FunkyLittleDarlings.co.uk

I first heard about this design service in the Sunday Times Style magazine. It was founded by Mandy Colliss and David Quinton (former toy and Graphic Designers). The company evolved after the couple discovered the surprising lack of uncheesy wallpapers available for kids. “The idea is that parents send ideas and photos of their children and we create a bespoke picture”. This is often personalized even further when they add characters or imaged based on the child into the design for them to discover.

I think it’s a fantastic idea, I remember when I was younger wanting something bright and dramatic on my walls and my mum begging me to change my mind into something that I would like for longer that a week. Whilst these dramatic designs don’t totally eliminate this possibility, the fact that they are designed specifically to suit both the child and the adults commissioning it does reduce this chance. Its like having a large (but more permanent) picture painted for your wall, it is something that will always remain unique to you.

Raise Them on Robinsons

I remember commenting on this TV advert (above) on Holly’s Blog just after it had come out. At the time I thought that it was a very clever way of marketing their drinks to children, but bypassing all the new legislation and laws that have been put in place to prevent this. The “Raise them on Robinsons” line is indicative of a parental audience, as is the website contents and the placement of the press ads. On the other hand if you took out this line and replaced the nutritional information on the website with a game or picture to colour, it would look anything but out of place.



My cynicism aside, I do really like this campaign. It has a fresh feeling to both the graphics and the music surrounding it. At the time when the first TV advert was released, the press ads and website had still to be launched. Now that they have you can see that throughout this has been a well thought out and planned campaign. It defiantly feels like it belongs together as all the components serve to remind you of another. My personal favourite is the No artificial colourings adverts shown bellow. It such a simple way of doing it, yet it makes you smile and draws attention to the point well. Overall I have to say I admire the Robinson’s campaign for finding it’s way round what could otherwise be a very difficult problem. I wonder if we will see more companies being forced approach marketing this way in the future.

CocaCola

I love the latest CocaCola advert, it has such a tangible feel of celebration and joy, it makes even me, who can’t stand the drink, tempted into their world. CocaCola is probably one of the most recognised and powerful brands, it must be hard in a way to know what to do next to build on their brand image. Both the website and the advert combine a mixture of graphical styles, from animation, to 3D modelling to photography, so often when you try and do multiple things the end product ends up suffering and not benefiting, thankfully for CocaCola, this is not true here.

The Advert works with the enchanting music to build up anticipation in their fantasy “world of CocaCola”. One thing that struck me when I first saw it was how clever it was from a marketing perspective. With all the legislation and rules surrounding advertising to children, and Coke’s brand image of being more of a young adult’s soft drink, it was never going to target it’s campaign specifically to kids. Having said this the animated style and fairytale like music would not isolate this audience sector either, i.e it’s customers of the future.



The website (http://www.coca-cola.com) is built on a very light hearted plane. There are interactive parts where you are able to create your own image to be left in “the coke side of life” gallery and also a bit which allows you to “discover the happiness” factory behind the advert. Apart from the expected Christmas advert, I don’t really remember that much self publicity launched by CocaCola recently. With this in mind, there was no guaranteeing that “Happiness Factory” campaign would be received well by the public, but from what I have seen this ‘invitation’ into their world has been a definite success.

Brylcream, Effortless

I have just seen an advert for Brylcreem on TV and surprisingly it has not yet found it’s way onto you tube. It is a clever sequence advert that whilst it shows the product, it doesn’t specifically focus on this. Instead as Honda, Skoda and many others have famously done, it sells an idea; this time the concept is “effortless”. I think this is likely to work well, obviously it is hard to predict the success of any campaign, but given the music, the style and idea, it will go down well with it’s target audience.


The advert can be seen on their website http://www.brylcreem.co.uk. This incidentally is one of the best websites that I have seen for this young but broad target audiences. The style is contrasting to the advert but there are small things like the sketched old style tv and the competitions that they have run to get the public’s take on the concept ‘Effortless’. I really hope that this is a success as it is one of the better pieces of marketing I have seen targeted at the student type age range in the past few years.

Elemore Leonard UK book covers

These are book covers designed by Tim Marrs for Elmore Leonard’s UK released books. They stood out when I was looking round a bookshop at the various covers, not because they were the most modern, nor because they were the most innovative. These stand out because of the attention and detail that has obviously gone into their creation.

I have not actually read any of the books myself so can’t vouch for if they are designed to specifically relate to the plot. However, given the differences between the covers I think it’s fair to assume that they are. These illustrations are of a style that is quite popular with a number of artists, yet they are well considered and created, and also very appropriate for the type of crime and mystery genre that Elmore Leonard writes in.

The illustrators personal website is also something I want to mention. It is a well-designed portfolio; its not too complicated, but everything from the page list to the background shows part of his individual style. If you are interested in illustration, it my be worth looking at. http://www.timmarrs.co.uk/

http://www.teaappreciationsociety.org

The first thing about this website that caught my attention was the name. This extract from the homepage explains a bit of who they are

‘The "Tea Appreciation Society" was setup in February 2007 by a small collective of British designers who LOVE TEA. Not only do we love tea, we drink tea, we use tea for those moments when you need some inspiration, relaxation or to forget the din of the world.”

This extract made me smile, mainly as its true of so many tea drinkers across this country. When they are feeling tired, down, upset, stressed or as it says above uninspired one of the first things that they reach for, is a cup or England’s favourite drink.

The more you explore this website, the more you realise that it is using this title to promote the fair trade tea industry and ethical clothing through their own designs. On face value this could just be a site designed to make you smile and give a bit of extra publicity for the designers, but I actually think they are trying to do more than this. They are using what could otherwise be ‘just another’ blog style website and making it into one that has a purpose in trying to promote fair trade standards.

On another note, this has also got some links to artist and designer’s personal websites. If anyone has a minute I would recommend looking at them, the work is varied and really good.

With regards to the design of the website, I do really like it. It may not be the most flashy website or one that is extremely innovative in its design, but it does however look good and do what it sets out to. In a way I think my favourite part of the visual design is the background. They have used very natural greens here and constructed a leaf pattern that looks very much like my grandma’s old wallpaper. This is perfect for the site, this style is not only fashionable at the moment, but it reminds you of all the things that tea is normally linked to, such as living rooms, comfy sofas and resting at the end of the day. The only thing that I do think is a bit of a shame is that they have used a totally different, green for the main part of the site. Whilst it is not designed to match, I think that if they used this colour and style within the homepage a bit more, it would have more of an impact as at the moment it looks like many different sections not one whole cohesive site.

Skoda Fabia website

I found this when I was looking to see if Skoda had made it’s “Full of Lovely Stuff” advert into more of a campaign. Although the website may not be the most flashy or impressive from a purely technical design point of view, I like the way that they have played on the success of the original concept and constructed the site around that. Because of the buzz that has followed the advert itself, many people wanted to know about if it was really constructed, how long it took, how they did it etc. The website seams to have more information on how they filmed the commercial rather than the technical specification of the car.

It is clear from the way that this advert was targeted that they were aiming for a different type of customer, one that is probably less worried as to its 0 to 60 speed and more wanting “just a car”. I think this is conveyed in the way that the website is laid out. It is not over complicated and has been done in a way that suggests the company is having fun and not taking itself too seriously (which brings it nicely back to the “full of lovely stuff” line).

The other thing that they have done quite cleverly is to make sure every part that you view has at least test drive link. I that Skoda in this case is good example of a company trying to differentiate itself in customer’s minds.

School Website Design

The image above was taken of my old infant school website, www.greenlane.leicester.sch.uk

I personally love it, and not just as it’s my former school, but because everything has been created in a fun way and with the children in mind. This is the element I like the most, it is not a clinical or generic website, it is one that is specific to the school and the children in it.

You can tell that it’s been created with the target audience in mind. This is shown in everything from the way of navigating, to the way that each section has been made to attractive for the children.

Yes there are elements that if it were my site I would change. However, overall I think that it is a fantastic site for it’s purpose which is to promote the school and create a fun way for the children to discover the internet.

On another note, some of the flash work that has been done by the original Webmaster is really clever. (My particular favourite is the ‘We are building a seaside’ shown in the photo above.)