New and exciting range of products will launch in the coming weeks

It’s a very exciting time and a new challenge for the business. The last few weeks have been busy not only with product design but also with designing and setting up the ecommerce website – which should go live over the next few weeks.

Jin Designs will continue to offer web and graphic design services alongside the shop.

If you are on the Jin Designs mailing list you will receive an email and an exclusive preview to the new shop in the coming weeks. If you own a retail unit and would like to view the range of products, please get in touch.

There are certain periods for many designers when they wonder if they can keep up with the changes. The answer to this lies truly in whether there is a desire to keep up. And I am certainly looking at 2013 as a new start and new beginnings on several fronts.

Responsive Web Design

First of all, we can’t ignore demands for Responsive Web Design. It’s our job as Designers to ensure visitors to websites are able to access information as easily and seamlessly as possible. We have to make sure that websites can be viewed on many different platforms – iPads, laptops, desktops, mobiles – the list is growing so our skills must grow. This is a new challenge but in all honesty, it’s exciting to be challenged like this. I’m glad to be a part of an industry that is constantly changing. As it grows so must I.

Email Marketing

There has been a significant rise in the demand for email newsletter design and marketing so I expect this to continue to be a big part of Jin Designs in 2013. Most requests for work involve designing the template, helping with content and setting up and sending through email marketing software such as Mail Chimp and Campaign Monitor. Tracking each campaign and ensuring its success rate is something that is very important to me and my clients.

Branding

It’s not enough nowadays to simply produce a logo for a new business or existing one. Clients are demanding more help in terms of getting their message across and attracting the right people. This means not only designing the logo, but working with the client to create a set of guidelines to define the business – from everything from type to colours to voice. It’s fascinating stuff to research, develop and define a brand and I’m looking forward to creating and working on many exciting brands in 2013.

WordPress

WordPress continues to be a leading website platform. I’ve used it for several websites now and have found it a great success amongst clients and customers. After a short period of training, clients are able to successfully control their website content. I work with clients from many different industries and I have found WordPress to be very useful for custom built websites. It will continue to be an important tool for Jin Designs in 2013.

And finally…

On the 31-01-13 at 13:13 my niece was born. A New Beginning for 2013. Welcome to the World, Lucille Ursell.

The Jin Designs Christmas message was designed in Fireworks, built in Dreamweaver and sent using Campaign Monitor. This is my favourite of all email clients. It’s straightforward to use and allows plenty of opportunity to test each email and monitor results.

This year, I included a short animated GIF in the Jin Designs Christmas message. It has been a good few years since I’ve designed one of these but more recently they seem to be making a re-appearance, particularly in email marketing. This is because they work on most email systems such as Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, Outlook, Apple Mail.

Companies are using them in their email marketing as an effective way of encouraging users to interact with their email – or to provide further information to offers – or in this case just for creativity and fun!

Here’s the design which you can also view online

And here’s the animated GIF in action:

Hope you all have a lovely Christmas and a Happy New Year. Best wishes for 2013.

To receive updates in your newsfeed for pages you have “liked” you need to do this:
Go to the page you have “liked” and hover over the “Liked” button. A menu should appear giving you options so click on “Show in News Feed”.

Alternatively, you can hover over the name of the page you like whether it’s on your profile or newsfeed and it will bring up a summary with the cover photo, then hover over the “Liked” button. The sub-menu will appear so you can click the option “Show in News Feed”.

So if you like the Jin Designs page, hover over the name “Jin Designs”, then hover over the “Liked” button and click “Show in News Feed”.

If you have any questions, please get in touch or feel free to leave comments on the Jin Designs Facebook Page.

The logo is much more flexible than previous versions. The numeral has been dropped so there is no more ITV1 branding. It’s just plain old ITV.

But plain this is not. The new design will change colour according to its surroundings. It’s a flexible logo design, created in-house and set to launch in January 2013.

ITV2 will feature a red logo and will be the entertainment channel.
ITV3 will be blue, the drama channel.
ITV4 will be slate grey, “the man club”, “haven of sport and cult classics”. ITV demonstrate that they can spend thousands on a flash, new, modern identity but they still cling on to the old stereotypes.

Aside from that, the design is an improvement. It will be interesting to see how it is put into practise. Although watching it change colour according to the mood of specific programmes could run the risk of being more entertaining than the programmes themselves.

What do you think of the new design?

A logo can be an effective marketing tool. It symbolises the business it represents and adds value to products and services. It is important to have a good logo design to stand out from the competition, to look professional and to attract business.

In this list of Top 100 Brands, the top brands use either a lettermark or a wordmark. Their logos are simple and free from icons, emblems and symbols.

Ask yourself the following questions to assess the strength of your logo.

1) Is it memorable?

Your logo needs to be visually appealing to be memorable. It needs to have impact but above all it needs to be simple. Get a friend to look at your logo for 5 seconds then ask them what they remember about it. If it has too many elements it may be difficult to remember. A good logo will be easy to remember.

2) Does it work well in black and white?

An effective logo needs to work well without colour. If you’re choosing a logo design from lots of different colours you will be distracted by colour rather than design. For a logo to work it must work as a black and white design. Every business owner at some point will need a black and white version of their logo. If the design fails when the colour is taken out then it’s not a good design.

3) Is it scalable?

It’s important that your logo works well across different mediums. If you try reducing the size of your logo is it still legible? On the other hand if you are going to use your logo on billboards and exhibition graphics, does it scale up effectively? Your logo should be a vector graphic too so it shouldn’t pixelate when the size increases. With a good logo, it doesn’t matter whether you scale it up or down it will still be effective either way.

4) Is it a timeless classic?

A good logo should be timeless. You don’t want to be spending money in a couple of years time when your logo looks out of date and old fashioned. It’s important to keep with current logo design trends but make sure you avoid using fancy styles and patterns which are likely to be in one season and out the next.

5) How many elements are there?

The best logos are the simplest ones. You don’t need lots of elements in your logo design. Your logo doesn’t need to say exactly what you do, nor does it need a picture of what you do. Some of the best logos are just plain simple.

6) Did you choose your logo from hundreds of designs and pay under £50 for it?

If you went down this path the chances are your logo won’t be very unique or original. You are likely to see it elsewhere and it is not likely to stand the test of time. If you value your business hire a professional designer to design your logo and make sure you see the quality of their work before they start. You should also look at their Logo Design Process before commissioning any work to ensure that you are getting the best service.

7) Do you have doubts about your logo?

If yes, the chances are it is not working for you. You should be proud of your design. You shouldn’t have any negative feelings when handing out your business card or directing people to your website. It is your chance to show what you do and how well you do it. Make it as professional as you can be. And remember, keep it simple, memorable and effective.

If you need professional advice or want to discuss your logo design, please contact Jin Designs.

1) How many products am I selling?

This may seem obvious but starting here will help you plan your store effectively. By listing the number of products and working out the categories of products you can work out how big you need your shop to be. Size matters as it will help you decide what kind of ecommerce platform you need. It’s a bit like deciding what size premises you would need if you were starting a shop on the high street.

2) What kind of shop functionality do I need?

This is important if you have products that vary in size, colour or design. The larger ecommerce solutions can handle multiple product variants but it’s important to work out how sophisticated you are going to need your system to be. Also, will you want to offer discounts and special offers? Some systems come with pre-built functionality enabling you to link products, offer percentage discounts and run special offers like buy one get one free etc. If you are considering this kind of commercial activity make sure you have the system that includes it.

3) How will I handle deliveries? Will I deliver beyond the UK? What postage rates will I use?

Delivery can be based on cost of products or weight of products. It depends on your business. Make sure you check competitors’ rates to ensure you are in line with what others are offering. You might want to consider offering free delivery on all purchases over a certain amount. Delivery rates vary across the world so make sure you cover your delivery costs if you decide to ship to Outer Mongolia.

4) How will I take payments?

There are a number of payment methods that enable you to take payments securely online. For smaller shops, PayPal is a popular option. Your customers don’t need a PayPal account but when they pay for your goods they are taken securely to a PayPal payment page where they can put in their credit card details. The benefits of this system is that you don’t have to worry about the security of holding your customers’ personal data and card numbers as PayPal do this for you. The only downside is that you do have to pay a transaction fee.

There are other options for taking payments. You may prefer to set up a merchant account with your bank, which is a popular choice for medium to larger companies. This will mean a monthly payment and a transactional fee. Also it can take a few weeks to organise so if you are going to choose this option make sure you do it well before you are ready to launch your shop.

5) What ecommerce platform do I need?

Once you’ve considered the questions above you’ll be in a better position to decide which ecommerce platform to use.There are many different options out there but be careful to choose the best one. Consult a Web Designer who has ecommerce experience as they will be able to advise you on what your best option is. Here is a brief list of some of the most popular solutions.

i) Magento is a popular choice for larger ecommerce stores as it offers a sophisticated range of shop functions, invoicing and reporting.

ii) Shopify is popular with small to medium firms. It’s an online store builder which comes with a secure shopping cart. You do have to pay a monthly set up fee plus transactional fees so it doesn’t suit every business. However, it’s easy to set up and with the help of a Web Designer, can be adapted to suit your business.

iii) WordPress ecommerce – this is useful if you already have a WordPress website. WordPress offer a number of plugins to allow you to start selling products online and the top 5 are covered in this article. One of the most popular is WP e-Commerce. It’s a free plugin and with the right planning, design and development, it can be integrated into any WordPress website and can be an effective way to run a shop.

This is a brief introduction into what to consider before selling products online. Each business has different requirements so its purely a question of working out your own requirements before any development work is carried out. The best thing to do is to hire a web professional to help you talk through your options and build the site that is going to ensure your online business is a success. If you have any questions or want to talk through your ecommerce requirements please contact Jin Designs.

The logo chosen to feature in this exclusive gallery was designed for a client who provides cakes and bakes for weddings and celebrations. It was one of three concepts that I came up with for this business.

As designers, we have to come up with several concepts for our clients when designing logos. Unfortunately the client must pick only one.

So there are a lot of logos out there that never see the light of day. For that reason, it is nice to receive recognition for this design – the design that sits quietly on my hard-drive, dreaming of the business cards and websites it could have been a part of.

Visit Creattica

Not by me. I’ve just returned from a break in the sun. Just for a week. Enough to relax and feel alive. I sat in the sun, I swam, I met some wonderful people. I didn’t think about design once. Well, maybe occasionally when perusing a badly designed restaurant menu.

The holiday has made me appreciate my work and my life and yes, whilst I could have done with another week, I feel I’m ready for the next few months and better prepared for what might be in store.

So to any designer out there, or indeed anyone who has been working hard – take a break. There’s a world beyond your computer screen. I had forgotten it for a while but it’s worth taking a look at from time to time.

1) Too much content

The average person is swamped with emails and will have limited time to spend reading each one. Content needs to be presented clearly and concisely and give the recipient the option to read more with links to further information. By using less content you are more likely to engage with the reader and encourage a response from them. If there is too much content your words are likely to end up in the bin.

2) Too many graphics

It’s great to liven up the text on an email newsletter with photos and images but too many graphics can be a mistake. Some email applications are set to hide images so if the top part of your email news is just graphics, it’s going to be hard to grab interest. Here’s an example received from Dwell this week. It looks great when you load up the graphics but when you don’t, it’s rather blank. There is nothing there to catch the eye.

Before images have loaded

After images have loaded

If you’re going to have images, make sure they are labelled and that you include some plain text that can be read when there are images that fill the content.

Here’s a good example from Londontown.com who manage to catch your eye with the content even before the images have loaded.

Before images have loaded

After images have loaded

3) Too frequent

Don’t bombard your subscribers with too much news. Think about the purpose of the email. Quality not quantity is the key with email marketing. Before you start your email campaigns, work out the purpose of why you want to contact them. Set goals. Goals can be anything from re-establishing direct contact with customers, getting subscribers to visit the website or getting them to click on at least one link. You don’t want to alienate your clients or customers with too many emails too often.

4) Difficult to unsubscribe

Make sure you have an unsubscribe button but more importantly, make sure it works. Make it as simple as possible to unsubscribe. One of the most common mistakes is to create a lengthy unsubscribe process which will just add irritation. And don’t follow up the unsubscribe with yet another email confirming the end of subscription. There’s no need for it.

It’s easy to fall into these common email newsletter mistakes when you send out your own campaigns. The best advice would be to find a designer with experience of email marketing who can plan, design and help send out your campaigns and ensure they are a success. If you want to talk about any aspect of email marketing please contact Jin Designs.