Each December, Pantone selects a “colour of the year.” Since the Pantone Matching System is used across all creative industries as a colour standard, this annual selection has come to be quite influential for many designers and is chosen with careful consideration to the marketplace and overall present consumer culture.
The colour for 2012? Tangerine Tango!
Pantone says this vibrant colour “provide(s) the energy boost we need to recharge and...
More →There are four main ingredients that make up a successful branding project:
The idea
The "idea" is the starting point for any branding project. It is a summary of a business' or product's 'personality', its character - what makes the business or product different. Looking carefully at the business and the marketplace it operates in, one should ask the following questions:
What does the business offer? What makes the business different? How... More →We occasionally have clients who are not clear on the issue of licensing, particularly when it comes to photographic image usage, and many times we've referred to an article written by San Francisco-based photographer Frédéric Neema for help in explaining the point.
We figure that part of this article as a blog post might help further in clarifying what can often be a very misunderstood issue. In fact an...
More →Does your business need branding?
Branding done right can elevate a product or business into something unique, standing it apart from just another among many. In competitive markets, recognition from competitors is particularly important.
There are many methods one can use to ensure a product stands out. These can run the full gamut from as simple as using a distinctive colour in your design or presentation which your competitors are not using,...
More →We never realized how often this perspective has been used in motion pictures! Take a couple minutes to relax and enjoy the world from "God's Eye View"!
"God's Eye View" from Brian Carroll on Vimeo.
More →We're regular reader's of Seth Godin. His books and his blog. Who best to describe Seth but the man himself: ". . . bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change." Ever heard of the book "Purple Cow"?
A recent post of Seth's was titled "Six questions for analyzing a website" and we thought we might share with you. Well, most of it. If you'd like to finish reading, you'll need...
More →Branding, branding, branding. You hear it all the time! Everywhere you look, someone is offering branding services. Your web designer, your graphic artist, the corner quickie-print shop. Are you branded if your business has a decent logo? Is branding the same as marketing? Are you done if your business card looks sharp?
Business branding is a passion of ours. At WhatBox we pride ourselves in our ability to help our...
More →To touch quickly on this subject again, we had an enquiry recently about building a Flash website to showcase a photographers work. We do not work in Flash. Flash is time consuming to develop (even more so when creating something good) and since it is not SEO-friendly, and Flash sites are not viewable with iPads or iPhones, we do not provide any Flash-platform services.
Are we shutting ourselves out of...
More →People have been arguing about scrolling on websites as long as websites have been around. Is scrolling a bad thing? Do site visitors scroll? How important is it to cram everything into the top part of each page? Especially the home page.
Is there such a thing as the "myth of the fold"?
In the late 1990’s scrolling was very often considered a bad thing. If your website couldn't fit...
More →Is Flash dead yet? No, not exactly. Steve Jobs said it's proprietary and closed, however.
OK, I'll explain.
Flash is not going anywhere any time soon. Some might say "unfortunately".
The Debate: HTML 5 vs. Flash When compared head-on with Flash, HTML might be missing many crucial features such as immersive graphical UIs, motion tweens, shiny UI effects, "skip intro" buttons and .. erm .. audio and video control. Until...
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