Have you ever had a leaking pipe or faulty boiler and tried to fix it yourself? Or a wall that needed a fresh coat of plaster or a carpet you thought you'd fit yourself? The answer might be yes in some cases (only to realise you've made a pigs ear of it and in the end you've called an actual plumber or plasterer or carpet fitter). All three professions mentioned above are just that. Professions... what does the word profession mean? In the dictionary it states a profession as 'an occupation requiring special training or knowledge'.  I wouldn't argue with that, especially when trying to skim a wall or fit a boiler.  So why is it that people think design is any different?Maybe it's the seemingly easy and comfy surroundings of a studio, computer and a cup of coffee that makes people think the job must be or is easy?  Maybe it's the lack of any actual physical hardwork, like there is in other professions.  But it is still and will always be precisely that, a profession, a job people do professionally and who have studied and learnt and spent years at Colleges and Universities to get to a level of quality which allows them to make a living from it. Now I know people will turn their hands to almost anything, especially us blokes.  But let's be honest, if a plumber turns up to fit a radiator, the only thing you'll do is offer him a cupper, not stand over his shoulder telling him he's doing it all wrong or asking him 'are you doing that right' because at the end of the day unless you've had some experience with plumbing, for example, then you'd have no idea what was going on.  However, when it comes to design, every man and his dog thinks they have a little creative side and thus think they know best.  Surely the reason they approached an agency in the first place is because they're the specialist and know what's best?  But when it comes to taking briefs and specs they insist upon certain things asking you 'what do you think' and usually the response through gritted teeth is 'no...' Now I'm not against input from anyone, but I am against a good piece of work being ruined by someone who thinks they know best.  Maybe what he or she wants to achieve is fine, but the way they've gone about it won't be. At the same time designers have a tendency to self-indulge in work, overlooking what the someone might really want or need in place of something they personally like or might have seen.  I suppose what I'm ranting about is that people are in their jobs because they love it or enjoy it but most of all because they know what they're doing, wether you're carrying a hod of bricks or sat in a comfy chair with a pencil and paper in front of you.  So next time you have a bright idea about how to change something on your web site or advertising etc, consult with your designer first!  :)

Here at EAOM it’s a very Happy 1st Birthday to our fantastic team! Founded on the 1st August 2011, we’ve had a fun year, on both a work and a personal level. Our first year as a digital marketing agency has been ridiculously busy whether this has been designing websites, copywriting, assisting clients with their SEO, PPC or Social Media campaigns. So to celebrate a hectic but successful first year, we thought we’d share with you what it’s like to be an EAOM team member… How to get the infographic on your website or blog Want to get place the EAOM infographic on your website? It couldnt be easier simpler, just insert the below HTML and there you go, realy is that simple <a href="http://www.eaonlinemarketing.co.uk"> <img src="http://www.eaonlinemarketing.co.uk/EAOM-Infograph.jpg" alt="EAOM Birthday Infographic" /></a>

I've recently been working on a branding project for EAL and thought I'd blog about the process I personally use and why I think it's the best way to unearth the best ideas and ultimately arrive at the best most polished treatment. Looking around my desk (aside from being a bit of a tip) it's awash with sheets of paper covered in scribbles and anotations all experimenting with 'EA' or 'EA Fusion' trying to mould (or fuse) the E and the A into some clever mark. I generally begin by just writing down the brand name 'EA Fusion' and scribbling the (usually) crap first ideas down, anotating, scribbling what I think, the best ideas and ones that usually end up as the final treatment 99% of the time aren't the first ones you have, it's very rare this is the case. I felt this particular brand wouldn't benefit from being to abstract and whilst a mark would have worked well I thought a logotype come mark might work well, the acronym of EA complimented with text reading either 'EA Fusion' or just 'Fusion' it could work two ways with the EA still being legible enough to read but also being stylised enough to be a stand alone mark. Obviously I wanted to focus more on the 'fusion' of the E and A, I also, as mentioned, wanted it to be legible enough to read and understand it was a fused E and A, to me it sounded industrial solid, strong and corporate, the product was a multi channel management system similar to Channel Adviser One problem we faced with the brand name was the constant comparison to Electronic Arts or more prominantly the EA sports logo, they use a joined E and A to forge EA and this proved difficult to try and move away from, I identified the sharpness of the edges, the floating crossbards on the E and the red colour as the thing which made me draw a likeness, especially the sharp edges. I decided to use the concepts I'd deigned but applied a softer, rounder edges to them (in part due to some input from the head honcho who said he liked 'curves') this moved it away from the key feature of the EA sports logo, but it still needed to be less complex, easier to read, I sent a copy of the mocks I'd designed to a collegue who wasn't a designer to see how a none design mind might interprate the logo, she said they didn't seem to look like an E or A, and as I said I didn't want it to be abstract I wanted legible but stylised. Back to the pen/pencil/paper I went to try and thrash out a design that accomplished this without resembling EA sports, I then dropped the red (which was only a mockup colour) this helped to further distance the brand from Electronic arts. In the end the brand developed was still deemed too familiar to Electronic Arts and I do beleive it nearly impossible to create a brand around the letters EA that won't get compared to the world renowned EA sports brand, I felt it distanced its self with the change in colour, corners etc and also think something more legible like this would have worked better, either way the importance of sketching and drawing and experimenting with ideas I feel is essential in generating the right ideas and arriving at the best design.

Before I begin I want to stress that I in no way dislike Apple or any of its products, this is purely my opinion about people perception of Apple products. Having owned an iMac from 2005-2009 I've experience in using an Apple, using the OS which i think at the time was leopard? (I may be wrong) appreciating the aesthetic of the 'all in one' unit with no tower under the desk and the quirky differences between a Mac and a Windows PC, I got rid in 2009 because the motherboard had packed up and for the price of getting it fixed I might as well and did buy a new PC, this time a Windows PC. At first I was reluctant to get rid of it, I'd had it 4 years and as I say enjoyed using it, simple things like built in Bluetooth and airport meant no unnecessary dongles hanging out of every USB port, and the fluidity of the OS made me want to keep it (although knowing it would either cost me or I'd be stuck with a machine that was temperamental when turned on) I decided to sell it for parts and got about a tenth of what I paid for it. Fast forward 4 years and I was starting to have problems with the new PC I'd bought post Macintosh, so I thought, I know I'll get another Mac, perhaps a Macbook pro this time which to me killed 2 birds with one stone, I could use it at home and take it on holiday et al thus negating the need for a tablet (I'll get to that later) as I shopped around I realised it wasn't going to be cheap, I knew Macs where expensive as my old one had cost around £1100 and that was 7 years ago, a base Macbook was coming out at around £1000 for a 13" and more for the "15 and so on, I didn't want and couldn't afford to spend that kind of money on a computer but A) needed one and B) really wanted a good spec and a nice looking machine, it was starting to become a headache, looking on EBay, Gum tree etc there were second hand ones around £700 but you don't know what you're getting till you buy it, I spoke to various friends and colleagues, some pro Windows and anti-apple and other vice versa, one friend owned a Macbook but had gotten it cheap and said if it wasn't for that he would definitely not have paid up to a thousand for one, another talked about the lower risk of viruses and problems but in the same breath talked about how expensive they are to get fixed with the complicated build quality of the machines and the specific parts needed. In the end my PC would turn out to be OK, but one thing I came to realise is the only reason I wanted a mac is because apple had sunk its seductive teeth into me and made me believe it was the only option. I'd seen windows laptops and desktops as powerful and if not better than a macbook or imac, but every time I browsed for a new PC I kept finding myself back on the apple site or apple pages of websites ogling a Macbook pro, number crunching in my head thinking of ways I could afford one, one day I just stopped and thought, this is pathetic, they're no better than an X or Y laptop and it's double the price! for me the apple now has a 'fashion accessory' aura surrounding it, people buy them to show them off, like a weekend car or something, like I said they work great but so do £400 Winsows laptops, one thing that I read about a Macbook was 'created from a single block of aluminium meaning no unnecessary joins or seams' SO WHAT! It's not like the seams or joins of a laptop will take your finger off, is that what you pay an extra £500 for? No seams? Another factor in hyping up the mac bandwagon I feel is cinema, you see a film and the family computer is an iMac? Or some joe meatball is swanning around with a 17" Macbook? product placement or whatever aside, it just isn't real life, a family isn't going to have a top spec 27" iMac with kids running around, you're not letting anyone near a £1400 computer never mind kids, it just says to me 'this is an ideal life. Wife. Children. Macbook. dog.' you never see a Dell laptop or a HP sat around, fair enough they may not look as good, but that’s just the point, people buy them for the way they look almost as much as they do for the way they perform. Above, a customer carts his 27 inch iMac into Starbucks. I think the whole ‘Designers use Macs' thing is a myth as well, I've used both and currently use a windows PC, I don't particularly find Windows hard to navigate and it probably isn't as fluid as Snow Leopard or Lion and does using a mac mean you produce better work? Certainly not, for anyone to suggest that would be ridiculous, but if the reason behind buying a mac is the superior software or experience of using Apples OS, consider this, if I wanted I could run Lion on my Microsoft PC? So am I buying a Mac for the OS or just to show of the glowing apple and brushed chrome knowing I've got a Macbook but also knowing I'm a £700 worse off than what I could have been? Another friend of mine (a mac user and fanboy) put it perfectly when talking about his expensive iPhone contract, the possibility of getting a cheaper phone/contract and also considering a playbook as apose to iPad he said ‘yeah but it’s the thing of owning an Apple product’ to me that just cements my point. It's like the people who buy, for example, an iPad2 then go and buy the newest iPad as soon as it comes out, nothing really has changed, and certainly not enough to go and spend another couple of hundred pounds, as I admitted, the way they market the products, advertising on TV etc is seductive, they make you think it's either Mac or nothing and they also make you believe the subtlest of changes matters and thus you NEED the latest iPad or iPhone. I recently bought a blackberry playbook, I was looking at a tablet once I knew my PC was going to be OK as I wanted something I could browse on, watch films etc but didn't feel I needed something as powerful as a laptop for such things, so I immediately thought 'iPad' I'd played with a few before and thought they were great I knew the iPad 2.1 or 3 or whatever it is was recently out so thought I could get the 2 for cheapish, £329 was the cheapest I could find brand new, again, I stood back and thought about it, I have a blackberry phone and knew about the Playbook, I did some reading about them, the reviews were positive, people even saying they were better than an iPad especially for the price, I got mine for £169, £160 cheaper than a brand new iPad 2, and it works fantastically well, not just that but having a blackberry phone and an iPad seemed a bit queer, the phone tethers with the playbook just as well if not better than the iphone does with the iPad, things like being able to upload via mini usb as a pose to messing around importing through iTunes, simple drag and drop, bluetoothing from the playbook to the phone. I could go on but have probably rambled enough, and as I said earlier, I don't dislike Apple or their products, they look and work great I just think there's a certain arrogance about them were they feel they can charge what they like and if you don't buy it, who cares, half of the world will whatever the price.

When starting a new project different people have different ways of approaching and trying to develop an idea. I prefer to get ideas out on paper, scribbles and annotations to explain my ideas, usually the poor ones are the first to be scribbled down, the ideas that are too obvious. This technique is something I learnt in my college years on the BA honours Graphic Design course (it's more than likely a universal technique) and I remember at first thinking it seemed like a waste of time, wanting to rush ahead to the final idea, I think when creating something that you're excited about you have to try and show some composure and restraint as to not rush it and not do the idea justice. I've always been under the impression that looking in to many design orientated books can lead to a mish mash of ideas, liking elements from several different designs and, without really knowing it, fusing them into one design, the same thing can happen when specifically looking on a certain site for inspiration, you can end up being tainted by 2 or 3 designs and then subconsciously merging them together into something that A) doesn't look or work right or B) you confuse yourself whilst designing because you realise it doesn't look how you imagined. When starting a new design I tend to prefer flicking through sites such as FFFFound or Pintrest for little snippets of inspiration maybe a certain font can generate an idea or the use of certain assets might spark something, of course for things such as layout ideas for web design, I prefer to know all the elements that are required for the layout then I believe it's a case of working out a hierarchy of importance then playing with the elements required in a layout, moving things around and trying to invent different ways of displaying them. Obviously you can't reinvent the wheel, and there's only so many ways to lay elements out, but I think looking to have them display in different ways can ad variety and bring something new to a web site, i.e. JS carousels, there are many different variations available for free these days and many you can manipulate to suit a particular design or for more originality (I came across a carousel recently and wondered how it worked, then realised it was on I already had which had just been tweaked to work differently.) At the end of the day I'm not condemning the referencing of design books et al (I'd be an idiot to even suggest that) I just feel it's easy to become tainted by a design or style, and it's more the subconscious that is influenced and in turn you end up creating a mish mash or styles, flicking through them and looking for those little sparks of inspiration however is certainly my preferred method.

The use of texture in web design is becoming increasingly popular, it is a simple and effective way of adding depth, brand identity and making calls to action more prominent thus increasing their effectiveness. [More]

I enjoy collecting interesting and well designed apps & links so I thought I would share the most useful ones i have found from 2011. If you have any you think I might like or any you have found to be useful then feel free to add a comment below and I will be sure to try them out! [More]

So Christmas is now officially over, and so is the EAOM 12 Days of Christmas. We have had a great uptake on the giveaways, but just in case you missed any, here is a quick summary of what we gave away and where to find it. [More]

Colour Experts, Pantone, have announced their new colour of the year, Pantone 17-1463 Tangerine Tango a “spirited reddish orange, continues to provide the energy boost we need to recharge and move forward” [More]

Today's free gift is five of our favourite web fonts used in EAOM projects in 2011 [More]