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Don Norman on the beauty of design

Flyer design - UDC Dance company

UDC is a professional dance company providing dancers and shows for film, TV and corporate events for such companies as The X Factor, Sony, Bench and Motorola.

Part of their business is running dance workshops for Hen Parties. To support their online marketing campaign they required a simple A5 flyer to hand out at wedding trade shows.

Northstar designed the flyer (incorporating client photography retouched in Photoshop and library photography bought under license from shutterstock), provided copywriting and print ready artwork.

Visit UDC Hen Parties web page
Visit UDC Hen Parties Facebook business page

The Social Media Marketing Revolution

Anyone over 30 will remember how funny, intelligent and entertaining TV commercials used to be, Benson & Hedges posters were almost works of art, ads in the colour supplements were usually more interesting than the articles themselves.

But times have changed, the public eye has moved elsewhere - and with it, has gone the revenue and investment in creativity.

The positive result of this shift in media, is that mass marketing is now accessible to all via the internet.

If you have ever wondered why traditional marketing is dying on its feet, here are a few statistics that will blow your socks off.


A few facts for your fingertips:
# By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network

# Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web

# Years to Reach 50 millions Users: Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.

# If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia

# 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction

# % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%

# The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females

# The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube

# Wikipedia has over 13 million articles…some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English

# There are over 200,000,000 Blogs

# Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth

# 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content

# 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations

# Only 14% trust advertisements

# Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI

Source: socialnomics.com

Anti Iraq War Advertising

I thought great advertising ideas were dead, but then I came across this.

An anti Iraq War advertising campaign on behalf of the Global Coalition for Peace perfectly executed by the New York agency Big Ant International.

“What goes around comes around” is a great strapline that everyone trusts as a truth, put into a context that really rams the message home - you can just imagine all the passers by walking around the pillars to get the message.

What the poster campaign didn’t generate awareness from, the internet coverage did.

“What Goes Around”
Advertising Agency: Big Ant International, New York
Creative director Alfred S. Park
Art director: Jeseok Yi
Copywriters Francisco Hui and William Tran.

The real crisis? We stopped being wise

Barry Schwartz gives a remarkable talk that puts today’s economic crises in stark relief and gives a unique insight into the reasons how it happened.

Compulsive viewing for anyone running a business. Just plain interesting for anyone trying to make sense of what’s going wrong in the world.

Gordon Brown’s internet marketing machine

Gordon Brown and the labour marketing machine have embraced the web in an effort to reach and engage with a wider audience.

“We’re listening.”

Taking notes from established business marketing techniques, they have a photo gallery on flickr, videos on YouTube, some particularly dull posts on Twitter and neglected facebook account.

Unfortunately, one of the primary strengths of the internet and social networking, is the interaction with your audience - a fact that seems to have been overlooked.

You can’t even send an email.

On 10 Downing Street’s contact page there is the following, succinct, explanation in plain English:

“Email Number 10 - We have decided at this time that it is important to take another look at the Email Number 10 service to ensure that it meets the same high standards as the other content and communication measures that the website delivers. Unfortunately, this means that we will be unable to replace the service as quickly as we had hoped, but we aim to have it up and running as soon as possible. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused.”

Even the smallest sites we’ve built for a couple of hundred quid have email. How come the Goverenment can’t manage it?

Ah, that will be because they need to “ensure that it meets the same high standards as the other content and communication measures that the website delivers.”

Accessibility Standards

This Government has also brought in legislation that all commercial websites should comply with standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA).

Number 10 has an Accessibility page which covers all the correct guidelines they should be following - but they aren’t.

1. Number 10 says: it complies with W3C 1.0 Transitional Guidelines. This standard is low and 10 years out of date, and still it fails on 5 points.

2. Number 10 says: it complies with WAI AA. Again, a lower standard than Triple A and still it fails on numerous points.

3. Number 10 says: “all images on this site are accompanied by a brief alternative text which describes the image or its function as appropriate.” Some, maybe 40% have.

4. Number 10 says: you can increase text size and tells you how to do it. Unfortunately, that’s quite out of date and doesn’t apply to 75% of visitors.

5. Access Keys are one of the most basic forms of accessibility you can give a site, so people with mobility problems can navigate without a mouse - this site doesn’t have them.

No wonder this Government isn’t enforcing the legislation they introduced to make websites accessible for all.

Most of Northstar’s websites comply with all of the above standards, not just the home pages, but every page. If we didn’t, we certainly wouldn’t post an Acccessibility page and lie about what we were doing.

Physiotherapist logo design

The Spine Courses approached Northstar to provide a logo, and website domain registration and hosting.

Steven Young, a Consultant Physiotherapist who specializes in spinal disorders, runs a series of courses throughout the UK for senior, clinical specialist and extended scope physiotherapists.

The first objective was create a company name which had an available domain - something more easy on the eye than The Spine Courses.

From a shortlist of eight names, logos and domains - Spine UK was chosen.

The font is Myriad Pro - clean, modern and approachable (the same font that Apple use). The colour is #2A9509 - fresh and medical, without being clinical and cold.

The trick was to re-draw the p with an extended descender to represent the brain and spinal cord.

Most people won’t see that, but it’s a subtlety that’s there to reward those for those who look hard enough. For everyone else, it’s just a professional looking logo. The sort of logo you would expect from a company you could trust.

Blame it on the Credit Crunch

For decades we have all been weaned on the virtues of the market economy. The Darwinian simplicity of how only the strongest survive; compared to evils nationalized corporations, trade unions and (God forbid) the failings of communism.

Then the Credit Crunch arrives in an endless blaze of shocking headlines - and all of sudden governments all round the world are pumping 100s of billions of tax payers’ money to prop up failed businesses.

Not small to medium sized businesses; which make up the majority of an economy’s gross domestic product (GDP) and employment - no, only the big businesses.

Oh, for the little guys trading with consumers, you can pass on the proportion of 2.5% VAT reduction, but when companies were slashing 70% off in pre-Christmas sales, this hardly figures.

Take a look at this simple graphic summary of General Motor’s situation taken from Wall Stats, and you can see the credit crunch tipped the balance of an unfeasible business - it was not the cause.

People just got too greedy and complacent.

So while governments look after their big corporate sponsors who have suddenly turned, and put a gun to their head with the threat of unemployment figures, who’s to look after the small to medium sized enterprises?

The answer, as always, is no one. You are on your own.

It’s a case of working smarter to reach your audience and make sales. Throw away the old marketing manuals about door-drops, telesales and press campaigns - in today’s overloaded and fragmented media environment it’s more than likely to annoy your potential customers than attract them, and guaranteed to be a comparatively vast waste money.

The Web is a trusted source of information where people find out for themselves about your product or service. It is cheaper than traditional (old fashioned media). And it can save you money.

Because it is comparatively new and cheap - and because there are so many cowboys in town dining on their client’s ignorance - the web hasn’t been taken seriously by the vast majority of businesses.

But in time, despite governments weighting the balance unfairly in favour of large corporations - it is the smart small businesses of today who will live to be the big businesses of tomorrow.

“If you don’t move, you get fat”

A brilliant press ad to promote exercise by the German Olympic committee.

It cuts to the heart of the endless debates about the potential causes of obesity: “If you don’t move, you get fat.”

A striking impression of what Michelangelo’s David could have looked like if he’d been brought on today’s diet of fast food and Sky Sports.

VW Touareg advert

At last a decent ad! Can’t remember the last time I saw one.

A single minded proposition, based on a benefit, executed with warmth, humour and style - Bill Bernbach would be proud.

The highest ground clearance in its class. Touareg

“Our job is to bring the dead facts to life”
Bill Bernbach

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