is presented well it sets a certain mood, in this case we were excited and keen to install this new technology, the branding was bang on which in turn reflects on our feeling towards Virgin Media. If the product was delivered in a damaged box, with instructions you’d need a magnifying glass to read our feelings toward the product and company would be negative and therefore damaging to their brand.

Have you come accross any packaging that you were particularly impressed with?

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As you know we are big fans of personal projects. We think they allow designers some design freedom and stretches those creative muscles. We’ve previously blogged about the Lost Poster and Charlie’s Nursery Rhyme. Well, this next personal project is a book my mother in law wrote for Steve and his brothers when they were little. Very briefly, the story is about a small town called Bladesville where the various scissor families lived. One day Andrew Household goes missing and his neighbours Steven Sharp and Matthew Shears go to search for the missing boy. Needless to say they found him stuck in some brambles and the whole of Bladesville had to come and snip him out!

As soon as we’d discovered the story Steve and I knew we’d have to illustrate and format it as a gift for my mother in law. We knew we’d use Lulu again for printing it, as the quality was so good last time and you could order a single book.

We wanted a different style to the illustrations this time, so we decided to hand draw the sketches and not re-draw the outlines in Illustrator to give them more of a homely, warm touch. We then coloured them in Photoshop using a layered effect with a watercolour brush.

As the illustrations were so time consuming we didn’t have enough time to do one illustration per page, so the most important scenes were selected and the format was designed around these key scenes.

We gave Ann-Marie her book on Christmas Day and her eyes welled up with tears as the present sunk in. It took 6 months in total to complete the book, and we were so very pleased with the results.

So what do you think of the Scissor Story? Do you prefer the illustrations on Charlie’s Nursery Rhyme? Or do you like the hand drawn look?

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ISOCS or the International School of Central Switzerland is a school based in Cham, not far from Zurich. The school caters for early years, primary and middle school. ISOCS’s mission is to provide excellence in international education in a supportive and secure environment.

The school heard about us through the work we carried out for the Australian International School in Sydney. The school were egar to re-vamp their logo. They really liked the idea of the mark but not the currecnt execution of it, but they weren’t happy with the layout and font.

The school felt the layout of the logo had emphasis on ‘Switzerland’ where they wanted the emphasis on ‘International School’.

With a nice tight brief and a current logo to work with we approached this logo re-vamp differently to a normal logo re-design. The research was already completed by the school and they were nearly there with their logo, they just needed a hand getting over the finish line.

We started by addressing the mark. The spiral itself was uneven and the triangles were at different angles and too tightly packed in. We  started by designing one arm of the spiral and then putting the arms together. This took some trial and error as depending on the angle and distance of the triangles the arms wouldn’t sit evenly together.

Once we were happy with the mark we started experimenting with layout. When it came to layout we presented several examples including some with the acronym included.

Three layouts where chosen as the school felt that the various layouts would work well in various applications. The client also felt that this would prevent users of the logo doctoring it for their own purposes if there we three distinct variations. The three variations looked as so:

We wanted the font to be easy to read, professional, authoritative - yet welcoming.

We presented a range of fonts to the client and they chose Helvetica (good old Helvetica - hasn’t failed me yet!).

Then it came down to colour. ISOCS liked their current colour scheme as it felt authoritative and professional to them, however they would like to see some experimentation to ensure there isn’t anything better suited to their message.

After seeing several different colour variations the client decided that they liked their red and blue colour scheme, but would like the shades to be more vibrant. After some further colour experimenting the final logos looked something like this:

When you compare the original ISOCS logo to the final one you can see it’s the same logo concept, just slightly tweaked to make the message clearer.

So what do you think of the ISOCS logo design re-vamp? Do you think the logo can be improved further? Do you perhaps prefer the original?

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Back in November we were lucky enough to spend some time in the most visited city in the world - Paris.

We were completely blown away by the impressive architecture and majestic buildings, it was certainly grander than we had expected. Here are a few photos to explain!

As you can see we had a fabulous time, and then there was the food….

Has anyone else been to Paris? What were your impressions?

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A client mentioned in passing the other day that they are so keen to crack on with new projects for 2013, they’ve forgotten what they’ve already achieved in 2012. They said it’s so easy to forget what you’ve achieved when you’re striving for the next goal. I thought this was very true, so this post is dedicated to some of our own favourite projects from 2012.

Sample Mills website re-design

Read more about the Sample Mills website design >>

Exchange Site Logo Design

Read more about the Exchange Site logo design >>

Design of Amber website

Read more about the design and development of the Amber website >>

Illustration of Munch and Crunch

Read more about the illustration of Munch and Crunch >>

Design and Development of the Dawlish Schools websites

Read More about the design of the Dawlish School websites >>

Blog Posts

I also thought I’d share some of our favourite blog posts from 2012 too.

Logo Design Rules!

Read more about Logo Design Rules! >>

How much is your logo design worth?

Read more about How much is your logo design worth? >>

Infographics fad or future?

Read more about infographics fad or future? >>

Helpful Wordpress Plugins

Readmore about Helpful Wordpress plugins >>

It’s also probably worth noting, that before you move onto goals for 2013, have you stopped to thoroughly analyse 2012 projects? It’s never a bad idea to take the time to address what was successful and what was not.

We do wish you all a prosperous and fruitful 2013!

You may also be interested in:

• Back to School - Again!
• Design and Development of Millmerran Website
• Design and Development of Dawlish School Websites
• Back to School!
• Design and Development of the Papillon Bleu Partners Website

We would just like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their ongoing support throughout 2012. It has been a truly superb year for us and are grateful to each and every one of you. Thanks to our blog subscribers, everyone who has taken time to take part in the blog discussions and most of all many thanks to each and everyone of our wonderful clients, it has been great to work with you this year and look forward to new projects in 2013.

In case you didn’t receive one, check out this years eightyone design Christmas card:

They still follow the traditional theme of using the eightyone design logo.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and Prosperous New Year!

You may also be interested in:

• Eightyone Design Christmas Cards 2011
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Way back in 2009 we wrote a blog about Wordpress hacks and plugins. Since then we have built up a catalogue of plugins we use to enhance Wordpress websites. We all know the usual plugins to improve SEO and backup databases. The plugins below are practical plugins which have allowed us to address clients needs and requests.

Cookie Consent

The Cookie Consent plugin addresses the recent changes in EU Regulations. The user is presented with non obtrusive notification that the site uses cookies and is asked to click to find out more or dismiss the message and close it.

Check out the Cookie Consent Plugin

Google Calendar Events

Google Calendar Events allows you to pull through events from your Google Calendar through onto your website. You can request how many events and how much information to show (ie date, event title, time, finish).

Check out the Google Calendar Events Plugin

Table Reloaded

This plugin gives you the option to add and update tables from the Wordpress admin area and embed them onto a page or post of your choice.

Check out the Table Reloaded Plugin

Easing Slider

Easing slider allows the user to add images to their header using a simple upload function (no code knowledge required). You can style the slider transition and upload and delete images at will.

Check out the Easing Slider Plugin

flickrRSS

flickrRSS pulls images through from a flickr photostream, it manages the RSS and leaves you to style the images as desired.

Check out the flickr RSS Plugin

Really Simple Facebook and Twitter Share Buttons

This plugin gives you ‘Like’ and ‘Tweet’ buttons at the bottom of each page allowing users to push your page onto Facebook or Twitter.

Check out the Facebook and Twitter Share Buttons Plugin

Google XML Sitemaps

The plugin creates an XML sitemap which enables search engines to better index blogs.

Check out the Google XML Plugin

Twitter Tools

Twitter Tools pulls through your current Tweets onto the website. You can pull through as many Tweets as required and link back to your Twitter page.

Check out the Twitter Tools Plugin

Page Links to

This plugin gives you the option of creating a Wordpress page, which links directly to another page or url. A simple but very useful plugin!

Check out the Pages Links to Plugin

WP Polls

WP Polls allows Wordpress site administrators to set up and manage their own surveys or polls. The plugin has many customisable options allowing multiple selections of answers and users to submit their selection only once.

Check out the WP Polls Plugin

Are there any plugins you use regularly which we have not encountered yet?

You may also be interested in:

• Design and Development of Millmerran Website
• Back to School - Again!
• Look back as well as forward
• Design and Development of Dawlish School Websites
• Back to School!