Businessmagnet.co.uk is the UK’s leading business-to-business directory, and at the end of August they approached us looking for some exciting ideas for their welcome pack mailer aimed at new subscribers.

The purpose of the mailer is to promote the range of value added services available from Businessmagnet, and to encourage customers to engage with their dedicated Businessmagnet account manager.

We got together with the guys at their offices to discuss the format of the mailer and its content. They were keen to give away a magnetic toy that would sit on their customers’ desks as a constant reminder of Businessmaget, so the welcome mailer would need to accommodate the chosen item.

We narrowed down the key messages of the mailer to a simple series of steps leading up to the final call to action – contacting their account manager to upgrade their Businesmagnet listing – and got to work on the design.

The finished mailer shows how a clear goal and careful copy writing can pay dividends in the success of a direct mail piece – the whole design is geared towards guiding the customer towards contact with Businessmagnet. Add in strong typography, a reduced colour palette (red and metallic silver) and a playful use of the magnetic toy in the design and the result is a mailer with real personality. So much so that we were also asked to apply the same brand style to their rate card/brochure.

So what is the EU Cookie Law?

First things first. Cookies are small text files that are written to your computer when you visit a website. They’re used for all kinds of reasons – helping the site to remember which pages you have visited, remembering who you are, and measuring the performance of the website (Google analytics uses cookies).

In May last year the EU brought in legislation requiring that all EU websites allow visitors to choose whether cookies are written to their computers. Actually most modern web browsers allow users to have full control of what cookies are allowed, but, according to the legislation, it’s website owners that are responsible for making sure that visitors are a) informed; and b) in control.

The main targets of the legislation are the sites that track personal data – location information, shopping habits etc, but ALL cookies are included (unless it can be shown that the site won’t work without them).

The UK government has interpreted the EU’s rules to mean that websites using cookies must allow visitors to actively OPT-IN to using them (rather than opting out by switching them off in their browser). The actual wording of the legislation is complex, but the general gist is that all website owners must a) provide information about cookies used on their site and b) obtain the visitor’s consent to store a cookie on their computer (or any other web-browsing device).

See the guidance from the ICO here

When does the law come into force?

The law has been in place since May last year, but the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) will start to enforce it from the 26^th May 2012.

So why haven’t I heard of it?

A good question. For a piece of legislation that potentially affects thousands upon thousands of website owners in the UK, the publicity surrounding this new law has been most notable by its absence; and you won’t have seen many sites rolling out ways to let visitors opt-in to cookies either. The ICO (The government body in charge of enforcing the law) has complied with a drop-down panel that shows the kind of thing that’s required (www.ico.gov.uk); the FT has a slightly different take on it (www.ft.com) and the Guardian has gone for a more passive ‘Ignore this message to give your consent’ approach (www.guardian.co.uk); but generally you’ll struggle to find a site that has complied with the law ahead of the 26^th May deadline (including most other .gov.uk sites).

So can I just ignore it?

The maximum fine for non-compliance with the EU Cookie Law is £500,000, so our advice would be “No you can’t”. However, the ICO’s enforcement policy is that the maximum fine can only be levied in the most serious cases, where serious harm has been caused; so not giving your customers the option to turn off Google Analytics on your site by the 26^th of May is unlikely to bring down the full force of the law. (please bear in mind though that we’re designers, not lawyers, so our opinion is unlikely to stand up in court). Also, in an article on The Guardian’s website entitled ‘Share cookies compliance expertise says ICO’, a senior ICO policy manager said that public sector organisations should be working towards compliance, but that he would be concerned if they rushed into being compliant by the May deadline without adequate testing; hinting that, for the public sector at least, there would be some leeway in the deadline.

So what should I do?

Fortunately, for most sites, complying with the EU cookie law is relatively straightforward. There are already a number of open source scripts available which will allow visitors to disable cookies, and it’s a fairly safe bet that the choice of solutions will increase once larger companies start to comply. We’re currently testing various options and will be able to advise on a solution that’s right for you.

There are three steps to compliance:

The Cookie Law boils down to two main rules:

1. You must provide clear and comprehensive information
   about any cookies you are using
2. You must obtain consent to store a cookie on a user or subscribers device

So to comply with the law, website owners need to take the following action:

1. Have your site audited to see what cookies, if any, are being used
2. Update your privacy policy to include information about each cookie and what it does
3. Install the Opt-in script that’s most appropriate for your site

Here comes the sales pitch!

All clients whose websites are managed by InSync Creative will receive a free site audit to let you know if you need to take any action.

If your site uses cookies, we will install a front-end Javascript to make it compliant and update your privacy policy with the relevant information for just £250 per site.

If we don’t manage your site, don’t worry. Just get in touch and we’ll be happy to give you a quote to make your site compliant.

The teaser campaign

Once the logo was finalised, the next stage was to prepare a teaser campaign in the run-up to the launch of Imagine at the BETT education show in January 2012.

The brief from Pearson Fronter was to create a press, website and direct mail campaign that would create a buzz around the name Imagine and attract education professionals to search for Imagine at BETT without giving away anything about the project, or even that it was a Pearson product.

We decided quite quickly that the learning content of Imagine gave the most scope for interesting visuals and set about working up some designs. A few ideas are shown here.

The unanimous favourite was the second, illustrated concept which, incidentally, through the use of the clouds and rainbow, refers back to some of the early logo visuals.

One of the reasons for choosing this idea was the potential to create an exciting web experience linked to the ad campaign – see the screenshots below.

Various direct mail pieces followed leading up to the product launch at Olympia in early January 2012.

The Launch campaign

The final stage of the launch has been to develop the brand ideas from the logo design and start to apply them to the post-launch marketing materials.

The launch brochure, advertising and web design is the first step in steering the visuals used in the teaser campaign towards something more explicit. Where the teaser campaign was all about exciting visuals and making people curious with veiled hints and promises, the next steps will be all about communicating the specific strengths and benefits of the Imagine suite of products.

Getting on with it

Working with words and phrases, doodles and found images led to a number of ideas that seemed good enough to work up into some logo visuals for Imagine. Some of the initial designs are shown here. Each logo design had its own evolution through several stages, with each having several different variations – too many to show them all here.

If you refer back to the mood board and mind map from part one, you’ll see several themes have been developed into the logo designs.

And this is the one that Pearson Fronter chose to develop.

Although all the ideas presented had one eye firmly on the brief, this was the one that was thought to be closest to fulfilling it. Firstly it was very different from logos used for other products in the school management or learning sector. And secondly it was seen to be readily adaptable to appeal to the very different target audiences that Imagine would be aimed at.

Pearson Fronter particularly liked the idea that the logo could be used as a container for different photographic images – a good analogy for Imagine as a container for a suite of different applications.

The shape of the letters, the shadow under the logo and the thickness of the keyline surrounding it were all careful refined over the next few stages.

Finally we supplied the finished master logo to Pearson Fronter to be registered as a tradmark.

The final instalment of this series will focus on the development of the brand design in the run-up to the product launch in January 2012.

Throughout the second half of 2011 we worked with Pearson Fronter on the brand identity for a new product that was finally launched in January 2012. The following is not so much a formal case study, but more of a guide as to how ideas in a project such as this develop and how we got to the end result.

The brief

The product in question is a way for schools to put all the management and learning applications that they use in one, easy to access, online toolbox. Everyone involved with the school: teachers, pupils, parents, admin staff, can use the same online portal to access the tools that are appropriate to them. School management software and VLEs (Virtual Learning Environments) are big, complex pieces of software – they have to be because they do big, complex things, and Pearson Fronter’s ‘Project X’, as it was known during the development stages, is designed to streamline these software monsters.

So in June 2011 we were briefed and given a name for the product – ‘Imagine’, and the work began…

The brief from Pearson Fronter’s marketing department was that the brand identity should be flexible; Imagine would be bought by a school’s management team but also be used by teachers, pupils and parents. Being different was also an important criteria as Imagine would be the only product out there that unified management and learning tools.

Armed with a thorough understanding of the product and a clear brief from the client it was time to start work.

Of mind maps (nearly) and mood boards

A blank piece of paper can be a daunting thing, so the first thing to do is to to put some marks on it to make it less scary. I usually start with the name and a few words to remind me of what the thing I’m designing for does. Then I can start to come up with metaphors, images, related ideas, doodles that spiral away from the starting point and lead on to new metaphors, images, related ideas and so on. The resulting page of free-wheeling ideas and scribbles is kind of like a mind map but without all the associated pseudo-science – it’s just a gentle shove to the old brain cells to get them moving.

These pages of words and doodles are an excellent way to come up with raw material for the design; the client doesn’t always get to see it, but sometimes, providing that it isn’t too weird, it’s worth cleaning one up and presenting it to make sure that designer and client are still pulling in the same direction.

The one for Imagine is here – they’re not always as tidy as this one! Click on it to see a larger version.

Next up – the mood board. Used in all branches of design as a way of getting a feel for what you’re trying to achieve before you start to put pen to paper. In the olden days you’d need to collect piles of magazines and shelves full of photo library catalogues to cut up and paste together to get the look and feel that you wanted. Nowadays a quick trawl around the internet can get you all the inspiration you need. I’m not talking about ripping off someone else’s design, I mean colour, texture and general feel that you want to achieve.

The next post will deal with how to turn all this preparation into a proper logo and brand identity.

The packaging needed to communicate clearly to the consumer what the product is and its benefits. The front design includes all the key product information with strong branding and clear imagery.

The reverse of the packaging explains in more detail the benefits of the play mat, its design and the materials used.

To accompany the packaging we were also asked to create labels for the replaceable covers. The design closely follows the play mat packaging with a strong use of brand and colour.

The main aim of the new corporate brochure was to remind their current clients of their full range of services and to act as a showcase to prospective customers. Before the release of the new brochure many customers were aware that Akhter are a manufacturer of PCs, but few realised that, in fact, they offer a complete suite of IT Services.

In most cases the corporate brochure will be a prospective client’s first detailed view of Akhter Computers. With this mind we wanted to create a very clean brochure design that clearly communicates the different aspects of their services, using primarily silver and black to portray the quality and expertise they have to offer.

Leading on from the successful completion of the corporate brochure we have now been asked to design and build their new company website. Exciting times lay ahead….

The company wanted to step up from a ‘freebie’ logo that had been used since it was formed, which would better reflect their credentials as a supplier of sustainable, high performance Scandinavian windows and doors – as well as make the most of their memorable name.

After presenting a range of different moose characters it was decided that the logo below had the right blend of fun and style to reflect the company’s personality.

Some of the other designs are shown below:

The Groupcall brand already has a strong emphasis on product identity, with each of their products having its own colour-coded logo. The product branding has been taken a step further with the introduction of a new set of portable exhibition graphics for two of their products – Emerge and Messenger. The new style will be rolled out across their other product lines and marketing materials over the coming months.

In addition to showcasing our work, the site will be used to keep you up to date with our latest projects and any other interesting stuff that we come across in the course of our varied workload.

We’ll also use the site to demonstrate any web scripts that we think might be of interest to you. Hopefully by now you’ve had a go at selecting your favourite colour scheme for the site. The javascript behind this function allows not just the colour scheme, but the entire CSS stylesheet for the site to be changed by the user, so potentially the look and feel of your whole site (or any part of it) could be tailored to different user groups – just ask them to choose which group they feel they belong to and the whole style of the site – colours, logos, typestyles – could be changed to suit them.

So take a look around and if you spot anything that you’d like more information about, just give us a call.