It all started with a mouse mat.

Since CNC, our lovely new client, was first established they have been sending out mouse mat calendars annually to their customers and suppliers. A simple bit of merchandise, but apt for an IT company and one that stays on their clients’ desks all year round. If their clients don’t receive a mouse mat in January they call to ask for one!

After 15 years in the business, CNC has evolved, alongside offering day-to-day IT support they focus on creating bespoke IT infrastructure solutions for their clients, designed to aid and grow their customer’s businesses. Now mature and progressive, CNC wanted a more dynamic look to reflect their core values and the increasing success of the company.

So in December, with the mouse mat send looming, a new year, an expectant audience, it was time to begin the rebrand. The first thing to feature on our to-do list, the mouse mat would announce the new identity.

CNC had a very clear strategy about the direction in which they wanted the business to progress. They are technologically advanced and also committed to listening and reacting accordingly to their customers’ requirements. Our task was to distill these aims into clear propositions for potential customers. There was no existing strapline but the longhand for CNC—Computer and Network Consultants—featured on the brochure. We started with the keywords as we saw them: dynamic, proactive, process, accountable, inspired. Ultimately we felt there had to be a strapline. It is impossible to encapsulate all that they do in one line but we certainly could convey their ethos. “Inspired Business Technology” is what CNC are all about.

The existing brand had done well for CNC to this point, but lacked the punch and standout that CNC now wanted. The logo comprised of a cyan square, an abstract marque and a light, lower case cnc within the square. The three elements jostled for prominence and the lower case cnc felt weak. There was however, equity in the logo and although CNC were not averse to a complete change, we felt there was an argument to evolve the elements that had mileage.

We were drawn to the cyan square. It had structure, and was the most noticeable thing about CNC’s existing brand, so we felt that the evolved logo should include reference to that shape and colour. When we explored the typography we noticed that CNC looked stronger and more confident in uppercase. We have set it in a customised version of Gotham; a classic, sans serif font which is clean, contemporary and has a bigger company feel.

We’ve transformed the flat cyan square into a three-dimensional cube adding a white cube within it to represent IT infrastructure, which is at the heart of many modern businesses. The structural feel of the marque reinforces the solidity of CNC, but also nods towards their progressive approach. With a mind to production costs and consistency, we designed the logo to be printable in only two colours but with creative use of tints it has the feel of more colours.

Taking elements of the logo, we created a sculptural and abstract graphic device as part of the brand identity. We call it the ‘Infrastructure Device’. Although it is actually more than one graphic, there can be infinite variations on the theme. We use this throughout the printed collateral and website, and have plans to use the device to create signage and branding within the CNC office for example. This fluid branding device reflects the adaptable nature of the way CNC works. On printed items we added a metallic silver to the palette, this fits well with the forward thinking technology and adds a ‘special’ quality.

The previous branding featured stark, austere photos of the office and abstract shots of cabling. We immediately saw the need for adding personality to their collateral. We commissioned a photographer and art directed the shoot at CNC’s offices. The images produced portray not only the collaborative, approachable nature of their staff, but also their professionalism.

In the updated typographic style, bold headers are juxtaposed with a modern, very legible serif font. The messages are confident, yet the body copy is informative and plain speaking. The complexities of IT made easy to digest by the customer.

Again, the website reflects a fresh, clear approach to ordering of information. All the information visitors immediately want is available on the home page, and further detail can be accessed without leaving the page by panels which slide open to reveal more information. We created concise messaging written in a straightforward way, avoiding jargon and waffle, which reflects the approach and personality of CNC.

The site is controlled by a CMS, allowing CNC to control the information, and to easily keep it up to date with the fast moving technology they work with. They now have a blog section, in which they publish their ideas and insights, helping to keep their customers up to date, and proving their expertise to new or potential customers.

So CNC start the new year with a new brand, which we hope you’ll agree is befitting of the company they have become and positions them to achieve their strategic business goals in the future.

We are delighted to see that our site www.baringa.com has been listed in a collection of ‘the best grid-based designs’ over at grid-based.com

Created as part of a branding and renaming project, designed and built in-house by VGroup, our V:CMS allows Baringa to edit all content and categorise news articles so that users can filter the news by the industries Baringa Partners work in.

The site was designed on a ten column grid giving the site structure and allowing use of plentiful white space.

We also spotted our own vgroup.com listed by grid-based.com too!

Once upon a time, in a world wide web far away, it was said that Content was King, and everyone believed it. Then along came a new religious cult called the Content Management System, and the people decided that the King didn’t really matter that much any more, and that they would build their kingdom how they wanted, despite having no idea what they were doing, and worry about the interiors later.

Somehow between now and then, everyone seems to have forgotten that monarchy even exists.

The kingdom is now full of grandiose castles with fancy entrances… but nothing inside, except perhaps a few mismatches pieces of junk that don’t seem to belong there and really aren’t that useful. In fact, it looks like most of them might have even been stolen from somewhere else.

But it’s time for the cult of the CMS to be brought back down to size, and for people to start treating content with the respect it deserves…

The importance of content strategy
Commissioning a content management system doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give your content the same careful consideration and forwarding planning you would if you were producing a static site, and had to pay for every change.

Key aspects of a good website are great design and sound information architecture. Getting this right makes all the difference to the user, and ultimately to the success of the business.

Populating content via a CMS requires at least a rudimentary knowledge of basic user experience and information architecture best practise – something that not all clients can be expected to have. Not only does allowing clients to manage content deflect from adequate consideration of content during the design process, it also leads to dodgy DIY – of the content variety.
Too often content is treated as something that just needs to get done, and focuses on what clients want to say, not what users need to find.

Don’t even get me started about what Google’s going to think about it all! (Yes, yes, I know that Google can’t actually think… yet…) Copy, page titles, page headings, key word density and image tags and linking are all crucial to good search engine performance, which all goes out the window with the DIY approach that CMS systems facilitate. Similarly – in terms of validation – a site can only be as valid and accessible as the content that’s put into it. Professionally and carefully considered content makes a web project more user-centric by proxy.

Meanwhile, in the real world…
It’s certainly a luxury to get final content before starting design and Information Architecture (IA) work. If this was the way things happened, we’d all be sitting around twiddling our thumbs, and very little design would ever get done at all.

But think about this. How can we get the IA right without the actual information? How can we design something that isn’t even there? Design and development without the real content is, at best, totally speculative.

While the evolutionary nature of online media is something I love, one of the down sides is definitely the “worry about it later” attitude when it comes to content.

There are many things that the web can learn from print – and one of them is more careful consideration of content. Although copy is often the last thing to come with print design as well, it gets carefully considered, edited, proof-read and proof-read again, to ensure that it’s perfect and looks great, because the medium of print is so final.

So what the point of a CMS then?
A CMS has it’s time and place – but without considering content as an integral part of the design and development process, it can be more of a hindrance than a help. The use of a CMS should aid content strategy, not replace it.

I’ve also found that few clients actually really use a CMS very much once their site is launched, which begs the question – was it really necessary? It’s all about considering your content from the start. So you know what you want to say. Then think about it again – how often will you actually be updating your content? If you work out what you want to say properly, much of it shouldn’t change.

Money spent on an all dancing, all singing CMS may be better spent on professional copywriting, or an ongoing agreement with your agency (or friendly freelance communications professional) with regards to maintaining your content.

A good balance can be to have some aspects of a site content managed – such as news sections, documents and job postings – with core information that doesn’t need to change being written professionally and optimised for search engines. (NB: updating copy regularly is great for SEO, so this is where CMS can be useful, but not if the content is of poor quality).

In the informal, banter-ish nature of last week’s SkillSwap, a good chuckle was had around the ideal versus the reality of designing around ACTUAL content, but it just got me thinking that we all just need to try harder. That means all of us.

After all – after spending all this time and money on great design, fancy animation and slick development – it’s what’s inside that really counts.

For more information on copywriting, content management systems, information architecture and content strategy, contact Jasmine Wilkinson

When commissioned to build a new website for the freshly rebranded Natures Way Foods, we jumped at the chance to get creative with the ‘nature’ element of their business, and play on the fact that they grow and distribute fresh produce all year round.

Background / Objectives

Our client’s brief for the website was to create a more consumer-focused online experience that emphasised their strong environmental and sustainability policies, and their contributions to the local community in their beautiful South Coast location.

As well as being engaging and educational for consumers, the site also needed to be straightforward and information rich and remain relevant to the wide range of NWF’s stakeholders, including the local community, suppliers and wholesale customers.

The Solution

These core business themes of nature, environment and produce all year round inspired a site that displays in four (virtual) seasons, acting as a backdrop for promoting different produce at different times of the year.

After reviewing all the other work we’d done for Nature’s Way, we were inspired by the colour palettes used in the packaging of different flavours of Naturo fruit pots, and came up with the idea of designing a site that could be viewed in 4 different colour-ways, to represent spring, summer, autumn and winter.

The all seasons website dynamically displays in the current real-world season by default, while allowing users to choose another season, triggering a switch in scenery, weather and colour palette throughout the site. Our design and build team incorporated bespoke illustration and Flash animation with clever use of CSS, JavaScript and ActionScript to allow the Flash area of the site and rest of the site to “talk” to each other, facilitating synchronised season change of all areas of the site. Try it yourself! www.natureswayfoods.com

Another important part of the brief was to ensure that there were plenty of ways for people to find content they might be looking for, and cross-promote other content.

The page tagging system in our content management system, V:CMS, allows the categorisation of pages and news articles with topics that dynamically form a tag search facility, as well as method for cross-promoting complimentary content throughout the site.

Our super-user friendly in-line CMS interface allows clients to edit pages, insert and resize images and documents on the fly, while navigating the site as it appears in a web browser.

We’re so proud of this site that we thought it was a definite candidate for the Outstanding Digital Design category of the Digital Media Awards South (DiMas) so we await the judges’ decisions with baited breath. You can see our entry with some further demonstrations of V:CMS in the awards entry PDF.

“A mashup is a combination of one or more data sources to create a unified interface and experience.”

The benefits to marketers are that instead of having to re-invent the wheel, you can use existing applications such as Flickr and YouTube and Facebook to produce customised and original content in your website without a whole lot of expensive custom development.

While the majority of mashups on the web tend to be fun, consumer orientated stuff, the mashup concept has much to offer businesses of all sizes, from both a marketing point of view and in terms of product and service offerings.

Some sites provide APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to allow web designers and developers to “plug-in” to these applications, and integrate them with their own sites.

For example, if you use Flickr, the online photo gallery, and YouTube to pull photos and video into your website, you are creating a “mash-up” gallery, that uses the existing functionality of Flickr and YouTube while allowing the look and feel to mirror your own site.

Benefits in this case are that a) you are able to manage , without having to use a content management system for your site, and you your photo and video content also exists on the internet in it’s original form ie in YouTube as well as in your website.

This can help drive traffic to your site, generate viral activity, reduce development time and provide interfaces for your users that they are already familiar with.

We are starting to use mash-ups more and more in the VGroup Interactive department – while we have our own CMS that can be configured to do anything we want, sometimes we find that it’s better for our clients to use combine existing technologies with the site we build for them.

Right now, we’re building a great new website for a Ratton School, a local performing arts school that uses mashup technology to great effect.

We’re using Flickr and YouTube to pull in content to their gallery, and using the API from our email marketing tool to integrate it with our CMS so the client can send short notifications in the secure parent’s section of the website out via RSS, SMS and email to parents, depending how they have specified they wish to receive them.
Developing things this way has allowed us to provide some genuinely useful functionality to the school staff, parents and students, without blowing their budget.

We’re encouraging our B2B clients to look at ways that they can pull data from different sources to provide useful, targeted and relevant mashups for themselves and their customers.

For a small real estate agent, we’ve mashed up their internal property management software, their website and huge online property portals such as Find A Property so that our client can enter their property data once, it populates their in-house system, their website and online portals all at once and they didn’t need a special content management system.

It was a little tricky at points persuading people to let us do it, but making life easier for people is something we’re rather passionate about. And it means we get to do geeky things.

The API is the limit – and then not even – when it comes to mashups; webbies everywhere are doing some really exciting and innovative things from the really useful to the downright silly.

Check out the MashupAwards at www.mashupawards.com to see some very cool stuff.

If you want to learn more about mash-ups or any of the technologies mentioned here, give us a call on 012373 766 300 or email us; we love talking to people about this kind of thing!