The De-Luxe team wanted something a bit different for their web presence which was to function as an online business card of sorts, with some very minimal content.

The result the team at Fluid produced is a virtual window display, that quickly shows visitors the attitude of the business and allows De-Luxe to add in new graphical elements at key points through the retail year to capture their clients imagination.

I spent Sunday morning getting to and running in the Wilmslow Half Marathon on behalf of a local charity that Fluid Creativity supports.  This is Willow Wood Hospice, which provides palliative care to people in the Tameside area where we are based.

We’ve recently been working on a rebrand of Willow Wood, which is celebrating its 10th Anniversary – more on this later, when the rebrand is officially unveiled.

Anyway, because we’ve been meeting with the fundraising team at Willow Wood about the rebrand, the idea of me running the Wilmslow Half for the Hospice began to take shape. They are a great team and really hard-working, as well as lovely people to work for.  The blisters I have are well worth it in such a great cause – the team won’t let me paste a photo here as they’re “too gross”!

If you’d like to lessen my pain or help the Willow Wood team a small way towards the massive amount of funds they have to raise each year, please take a look at my JustGiving pageThank you!

Local goverments seem to enjoy the unenviable reputation of being red tape obsessed beaurocrats.  Luckily some of these organisations are willing to shake of this dusty image and rebrand themselves in a way that will appeal to the man on the street.

Last month we blogged about what we felt was Birmingham City’s overcosted and shoddily produced effort.  Now Burnley Council have decided that they can do much better and have treated themselves to a new website and a new logo!

Unlike Birmingham Council I imagine they shopped round for skilled designers and develepors, considered several potential suiters before agreeing on a design specification that would match the image they were looking to convey to their public.  It’s going to look good, isn’t it!

No.

After feasting my eyes on this visual monstrosity, I donned my dirty Columbo mac and set about doing some investigating.  After days of stake outs, clandestine meetings with informants down dark alleys, bribing corrupt policemen and eating lots of donuts I managed to turn up the document I believe was originally used in the conception of this logo.  Ladies and gentleman of the jury, I present to you the evidence:

I joke of course.  All it took was a chewed up biro and 4 minutes of time for the musings of an idiot (me) to be spewed onto a pad.  But surely thats my point.  I’m no designer (although some of you may beg to differ after seeing my photorealistic rendering of The Count) but even a little piece of me dies when browsing Burnley Council’s logo and website.  I can only imagine how many designers and developers would have loved to make a dramatic dive to push the Burnley Executives out of the firing line of that scribbled bullet.

If there are any any other local governments who are considering reworking their website and want to do it on a shoe string budget then by all means contact me as my pad and ruined biro are permanantly to hand.  If however you would rather speak to experienced design and development professionals then you would be wise to contact Fluid Creativity.

Once again I give a hat tip to How-Do for breaking the original story.

The quality and the reach of your initial marketing campaigns can often mean the difference between a comfortable first year and a difficult twelve months. Businesses which invest too little in marketing or fail to target the correct market can face an uphill struggle trying to attract the right interest in their product and persuade potential customers that they are a reputable, new company that will be serve their needs best.

On the other hand, businesses that set aside an appropriate marketing budget early on are much more likely to build a customer base quickly and develop a trustworthy brand which can help them to retain customers long after their first, tentative, purchase.

Becoming perceived as a trustworthy and reliable business is now more important then ever due to today’s entrepreneurial environment in which several similar businesses can launch at the same time in the same geographical area; Building a quality brand for your business is a good way of doing this in the early stages of your burgeoning business.

Twenty years ago it was only the international companies such as Nike, Coca Cola and McDonalds that could afford (and had the foresight) to develop their brand alongside their business. Nowadays brand building is a fairly inexpensive and invaluable addition to the marketing campaigns of most small businesses; afterall, what SME doesn’t want the recognition that the ‘Swoosh’ or ‘Golden Arches’ conjures up?

Fluid Creativity offers small businesses a brand identity design service alongside its award winning web design and development services, such as our work for design clothing specialists Brand Neusense;

Through a series of consultations, Fluid Creativity will attempt to understand your business and the mindset of your target audience. We will then create corporate identity for your business that can be applied to any marketing literature that you produce. Products such as business cards, letterheads, flyers and more can all be branded with your unique and instantly recognizable corporate identity.

Contact us online or give us a call on 0161 368 9814 to discuss developing a brand identity for your mall business.