Morphamish’s music can can be found at soundcloud.com/morphamish

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Bass, Breaks, Tekno and Hardcore with a monthly theme. Oh yes.

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When you need a friend

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Client:

Spanish with Style

Project:

Identity, Website Design & Development

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Being a freelance designer is great. Working with clients directly to find out what they want and then producing the creative brings about a great fusion of minds which makes each project a different and more interesting challenge as well as a learning experience which is further enhanced by watching the client reap the rewards from this kid of work.

The only problem, however, is the fact that you have to do your own marketing as you are not getting handed projects to you as you would in an agency.

As such, if anyone could help take some of that work off my hands I would be very grateful.

This is why I am starting a referral service. I’d be happy to offer a 15% commission to anyone who introduces me to a new client that pays for work produced by Antimatter Design.

With the advantage of internet services such as Skype, email and DropBox, as well as the ease of international bank transfers there is no need for you to even come from the UK either.

So if you know anyone who could do with some sharp, high impact design for their project, be it a business venture, event, charity, website or branding exercise, then get in touch – it will be great to hear from you!

Just contact using any of the details found on this link: Contact

UrbanSkogbruk (translated as ‘urban forestry’) is a tree surgery service based in Oslo, Norway.

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Can’t remember what it’s for though.

I’m sure most of us have had a conversation that has gone something along these lines before. The question that then gets asked is ‘how can advertising work if you don’t know what the ad is for?’

The converse of this is when people want to give as much information as possible about a product or service as possible in their advertising. These adverts tend to turn into a kind of hard sell about the product and its merits.

Not my kind of product, but a very extensive overview of this monkey doll

As a designer, I prefer the first kind of advertising for the level of creativity, enthusiasm and visual appeal that these ads have. However, I can understand a client’s potential apprehension about advertising like this as, at the end of the day, advertising is not cheap and is meant to generate sales.

So how do you know if your designer or agency is being self indulgent or if they are actually producing something of value? How much information should be included in an advert?

Well the answer lies in the way in which the human brain filters out irrelevant or low impact information. Our attention is grabbed whenever we something that is relevant to ourselves, original, engaging and informative.

There is also a level of entropy involved with anything we see. A simple example of this is when you have a playlist set up of your favourite songs on your iPod, mp3 player or phone. The first time you hear the playlist you will pay attention to each of the songs as you like them and are engaged with them.

However, after a while of hearing the exact same songs every time you drive into work, get the bus or walk to the shops, the songs will have less and less impact, ultimately resulting in you being unable to say what the last song you listened to was, as the music has become part of the wallpaper, so to speak.

The same is true with advertising. The rate at which people stop paying attention to an ad is dependent on how emotionally engaging the advert in question is. The more engaging, visually appealing and original an advert is, the longer it will take before people start filtering it out.

But there is a flip side to this story.

As well as keeping the attention of the viewer, an advert must also inform people about what the advert is for. Effectively, advertising is about training people to use your product or service and as such works in the same way that learning does.

In this way, the more clear cut a message is, the easier it is going to be to get the message across about what your organisation does, and the easier it will be for someone who might be interested in your product or service to connect your name with what it is that they need.

Informative ads produce short term sales bursts, emotive ones create longer term sales

The end result of this is that informative adverts create short term sales bursts before becoming ineffective, while emotive adverts have a much more ‘slow release’ mechanism which lasts longer.

This has implications for your marketing strategy depending on what your organisation is doing at any given time.

If you are a new organisation, or if you are either launching a new product or offer, then you might be better off with a more informative advertising campaign, so that people know about what you do or what you’re up to at the moment.

If you are an established brand, then you no longer need to inform people about what you do, as they already know. However, if you want to generate more sales, the you need to make sure that your brand gets associated with a positive emotion, by creating advertising that is more engaging and works better in your target audience’s minds.

Another determining factor is how unique your product is. An organisation like Moon Pig provide a fairly unique service that needs to be explained to customers. In my personal view, the service is quite naff and the advertising revels in this, but it is effective because it is informative and will appeal to anyone who might be interested in personalised greetings cards.

On the other hand, a product in a highly competitive industry needs to stand out from its competitors by having a certain emotion attached to it through its advertising. This is why a sportswear brand like Nike is so successful compared to other sportswear brands – because it has such a recognisable brand based on victory in the face of competition, athleticism, youthfulness and stylishness.

Make sure people know who you are at all times

The main thing that holds all of this together is your brand. This is more than just a logo, but a set of characteristics that gives your organisation a personality that stands apart from your competitors.

As such, make sure that there is a theme going through each of your ads, whether they are informative or emotive and thus recognisable as you.

This means that whenever anyone is making a decision about whether or not to go for your product or not, then they have a comprehensive amount of information all relating to what you do which is triggered as soon as they see your brand, whether it comes from knowledge about what you do, or emotional impact that they associate with your advertising.

Glasgow likes to party

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A World of Music in the Hills

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