Microsoft has announced that IE is to start automatic upgrades across Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

It’s brilliant news.

Users will be automatically updated to the latest version of IE for their version of Windows (IE8 on XP, IE9 on Vista and 7) ensuring that they will be experiencing the web at it’s best. This is also great news for website owners, managers and developers, who will need to support fewer old browser versions.

Users user’s home page, search provider, and default browser will unchanged when the browser updates, and if users prefer not to update, they can use an Automatic Update Blocker to ensure they only update when they are good and ready. Good news for Microsoft’s enterprise customers. Users can also choose to uninstall the updated if they wish.

The main benefits of this move are cited as security, a better experience for users and less development overhead for website stakeholders.

Ryan Gavin, Microsoft’s senior director for Internet Explorer explains:

“We want to make updating to the best protection possible as fast and simple as we can for Windows customers. IE is how millions of Windows customers connect to the Web, so keeping that part of Windows updated at all times is critical to keeping them safe online. With automatic updates enabled through Windows Update, customers can receive IE9 and future versions of Internet Explorer seamlessly without any “update fatigue” issues.”

“Wider deployment of the most up-to-date browser benefits the Web in other ways as well. Developers and online businesses can rely on better browsers to deliver richer and more capable Web experiences. We built IE9 with a focus on modern web standards and interoperability so that developers could spend less time coding for specific browsers and spend more time building the next big thing on the Web. More of the Web running an HTML5 capable browser, vs. something built ten years ago, is a great thing for developers and the businesses they support.”

This move will help reduce the amount of people on IE6, something Microsoft are promoting, as discussed in Suzanne’s article, Be Browser Smart.

This is a win-win situation for everybody. Huzzah!

Read more on Microsoft’s blog

Being someone who is probably a little more more obsessed with typography than most a couple of great HTML5 sites have appeared recently that have caused just a little friendly competition in the studio.

This kerning game is not only infuriatingly addictive but a great demonstration of what’s now possible in HTML5 using the latest web browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari and also multitouch devices such as tablets and smart phones.

Instructions
Your mission is simple: achieve pleasant and readable text by distributing the space between letters. Typographers call this activity kerning. Your solution will be compared to typographer’s solution, and you will be given a score depending on how close you nailed it. Good luck!

The studio best score is 95% so do let us know if anyones beats it as you’re obviously a typographic genius.

As well as the kerning game there is another challenge based around the shape and form of characters where you have to complete the letter shapes concerned. Again, wonderfully addictive and provides a real insight into how type foundries and type designers really have such an amazing eye for detail to craft the multitude of typefaces that designers are able to use in their work.

Corven is an integrated group of businesses all focused on creating value through strategic change. The business is composed of three divisions; Corven Consulting, Corven Ventures and Corven Networks. Working with FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 companies as well as with central government departments, in Europe and North America, dynamic growth led them to reappraise their brand and communications. VGroup’s appointment, following a credentials pitch, has resulted in a cohesive and integrated look to their communications.

Having successfully won the pitch, we started an intense six week project schedule to refresh their brand identity and their communications including a new website. The first stage was to clarify the hierarchy of the business divisions, each of their sectors and practice areas, and to distil this information into a clear brand architecture.

The Corven logo and Corven Networks logo were retained in order to maintain brand recognition. Our core objective was to refresh their visual identity, build upon their existing brand mark and produce a cohesive look to their corporate brand that would enable Corven to have full control over content in their  literature and website.

We rationalised their colour palette and typefaces across the Group; created an important new brand element in the form of a ‘wrap’ graphic panel which was employed throughout the design work to provide a distinctive area for titles and headers.

With Corven’s need for flexibility to edit and produce a lot of printed materials in-house careful consideration was given to the branding, fonts and colours to ensure consistency across InDesign and Microsoft Word platforms.

The Corven logo’s are written in Helvetica light, a clean open typeface, so it was decided that the Helvetica family should be used as the primary font throughout their printed materials. We took advantage of the release of Helvetica as a web-font to achieve onscreen consistency across their website. If this was unavailable to users, we nominated Arial as a secondary typeface as it would work well with Helvetica as well as across numerous Word Documents that are used internally and externally; this ensured there were no issues with type rendering incorrectly. In short we wanted to make life as easy as possible for their marketing teams.

The personality of the company is warm, colourful, optimistic, genuine and professional, so we felt it was really important that these values came across in their brand. We commissioned a photo shoot of the teams at work and engaging in live projects – the results of which can be seen across the website and in all of their collateral.

Corven PowerPoint template

The new Corven website brought together Corven Consulting and the H-I Network (now renamed Corven Networks). We created a new site architecture to ensure the content could be found easily once brought together.

When the sitemap was approved we moved on to creating a fully interactive wireframe version of the site that allowed Corven to click through and get a feel for how the site would work. These wireframes were then used as the base for the site design.

As with the printed materials we created a clean and modern look for the website ensuring it retained all the brand values of the new visual identity. With the site being built on the Drupal Content Management System (CMS) we paid careful attention to allowing the site to be as flexible as possible. Lots of different page templates and modules are available for the client to update copy, images, create new sections and promotions quickly and easily.

The results speak for themselves, but by working closely with key personnel who were involved in managing and producing marketing materials, Corven now have a more contemporary feel to their communications that represents their value and culture as a business. Their “brand toolkit” will enable them to attract new clients, as well as the calibre of people they need for their growing business, and lastly build brand value over the mid-long term.

“I wanted to write to thank you for your efforts with our website and brand refresh. Whilst it was an intense project, we are very pleased with the end results, and have had very positive feedback from clients, candidates and network members alike, as well as our own staff.” Charles Oppenheim, Corven.

www.corven.com

MXC Capital is an investment company, and a consultancy. MXC’s proposition is to work with clients to identify acquisition and disposal opportunities as well as provide corporate consultancy on all aspects of business management. But it also, crucially, invests into the client companies with which it is engaged.

MXC Capital approached VGroup with a brief to brand them in a way that reflected both the financial and the consultancy aspects of their business. There was a balance to be struck between ‘financial’ and ‘racy’ so, unusually, we presented a number of options on the visual identity allowing MXC Capital to choose visually where they would position themselves between ‘financial’ and ‘racy’.  You can see what they opted for as we think the overall design speaks for itself.

The MXC Capital website brief was for a clean, clear, concise site with a bit of subtle Flash animation. Oh, and… “Can it work on my iPhone?”. Well, yes. We have used web fonts (Thank you Typoteque) and some lovely JavaScript animation to lift the site but keep it firmly in search and mobile device friendly technology. Attention to the grid and typography means that the site has visual impact without relying on a whole lot of irrelevant imagery. Take a look.

Their stationery, and in particular the business cards, also needed to make a serious impact. We produced a thick, duplexed colour plan card—black on one side, white on the other—with a foil blocked logo. Wow.

The whole brand identity came together really nicely, accurately positioning MXC Capital as an investment company with an edge.

Don’t be left behind, upgrade your web browser from Internet Explorer 6. Although most people tend to use newer browsers, there is still 12% of the world using IE6, which is in fact 9% less than the previous year. I read an article by Microsoft which explained the countdown of the usage of IE6 to less than 1%.

It has been 10 years since IE6 was born, as we all well know much has changed on the web during this time and so maybe it is worth thinking about upgrading if you haven’t already. Here are just a few of the ‘key’ benefits to help you identify progress and functionality currently available by upgrading your browser:

• Faster web browsing
• Better security and privacy
• Support for new technologies and web standards
• Improved reliability
• Rich user experience

And so slowly but surely Microsoft are dedicated to watching the usage of IE 6 drop to less than 1% worldwide, so all web developers can breathe a little sigh of relief.

Popular browsers you could consider using are:
Mozilla Firefox
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Google Chrome
or Safari on the Mac

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.

Where can I buy frozen soybeans in Brighton? Where’s the place to stay in Koh Samui? Anyone know any good food photographers? There are some questions that search engines struggle to answer, but there is a revolutionary new search engine that has a better chance of answering those tricky questions.

Aardvark is a new kind of search engine that’s powered by humans! And not just any humans, it uses the brains of all your online friends and friends of friends. The idea is that you log on at vark.com, providing details of your social network (Facebook and Google contacts), then ask your question. Ardvark then seeks out the people most qualified to answer your question and gets back to you with the answers it finds from real people.

The service doesn’t blanket the web to get answers, rather, it forwards your question to a few people that have expertise on your subject, and then only people who are in your social network, a few at a time, saving you ‘social capital’ compared with blanket email, facebook or twitter questions.

Microsoft are currently advertising bing.com as a cure for ‘search overload syndrome, but ‘Where can I buy frozen soybeans around Brighton?’ comes up with a forum subject about buying tofu. Close, but not close enough.

Using humans to answer your questions has distinct advantages over even the cleverest search algorithm, in that it can give you answers that aren’t posed in the question. For instance, ‘Where’s the place to stay in Koh Samui?’ could come back with ‘It’s monsoon season in the east, you could try this place in Phuket…’ You also may be more likely to trust the judgment of people you know, or their trusted friends, than complete strangers in services such as Yahoo Answers.

I haven’t tried using the service yet, but it certainly sounds interesting. The startup has been aquired by Google, so expect to hear more about it in the future.

Do we still need a ‘home’ link in the top-level navigation? It is a long established custom to have a link to a website’s homepage included in the top-level navigation, but why do we do this? Is it really a good idea? And can a website work with a home link in the top-level navigation?

A number of websites have been doing away with the traditional ‘home’ link in their top-level navigation. A couple of examples include apple.com, johnlewis.com and facebook.com all lack a link saying ’home’ in the top navigation. So where did the home link go? And how do you get home in sites that lack a ‘home button’? Well, it is a fairly well established convention that clicking on the logo takes you back to the website’s homepage, and many sites rely on this to let users navigate back to the home page. Other sites use a breadcrumb, which is typically a horizontal line of text providing links back up through levels of the site up to the home page. Breadcrumbs typically look a bit like this:

Home page / Section page / Subsection page

The John Lewis site is a good example of how breadcrumbs work.

You could argue that having a ‘home’ link on the home page doesn’t make much sense. Imagine you’re driving down a road, let’s say it’s the M4 motorway, and there is a signpost for the M4, next junction. But you’re on the M4. Pretty confusing. Who wants to go to a page they’re already on? But in real terms, I don’t think this confuses many people.

Others websites, including www.bbc.co.uk, lastminute.com, myspace.com and vgroup.com have kept home link in the top-level navigation. On these sites users have the same set of top-level navigation available wherever in the site they are. Considering a large proportion of users arriving at a website will not be arriving on the home page, perhaps it makes sense to have this link in the top-level navigation.

Certainly the last few sites I have designed have had a home button in the top-level navigation, but I think it’s worth considering whether it is really necessary.

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!

Anyone who follows anyone who could be described as a geek on Twitter has probably seen the hashtag #sxsw this week and may have wondered why it was so ubiquitous. South by Southwest (SXSW) is an interactive conference that takes place in Austin Texas every March – literally thousands of geeks descend on the Lonestar state to meet and discuss the myriad of opportunities in the tech world. Doesn’t sound terribly fascinating to those who don’t live and breathe digital media, but because of its reputation for being the place for tech start-ups to launch themselves, it’s definitely the place where you’re most likely to see the Next Big Thing.

Last year it was Foursquare, a location based social networking service that allows users to tag where they are (and was dubbed in some quarters ‘the burglar’s friend’!). This year it’s stickybits, which involves tagging objects in the real world with little barcode stickers available from stickybits (or using the existing barcode assigned to an object), and then uploading all kinds of content and attaching it to the object using the free stickybits app on their iPhone or Android. Users can also view what other people have attached to a barcode by scanning it with their phone.

Now, on the face of it sticking a barcode on an item and then uploading information to that barcode seems a bit pointless: so I put a sticker on Suzanne’s coffee mug and upload a picture of Suzanne. It’s nice, but why would you bother? But imagine if you could scan a barcode sticker on your fridge or washing machine and get instant access to the user manual, guarantee information and energy usage statistics. Now that would be handy.
Other real world applications of stickybits are already flying around the TechBlogs, here are just a few

• Stick a barcode on a birthday card and upload a video greeting to your Mum.
• Never lose the assembly instructions for your Ikea bookcase (because you know you’ll need them again one day); just scan the barcode and there they are (and in video format too, for extra help).
• Get the benefits of online shopping offline by swiping the barcode with your phone and getting instant access to user reviews and ratings, not to mention discount vouchers and special offers.
• Create a box inventory by taking a photo of the contents and then sticking a barcode on the outside and uploading the picture to it – could make unpacking after a move a whole lot easier.
• Run a competition where people attach their favourite recipe involving cornflakes to the barcode on the packet.
• A simple barcode added to your brochure or business card could give new customers access to more company and product information quickly and easily.

At the moment stickybits is just starting out, but I bet in a year’s time you’ll be seeing their barcode stickers appearing on all sorts of things and the ability to ‘read the story’ of an item will become second nature. Meanwhile, SXSW will have moved on to the next Next Big Thing.