Hello Citizen

Crimpington Post

2012-02-01T09:00:00.000Z

The simple ideas are always the best, and sometimes the ones you would never consider to be interesting to anyone else and totally barnstorming.

This week the creative team behind The Torygraph invited me to have a look at The Crimpington Post. I'll be honest, to start with I though it was stupid, backs of head, then fronts of head WFT? But then I found myself scrolling through all the images and noticed that from the backs of the heads I started to develop an expectation of that the faces looked like, then on the reveal I was generally wrong. This is genuinely engaging, and a simple idea that a lot of people will find interesting.

It helps that the photography is beautify crisp, and the street models are characterful. It's great example of engaging content and a really human level, and once again honoured to be a part of it (I formatted the blog and created the masthead for them).

Now what could that bloke look like... take a click though and see The Crimpington Post.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

Too Busy to Save Lives

2012-01-24T09:00:00.000Z

If you take a look at this post and figure you can't read it in a minute you're going to 'do one', and that's fair enough. Attention spans are at a critical point, nobody has anytime for anything these days.

People hate reading instructions, wading though tutorials, watching How-To videos and anything that's going to teach them to do something properly, everyone is obsessed with the idea they're busy, and their time is ultra precious, why would they waste it on something they can probably skim read and 'fudge'.

A recent example of this is the Vinnie Jones CPR ad. It's a brilliant advert, the message is great, the script is funny and succinct, and the casting and music are spot on, but take a moment to think about what an important message that is, and how childishly it's been spoon fed to the public.

When the guidelines for first response medical recovery changed last year there was an important message to get out to the public, in the 80's they might have considered a Public Service Broadcast to get people's attention, but these days that's exactly the kind of thing people don't have time for, so instead advertisers have to think of ways into fooling people that they're not having their busy, busy schedule eaten into, and the only way to do this is to blitz them with 'fun'.

The ad takes an important set of instructions for SAVING SOMEONE'S LIFE and breaks them down to BeeGee's song, so we can all remember them. Is this evolution, is this how sophisticated we've all become, is this where our hectic schedules have got us? We all think we're a more sophisticated generation then our parents, but I'm positive they were never too busy to watched a boring Public Service Broadcast about how to save a life.

I'm not blaming the ad, it's brilliant, I'm just saying if we carry on being so busy we have to be spoon fed life saving information to music, then I see a not too distant future where One Direction sing the news, and event though Harry's hair is beyond perfect, we can't allow that.

Hope that was less than a minute. Thanks for your time.

Here's the ad:

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

Yellow is the new Punk Rock

2012-01-19T09:00:00.000Z

Obvious really, I don't want to patronise you, but I'll make my case.

Things move in cycles, and for the last few years we've worked our way though the process colours in some kind of salute to the simplicity of the times, even though the 'times' have been really complicated and that doesn't make any sense, perhaps we've all subconsciously mourned the loss of simplicity whilst moaning that our iPhones can't scrape the ice off our windscreens.

Black

So back in late 90's we were all very Black, people loved saying "Black is the new Black," and it became sophisticated to make everything Black, it was shorthand for quality and it's absence of light was reflective of the era, as the Prophet Richard Madeley filled his bath tub with hand wipes bottled water and waited for the Millennium Bug to destroy our Black world.

This was Colour's Metal Period.

Cyan

Then we all woke up to a new dawn of realisation; we weren't going to die if our nan's Microwave reset it's clock. This gave us new hope and everything went Blue, Facebook now owned Blue, taking it from monolithic companies like Intel and HP. The Facebook blue went though several changes with millions of people threatening never to post on their wall again if they changed it one more time. They did change it, and everyone continued to post what they were having for tea, everyday.

This was Colour's ambitious Folk Period

Magenta

The markets were buoyant, pocket money averages were at an all time high, and people on benefits were enjoying Spa Days, these really were the glory days, nothing could stop us now. The Magenta reflected the opulence we all enjoyed, these really were Romanic times, grapes were everywhere and everyone was so happy, the only thing they had to worry about was what was going to go wrong, and they didn't have long to wait.

This was colours Prog Period.

Yellow

This brings us crashing into the current day. Times are hard again, people are depressed the world is looking for a new hope, something to blow away the sickly memories of Magenta, but still to give them hope, the people have turned to Yellow to do this.

Yellow is the new Punk Rock, it's given us all hope, it's saying if I can do this, a colour that doesn't really work against white, a colour that makes people think of dehydrated urine, and colour that means 'passive or scared,' then you, yes you can do anything. Use it.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

First Touch

2012-01-17T09:00:00.000Z

For football fans who like Soccer Am more than actual football, and think Tim Lovejoy is more influential on the game than Tim Sherwood, Johann Cruyff is the pinnacle of cool. The above video is probably something that they've never seen before and it shows what some people think is the greatest first touch of all time, now I've not seen every first touch, but from the limited range I have, it's pretty smart. He puts exactly enough stink on the ball to drop it into an area just right to run onto and bend it round the keeper. Sweet.

But really, what does this have to do with you, and the marketing industry as a whole, well… nothing really. Except the words 'First Touch' do have marketing connotations, and your first touch with a customer had better put you into enough space to delicately bend the ball around the keeper, and not fall flat on your nuts in front of the away fans. Your first touch could be anything, from your hair cut to your business card, your website to your Facebook Page, basically anything that's going to give a potential customer a first impression of what kind of business they're going dealing with and getting it right is essential, get it wrong and a precious opportunity could be wasted.

So, there's nothing I can do about your haircut, and even if I pitched an idea you'd not listen, but there is something I can do about your brand. A strong brand is created not from a logo, but from an idea of what the company is about, what is does, what it means to people and what is can offer. Only from this clear proposition can a brand can flourish. If everything is built from this idea upwards then your brand will be strong, aligned and have the potential to create a positive first touch for all potential customers that encounter it. Understanding the importance of a solid brand is only for those people that know what their business means to other people, and want to create something that embraces this, the people that dismiss this way of thinking are really just Emile Hesky when he was at Liverpool. Speak to Citizen about creating a positive first touch.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk Or call 07738 175 614

New Cassettes – Winterhead

2012-01-12T09:00:00.000Z

Popular electric indie rock beat combo The New Cassettes approached me about a year ago to create the art for their new album on N13 Records and of course I agreed. we met in The Charles Bradlaugh and discussed what they were looking for. They wanted something reflective of their ideas behind the music, less abstract than perhaps some people might approach this, and with a little bit of Roxy Music sexiness thrown in.

My first idea was to find out what the band actually thought the music was about, so I asked them to each put together around 5-10 images for each song that represented it's origins, they did this and I created this montage:

This gave me a texture with which to fill my illustration, I wanted to use this with shading to create a layered affect across skin tones and body shapes, so the next stage was to create the model for the montage to sit within, this was done with this illustration, that kept the limbs and chair separate so that could be selected and different parts of the montage layered in:

Next step was to drop parts of the montage into the areas of the illustration, then apply the shading and draw the hair, the end result was a 1000mmx1000mm illustration that I could crop into to make different covers and pages for the booklet, and never reveal the full piece of work;

And that's how it was done, simple but effective and a beautiful piece of work that captures the spirit of the band, and the ideas behind the music.

The album is out this March on N13 Records.

Please get in touch is you'd like Citizen to develop album or single artwork for you, or if you have any questions on how this artwork was created.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

Stop worrying about 1984, it's over...

2012-01-09T13:46:00.001Z

People think they hate adverts, they think they hate being marketed too, and that all promotions are evil ways of trying to suck some money out of their wallet. They think this, until they see an advert that appeals to them and makes them spend some money, then after that, they hate adverts again.

This is how our generation is, we're all about skipping the ads on Sky Planner, ignoring them in magazines and moaning about them on websites,

What if every advert was directly for you, what if you'd grown up in a world where advertisers only bothered you when they had something you wanted, at the price you wanted to pay for it? Then advertising isn't annoying, it's helpful. Well, this is the world we live in today, and until we stop being scared of a faux 'Big Brother Society,' and stop worrying that someone is going to download our saved games on Grand Theft Auto and a million photos of us in the pub, then our generation is never going to get there. We've got to be flexible on what we consider to be 'Orwellian Measures' and accept that fewer, more relevant messages is far more acceptable than a thousand irrelevant ones.

Web and mobile Location Services are the key to this. The kids growing up now think nothing of broadcasting their location every minute of the day on sites like Facebook and Foursquare, but us grown ups snigger at them for thinking 1984 was just a year Band Aid happened, they don't understand the dangers of people knowing where they area all the time, back in our day nobody knew where we were, and obviously that was much safer!

As ever the kids are alright, they're the ones accepting this, without knowing why they need to hide themselves all the time, or without understanding the social pressure to fear corporations and data collection, they are in fact freeing themselves from an old, crippling school of thought that opens up endless opportunity, and potentially declutters their lives from pointless communications.

Of course I don't want to publish my PIN code on Facebook and I don't want people to know when I'm doing a poo, but that's not how these things are set up, they're built with care and security and we have to trust them. Ultimately that's easier if you have nothing to hide, but Location Services aren't there to catch people out, they're there for a new generation of Nano-Targeted advertising, they're there so when you breakdown you get an advert for the AA, when you're having a party you know where to get a cake, and they're there to free you from the DFS Bank Holiday sale advert where everyone's laying on an unmade bed - unless you want a bed of course.

The youth are never wrong about these things, just like they were about The Beatles, Punk Rock and Wham Bars, they know how to live in their times. They'll laugh at us in 40 years as we cower away in an old people's home paranoid the government is spying on our phone, then they'll take us to the toilet and post on Facebook we're doing a poo, so you see, we can never win.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

2012 Let's Make This Happen...

2012-01-03T11:38:00.000Z

My office was never this cold, it really wasn't this is disgusting, why did I sit here in the cold, typing stuff, when I could be playing Hungry Hippos (with Maltesers) by the fire.

So far 2012 has been boring, no uprising, riots, overdoses or choirs made up of soldiers wives, so let's make some predictions for 2012...

1. People will get bored of Facebook changing all the time.

Timeline launches on the 9th Jan, and it's a pretty big step forward, it breaks down your whole life into a time line of Facebook events (actually quite a depressing thought), starting from your birth, then skipping to when you joined Facebook and then running through all the events from there.

I don't know about you, but recently I've been a bit frustrated with Facebook, and left with a feeling I'm not as involved with friends posts as I used to be, it seems to have become a little too insular, and I think this is a result of it worrying too much about Google+ 's USP of exclusivity. Which brings us onto our next point...

2. Social Exclusivity

Google+ started this, and Facebook has also developed the way it works to incorporate it. This is all happening because the rate people are gathering friends across all platforms, in about 15 years time everyone will be connected to everyone, and then everything is ruined. Advertising becomes less targeted, messages become diluted and communication is back to being 'mass', and loses it's 'Nano' appeal.

Earlier this year asked this question to Dave Kerpen and he told me that these sites are dealing with this by forcing people to group their contacts, and target their messages more directly to those groups. You can see this happening across the platforms, but if it's going to work, the algorithms that make these calculations for you, (especially on Facebook) have got to get more intelligent.

3. Some Famous People will Die

I've been thinking about this a lot, but here's the official Deathlist 2012.

4. BandApp Will Be Huge

There's a new app coming for Bands, it's been around of 2 years, but it's being rebuilt, rebranded and relaunched, and Citizen are at the heart of this new initiative. Citizen, along side Colin Hayward of Monogram Digital have just signed an 18 Month deal to be part of the team that makes this App, the biggest distribution aid for unsigned Bands. I'll keep you posted on this.

What do you think's going to happen, get you predictions in now before they happen.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

Looking after your Mac

2011-12-16T09:00:00.000Z

I really do love my Mac, if anyone ever criticises it, I honestly get in a mood. I find myself personally offended is people don't use Mac, and when I have to use a PC I go out of my way to make it as big-a-deal as possible. But this isn't an Apple brand message, this is about looking after your Mac.

My set up is relatively simple, I've got a Time Machine back up running constantly to an external hard drive, and an Archive Drive that I backup to each month. At the end of every month I'll copy all my completed work across to my Archive and delete them from my laptop hard drive. This means I've got 2 copies of everything from the let 6 months across both drives.

If you want to make this process even more robust then it's possible to to use BackUp to run an automated process to back your files up to a remote server, if you set this up to mirror your Archive or TimeMachine you'd have a safety net if your house burnt down, and assuming you didn't die, and were ready to work the next day, then you'd be OK. It's always been my personal policy that if I die I'm taking the week off.

Once that process is done I'll run Disk Utility and Verify Permissions on the drive and make sure everything is running properly, then I'll use Mac Keeper to remove any unwanted files that have crept onto the drive, and check all my applications for updates. This little routine keeps everything neat, and tidy and up to date, ready for the next month.

I'm taking some time off for Christmas and will be back in the New Year.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

Project of the year...

2011-12-14T09:00:00.000Z

It's been a busy year for me, I've worked on loads of different things for a whole host of different clients, but one project stood out for me, and that was the relaunching of the Torygraph.

I've already written about this in a previous post, but in the interests of wrapping things up as the year ends, it's worth another mention. The site is brilliant, running since 2009 and has an archive you would not believe, actually take a minute here and check it out.....

Torygraph Archive

See what I mean? Amazing, and this was all hidden away on a Tumblr site, getting about 30 hits a day, when we saw it and the potential we instantly knew what needed to be done. We relocated the site to a Wordpress site, and set up a suite of social media channels to exploit the content and reach a whole new audience.

The results were amazing, using Twitter we managed to crash the site in the first week as Telegraph journalists started to pass the link around. Once we'd upgraded the server and launched the Facebook advertising we started to see a steady flow of traffic and the realisation of the strategy had started to pay off.

The two hooded manics behind the site were great to work with, giving us a free reign over the planning and development and continuously keeping the site up to date with new content, which is a daily job.

The project bought with it a steep learning curve, and an opportunity to put into practice a lot of the theories that a everywhere in this Social Market age, it's meant we can now confidentially go to clients and offer this as a service. It's a great project to be involved in and has help Citizen to grow this year.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

Looking for more App-eal

2011-12-12T09:00:00.000Z

If I could find the statistic I'd tell you that loads of people buy Apps because they have really nice icons. I know that I do, so from my surveyed group of 1, that's 100%, wait a minute, I'm with my friend Colin, I'll ask him. Yup still 100% if not 200%.

The thing is Smartphones are normally really pretty, and you don't want a home screen full of shitty looking apps, so why spend all that time and money developing an app, get it to market and then do nothing on the design and branding side, it makes no sense, there's 6 Million out there, how are you going to make yours stand out?

An App's icon needs to be as eye catching as the idea itself, it's your album cover, you need to make sure it's selling the idea off the page. Great icons will take a sense or idea from the functionality of the app and showcase this in a bold and beautiful way.

And yes, I designed all of the above icon.

Here’s some simple tips to creating your App icon

1 Keep it simple, avoid wording or being too descriptive
2 Keep it consistant with the look and feel of your App UI
3 It has to work internationally, use a clear visual language

So give us a call and speak to Citizen about

• App icon Design
• Branding for your App
• App Microsites
• App feature panels and web banners
• App Social Media Strategies

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk
Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

Citizen at One: 3 Things I've learnt this year. Pt. 3

2011-12-09T10:43:00.000Z

When the clock hits 5.30, or 5 on a Friday you have to immediately get drunk. It's the only way to clear your mind ready for the challenge of the next day.

OK, that's a joke, but you have to find ways of doing it. Working from home really means you're always in the office, so you need to compartmentalise your working and home life and make sure bits of each don't slip into either side.

If you spend all of your days working, then your evenings thinking about working you will eventually turn into a boring zombie, I've seen it happen, in the end I had to kill him with a snooker cue, it wasn't nice.

Sure, one of the big benefits of this big step you've taken is the freedom, nobody can tell you what to do now, but the reality is different. It's an old saying, but instead of having 1 boss now, you have 20, they're all your clients and they expect a certain level of service from you. Yes, this means you can never totally switch off, but you are still entitled to a family life.

I'm lucky my wife loves to hear me moan about my work, she put up with it for years at my old job. Many an evening we'd sit around the fire and she'd press me for stories about how someone at work had asked for 47 data sheets designing, only to realise at the end of the day they only needed 3. I think deep down she misses those long, angst ridden stories, and perhaps wants me to be unhappy so I can entertain her with them again.

I've learnt that doing something like playing football (which I'm shit at), playing in a band (which I'm shit at), or even playing Call of Duty (which I'm shit at), even though you might be shit at those things (and I am), can really help you concentrate on something else and dispel the stresses of the day.

So Don't be frightened to switch off is the message, or I will come around your house and stick a snooker cue through your unbleeding heart.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

Citizen at One: 3 Things I've learnt this year. Pt. 2

2011-12-07T09:00:00.000Z

Clients are amazing. All of them all the time.

OK, that might not be true, but that's how it has to look. I've been lucky, I've had nearly all good people to work with, a couple of non and late payers, but on the whole they've been very cool.

It hasn't been all amazing though, I've learnt that you have to adapt yourself to who you're dealing with, some people want to work with an artist, others, a professional designer, some people want 'The Funny' and others think you're weird.

The most valuable client lesson I learnt this year was working a potential new client. They rang me to talk about some new branding, we discussed their current site, and how we could improve on this. We got on well, it was a Friday so a few funnies were flying around, it all felt like it was going well. A week later I hadn't heard anything, so I dropped them a line to catch up, and got a nice reply, everything looking good.

A week later the project was still stalling, I figured that this probably wasn't going to happen. So I replied back with an email along the lines of;

"So I guess this isn't going to happen, I'm pretty sad about it, you should see my face".

OK, looking back, it was a but unprofessional, and the client hit me back with;

"I'm not sure how to take that email".

And from here, I was a bit embarrassed, clearly I'd over stepped the mark, assumed we were on the same wavelength, become too friendly too quickly and ultimately made myself look like a bell end.

It's the kind of thing Alan Partridge might have done, and it taught me a valuable lesson, you can make a client your friend though hard work and getting to know them over a series of projects, but life isn't Facebook, you don't pick up the phone to someone and they're instantly your friend.

Just remember, however lonely you get in the office and whatever mood you're in, always be professional.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 17

Citizen at One: 3 Things I've learnt this year. Pt. 1

2011-12-05T09:00:00.000Z

PANIC, DON'T PANIC, then PANIC!

There are going to be times when work seems to have dried up, I've been lucky I've only really had this twice in the first year, but on those two occasions I may or may not have acted like a bit of a baby. My wife will testify to this, she's always the one that tells me something's going to turn up, and so far it always has, but in those moments of downtime you need to be the one that makes the next thing happen.

Crying (I didn't actually cry) is not going to help, there's always something you can do, and really you need these moments to fertilise your company, (don't actually take a shit on your company, that would be bad). Here's some of the things I do to bulk out those free periods;

• Write Blog posts, I write 2-3 at a time and schedule them to drop throughout the week.
• Linked In Fishing, see my LinkedIn post from last month
• PPH prospecting, always worth bidding on anything, you never know where it might lead
• Contact hitting up, don't be annoying, but don't let them forget
• Favours, do a record sleeve for someone for free, get the juices flowing
• Web updates, keep your site fresh, get some new work on there

The thing is, if you have the right frame of mind, it's going to work for you. Managing your time and energy is really important, and when you're given some downtime you have to look on it as a opportunity to get some of the internal stuff done that you've been putting off and not spend the day watching Cash in the Attic, and then going into your attic and putting your foot through the roof, for example.

So I've learnt this, don't panic, and don't annoy your wife by saying you've got nothing to do one day, and then 2 days later crying (I didn't cry) to her because you're too busy. It's all about not being a baby at the end of the day, something that I'm getting better at. I'm only 35 after all.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

Simple Social Strategy: Linked In

2011-12-02T09:00:00.000Z

I've read several explanations of Linked In, they always go;

If Facebook is you at a crazy party, and Twitter is you running around in the street in your pants shouting through a Megaphone, then LinkedIn is you, at your day job, behind a desk, with a tie and sock braces on... Personally I like to think that if Facebook is you at a crazy party, and Twitter is you running around in the street in your pants shouting through a Megaphone, then LinkedIn is you, at your day job, behind a desk, with a tie and sock braces on.

LinkedIn For Professionals

LinkedIn I suppose is a professional network, what really started as an online CV and resumé has now become a professional networking group, linking you with people you've worked with, for and arranging potential contacts through shared industries and colleagues.

With a potential pool of 100Million contacts, LinkedIn is like being at the world's worst, or best Morning Coffee Networking group, depending on how you like those thing. Personally I've never gone to one as the idea of a room full of strangers dressed in suits scares me, I'd rather die than stand in a room with 100 Million of them. So that's the great thing about LinkedIn, from the comfort of your desk, you can reach out, and discover new like minded professional for a chat or second opinion, or hit up new contacts and point them to your LinkedIn Company page.

LinkedIn is a little more complicated than Facebook and Twitter but it's relatively easy to set up a profile and get your experience and company details on there. The basic account is free and this will give you more than enough usability to start with, upgrading gives you access to directly contacting contacts, but really it's something you don't need when you first set up.

Like Facebook and Twitter, it's not going to work for you if you just use it as a noticeboard, you need to make everything engaging, from your profile to your status updates, you need to supply your profile with real and meaningful content, join groups based on your profession, and contribute insightful and helpful information to these. It's the same old story, be interesting, clever and helpful and you'll build a nice group of valuable contacts. Be a boring arsehole, and you'll probably end up with a contact list of boring arseholes.

Unlike Facebook, you can see the people who have been looking at your profile, which is interesting, for example I can see that you've looked at my profile everyday for the last 6 weeks, no wait that's a just a bit weird.

QUICK TIP: This might not work forever, so get in there quickly, but if you download the app for iPhone, go to the 'People You May Know' tab, and you can quickly invite anyone in that list to become a Contact. This seems to negate the need to have some connection with them you need to link on the main site.

Please get in touch to talk through your Social Media Strategy ask any questions and see what Citizen can do for you.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

Simple Social Strategy: Twitter

2011-11-30T09:00:00.000Z

If Facebook is an Oil Tanker, then Twitter is a speedboat (Sorry to mix my analogies, after this), this is Microblogging in the extreme, it's limited character count and instantaneous swirling, continuious stream of messages mean it's perfectly suited to customer service, consumer insight, real-time communication and utter bullshit/bollox.

Tweet, Tweet

Twitter was born in 2006, and quickly swept up 200 million addicted tweeters, loads of celebrities, loads of fake celebrities, but more importantly loads and loads of real people, and real customers.

Twitter is the second pillar of your Social Media Strategy, and you have to be prepared to integrate it into your life, Twitter isn't something you assign 30 minutes at the end of your working day to, Twitter is for your mini-down-times, so when a document is PDFing, you're on the train, the toilet or just waiting around in cafe, it's something that you have to bring into your life, and make second nature to your communications.

The starting point for any user is to populate their account, and then find a few people to follow, generally the more people you follow, the more followers you'll scoop back up, but, you can end up with a pretty naff and spammy feed if you just chase the numbers like this. You want a follower base of genuinely interesting and connected people, because if someone likes your message and retweets it, you potentially have a huge audience.

The slow and correct way to build your followers is to make yourself valuable, to be interesting, ask questions and engage people. So instead of saying 'We've just posted a new blog about Chips', say 'I freaking love Chips, doesn't anybody here not love Chips?', Chips are pretty amazing, I can't recommend blogging about Chips highly enough.

Be aware that it will take time, I've been on the site for 2 years now, and posted over 2000 comments (ALL HILARIOUS), and I'm close to 600 followers, so don't expect over night success, unless you're really funny, or you keep pointing nude pictures of yourself (and you're hot).

There's 3 types of messages, General Updates, which are you comments, Retweets, which is where people take your comment and post it to their followers, and Direct Messages, which are private email messages and all of these are restricted to 140 characters, Twitter will Auto Shorten links saving you valuable character space.

A good practice to get into is to look for your product or company name by using TwitterSearch find what people are saying about you and respond, follow and retweet the ones you like, this kind of direct contact with your customers is what Twitter is all about, a good example of this was demonstrated in my recent VistaPrint debacle.

It's said that it takes about 2 weeks to get to grips with Twitter, it's really important that you download it for your smartphone and use this access to widen your social standing, every positive message you get out into the world about your company is going to raise your profile, no matter haw many followers you have. Twitter gives you a megaphone to tell everyone how great you are, just make sure you point it in the right direction, if you haven't already, get online now and give it a try.

QUICK TIP: If you put #in at the end of your Tweets, they'll post onto LinkedIn as well, can't hurt right?

Please get in touch to talk through your Social Media Strategy ask any questions and see what Citizen can do for you.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

Simple Social Strategy: Facebook

2011-11-28T09:00:00.001Z

If you have an idea in your head, it's not really worth anything unless someone else hears it, the challenge you have is, to get this message into the minds of as many people as possible, today there are a thousand ways to do this, but where do you start? Teletext, Post-It-notes, PENS! What about branded pens? No, they're all stupid ideas.

I always advise clients to set up 3 basic things to ensure they've got a good Social Strategy foundation, this week I'll take you through some very basic ideas around the 3 main Social Media sites Facebook, Twitter and Linked In, I'm going to start with Facebook, and point out some very basic reasons why you need to be represented.

Facebook Vs The World

With 600 Million users and growing, the worldwide take-over of Facebook is kind of half way over, if you're not represented as a business then you really need to drag your sorry arse into 2011. Facebook isn't a fad, it's not just used by children and it's not just somewhere to waste time (although it's really good to look at people you don't really know from the offices' photos). It's fastest growing demographic is those twenty-five years and over and it's said that in 2011 over one-quarter of all internet page views were on Facebook.com. It's a face as massive as Lovejoy's, so why should you get on it?

Let's start with The Like button, this button essentially 'Likes' your site from another profile. Currently Facebook is registering over a BILLION Likes a day. If you don't know, then this is why the Like button is so powerful;

Once a user 'Likes' your page, the status 'Ben Brown Likes Peartree Productions' appears on BB's profile, now the average user has 140 Friends, so this message is potentially exposed to 140 people, if it catches the eye of say, Karen Brown (his nosey wife), she checks it's not pornography, and finds she likes it too, then you can see this message is exposed to another group of potential customers. Very basically, you can see how the exposure of a message is exponentially growing with each contact, and the potential is endless.

Another example I like is how I've used Facebook to find a good local mechanic to service my car. Previously when looking for a garage I've searched Google, obviously it's great for finding a list of thousands of mechanics, and with a little tweaking I can localise this search, and find one close to me. That's really helpful, but what I don't know, is which of these are any good. A fact proven to me when last time I took my car to a backstreet garage. When I returned the 'child' on reception hadn't booked the car in, so I waited an hour for the work to be done, and finally drove it away only to find it had a nail hammered into the tyre. Obviously I was too scared to take it back.

What Facebook offers by categorising it's Business Pages is a similar but much more effective version of Google and other listing services. Now I can search for a garage directly on Facebook, these results will be localised to me, and most importantly I can see which of these my friends have 'Liked' so I'll know straight away which ones are good. This directory searching of Facebook is becoming more and more commonplace as people are looking for personal recommendations and more reliable companies in these difficult economical times.

These very basic ideas give you a little insight into why presence on Facebook is pretty much essential, and something that's as important to building your Corporate web page, indeed it may be more important, and some companies are actually moving away from corporate sites and focussing their online strategy entirely towards their Facebook page.

Now excuse me someone I went to school with has just painted their front room and posted some pictures, and I really want to see if I can make out what DVD's they've got in the background.

QUICK TIP: Make sure you change your Facebook Profile URL, so you can have a nice neat address like Facebook.com/citizenstudios

Please get in touch to talk through your Social Media Strategy ask any questions and see what Citizen can do for you.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

Head On: Dealing With Your Problems Publicly.

2011-11-23T09:00:00.000Z

Earlier last week I ordered some temporary business cards as my mobile number changed to 07738 175 614, this of course meant I had to order some new cards, I decided to get some temporary cards, and looked for the cheapest option. Vista Print were offering 250 for £4, sounds like a good deal right?

...and I like any letter or email that contains this next phrase...

So imagine my surprise, when I added the cheap option of Reverse Printing, and the total came to £42. Well dear reader, I was appalled, and being Lion Hearted immediately tweeted my disgust, non-directly on Twitter, being careful not to hash-tag them in, and hurt anyone's feelings.

An hour later, the bastards got me, and guess what, they offered to rectify my complaint. As things stand I'm too embarrassed to take them up on their offer, but this is a monumentally magnificent example of using Social Media in your customer service.

Instead of burying their head and hoping I go away, they're publicly showing themselves to care about my issues, and by seeking me out through a 'Google Alert' they look like they care about what people are saying about them and they want to fix issues. Also this strategy runs the risk of giving my complaint more exposure, but worth that risk as it demonstrates their concerns.

This is a very modern approach to customer service, it's the only way to do things when everyone is so vocal these days, and, yes something we can help you with at Citizen. Give us a call to talk about setting up alerts, and Twitter Searches, and building that into part of your Social Media Strategy for 2012.

I have to admit, I'm a little bit worried about what they're going to think of this post when their alerts pick it up, maybe they'll retweet it, but for the record I'm sorry, I know some of it was VAT and postage, I may have overreacted.

Addition.

So the cards turned up and I wasn't happy with them, in fact I binned them immediately. I think there's a problem with these automated systems, there's nobody on the press quality checking them, they were a weird size, the artwork was aligned to the right, and the print was really washy. Some of those things might have been my fault, but I was still furious.

So again, like the big man, I took my rage to Twitter, and within 20 minutes Vista Print had responded, and issued me a full refund! You have to say that's amazing. It doesn't help the fact I've got a meeting tomorrow with no business cards though does it?

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

The Genius of Ignorance

2011-11-21T10:43:00.000Z

In the documentary Upside Down: The Creation Records Story, producer Andrew Weatherall, talks about his process for mixing and producing Screamdelica by declaring that he didn't know what he was doing, and the process was inspired the 'Genius of Ignorance'. The album is undeniably a work of genius and Weatherall's production is astonishing, but the quote resonated with me and I think about it a lot.

It's always been my opinion that the people that know too much are the people that do boring work, of course I respect multi-musician polymaths that can play to the highest standard, but they'll never be more interesting that Sid Vicious who really couldn't play a note, and that's how I feel about designers. Some of the least inspired and most insipid designers in the industry are over-educated and mundanely text-book in their approach, and obsessed with every detail to painstaking degrees, and their work suffers for it.

I did not study Graphic Design at university, and I've always felt this to my advantage. Early in my career when in briefing sessions I was never trying to mimic the 'Lemon', or make subtle references to industry standards, I was always able to approach a brief from a consumer point of view, always able to see an idea, not for how it looked in a portfolio, or to other designers, because I really didn't understand that, no I always felt I could make a better, more informed approach, that had a more honest and relevant appeal to it.

For me Genius of Ignorance is about doing incredible original work that's not rooted in anything, is inspired, but doesn't copy directly and happens in the moments when the work takes over and you create in a bubble inspired by itself. It's the only way to create outstanding work, and happens rarely, but when it does, what it produces is never over-thought, laboured or boring, but a true step into what you're trying to achieve.

Obviously I'm not a genus, and I'm clearly ignorant, but this quote reminded me that sometimes you need to throw away everything you know, and think much simpler, and that's how great work is created.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

Cabin Fever - 15 Ideas for Freelancers

2011-11-18T12:06:00.000Z

Here's a guide to home working, I'm a complete expert at it, I've been doing it for a WHOLE YEAR! OK, maybe I'm not, but these are my thoughts from year one.

(This is a collection from the previous weeks posts).

1. Get Dressed

Seriously DO NOT work in your pyjamas, don't even work in your tracksuit bottoms, no you have to dress like you're going to work to feel like you're working, this means no bare feet, no nude under the desk, no nipples at monitor level. If you're going to take this seriously then 'Never Nude' is a good policy.

2. Work at Least Proper Hours

You might be more inspired in the evening, I tend to feel purple around 6pm and like to push through, but always make sure you're available the hours your clients work. Unfortunately for me, my voice always sounds like I've woken up, so even though I'm working from about 8.30, clients always ask me if I'm in bed, of course, I'm not, I'm ready for action, and my clients like this kind of reliability.

3. Get an Accountant

I've got an accountant, I call him Uncle Neil, I'm pretty sure he hates me, I ask him all sorts of stupid questions, all the time. When we have a meeting I make him explain everything about 12 times until I properly understand it, but that's what I'm paying for right? Getting a proper accountant to handle your Tax Return and other boring stuff is essential, it's really complicated and you don't want to waste your precious time on these kind of things. Everyone needs an Uncle Neil. (He doesn't know I call him 'Uncle', and he's not really my uncle).

4. Back-up Properly

However you do it, make sure you back up properly. I back up to TimeMachine throughout the day, then at the end of each month I have a separate drive that I transfer all of my completed project for the month onto. I also do automatic duplicated saves locally from Quark on even save. You can go a step further and back up these backup drives remotely, Amazon servers are excellent for this kind of security.

5. Manage Your Moods

Had a rough night's sleep? Feeling a bit fragile, then maybe don't send that email to your client questioning the need to make this particular amend. If you're in a bad mood, remember there's no account managers here to buffer your brooding apathy, if you annoy a client, it's very easy for them to find another designer. Take a minute, take a breath and come back it when when you feel a bit more like a pretty, pretty princess.

6. Plan Your Week on a Friday

Every Friday I'll plan the following week on my chalkboard (above), I'll make a list of jobs that I have on (bottom right), above that I'll list the tasks that need doing, and then break each day into AM and PM and divide these tasks through the week. Who needs Basecamp right? Chalkboard planning like this will help keep the motivation going over the weekend, and always mean you know exactly what needs doing when.

7. Take Walks, Play Sports

Cabin Fever is a killer when you work for yourself, whole days not talking to anyone can leave you a little strange of mind. Not long ago, I went nearly 2 weeks without leaving the office, and when I eventually did go out I felt very anxious. I've started to get out more, play some sports and make sure I'm seeing people regularly, these kinds of relationships are invaluable and they help to maintain sanity. Get some tight shorts a headband, and play some badders (badminton).

8. Be Cautious with Amends

When you're part of an agency you have that second line of defence in your Account Manager, they'll manage amends, and then check and sign them off. Every designer I ever met thought they could handle their own amends, and everyone of them couldn't. Be cautious, print the email out, tick off the ones you've done, then double check these and cross through the ticks. It's the only way to ensure you're not wasting everyone's time.

9. Get a System to Manage Work

When you're busy the last thing you want to do it to get a load more work drop on your desk, but you have to learn to manage your workflow. It's really important that you keep the momentum going through the properious times to minimise the lean times. I have a system that keeps me in check, I have a 'special' chart, and everyday I have to get a tick in at last 2 of the boxes. The Columns are 'Pitched'. 'Quoted' and 'invoice'. Then at the end of the week I add up my scores, each week has a max of 15, and if I'm under 10 I thrash myself with my mouse cable. Only joking of course, I use a Wireless Mouse.

10. Make Something Positive Happen Every Day

I know this sounds really annoying, and you probably hate me now, but it really works for me. I have a goal that I have to make something positive for Citizen happen every day, this can be anything from a good response to a blog, or quoting a new piece of work. A good business will move forward on positivity (I'm so sorry, I hate things like this as well), but you're on the only one that can make that happen (god, I can only apologise). Nobody put this on a motivational poster and we'll be alright.

11. Be Scallable

All freelancers rate themselves very highly, that's why they're freelance, they've got their targets and they're going to stick to them, it would be a total insult for them to go under their perceived hourly rate, and to a point I do agree. Often our skill are totally undervalued, but never lose a job because you couldn't bring yourself to adjust a quote to a client's budget (within something like 20%). At the end of the year add up the quotes for all the work you didn't get and halve it and tell me you don't want that kind of money sitting in your account. Work harder, be flexible and remember we're in a recession.

12. Have Resources for Backup

You need a team of reliable people to manage your overspill. Remember if you turn down a piece of work, your client is going to get it done somewhere else, the chances are that next designer is going to look at your work and say it sux, they all do it, you've done it! When that happens your client will be swept off their feet into their arms. Have a good back-up team in place, and don't worry about making money on a job to keep service levels consistent, just keep your clients happy.

13. Invite Feedback

You need to know where you're going wrong, nobody is flawless and the only people who can judge you are your clients, your wife, husband and parent don't count. Set up a feedback form on something like SurveyMonkey and send it to clients when their jobs close, ask questions about delivery, pricing and time scales and look for patterns in responses. Also don't just send it to the clients you know you've done a good job for, you have to be grown up about this in the history of the world there has never been a successful Business-Baby.

14. Charge for Account Management

As a designer you probably don't feel like you can charge for Account Management, but managing the job is always going to eat into your time, trips to meeting, expenses and phone calls are all going to cost you money, make sure you have an hourly rate, that's lower than your Creative rate and put some Account Management on every job, clients will expect to see it on there, and you have a right to charge it. Please note, this doesn't not make you an Account Manager, so don't start ruining your own ideas and going for really long lunches (only joking, KB, ST, HL, PB, CH, EP, JW, CH, TR, SS, and any others I might have worked with or known).

15. Commit to doing a lower number, and when it comes to it, do more, or say you'll do it on Tuesday and do it Monday... (OK!... Under Promise and Over Deliver.)

Yup, you made me say it! This is pure business talk, and you probably hate it, but it's a really good piece of advice, and one that's so easy to implement and makes you look great. Under promise on your delivery, so tell a client the work will be ready Wednesday and aim for Tuesday, tell them they'll see 3 concepts and get 5 ready, these kinds of things will create a positive aural around your company and make your client relations fluid and rewarding. Don't tell them you'll be at a meeting at 9am, and turn up at 7am, though that's just stupid.

What do you think? Have you got any good tips for Home Workers? Do Share them.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

Cabin Fever - 15 Ideas for Freelancers. Pt. 10-15

2011-11-18T09:30:00.000Z

Here's the third in a 3 part series in a guide to home working, I'm a complete expert at it, I've been doing it for a WHOLE YEAR! OK, maybe I'm not, but these are my thoughts from year one.

Read Part Two Here and Part One Here.

11. Be Scallable

12. Have Resources for Backup

13. Invite Feedback

14. Charge for Account Management

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

Cabin Fever - 15 Ideas for Freelancers. Pt. 5-10

2011-11-16T08:46:00.000Z

Here's the second in a 3 part series in a guide to home working, I'm a complete expert at it, I've been doing it for a WHOLE YEAR! OK, maybe I'm not, but these are my thoughts from year one.

Read Part One here.

6. Plan Your Week on a Friday

7. Take Walks, Play Sports

8. Be Cautious with Amends

9. Get a System to Manage Work

10. Make Something Positive Happen Every Day

Part 3 on Friday 18th November

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

Cabin Fever - 15 Ideas for Freelancers. Pt. 1-5

2011-11-14T09:30:00.000Z

Here's the first in a 3 part series in a guide to home working, I'm a complete expert at it, I've been doing it for a WHOLE YEAR! OK, maybe I'm not, but these are my thoughts from year one.

1. Get Dressed

4. Back-up Properly

5. Manage Your Moods

Part 2 on Wednesday 16th November

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

A Social Media Model for Imperial Recruitment

2011-11-11T09:00:00.000Z

I found the above in my head whilst I had a headache. For a while I've been trying to create a diagram to show how a simple Social Media model might work, but it was as dry as a nat's chuff. Then for some reason when I broke it down into the Imperial arsenal it seemed to be quite a neat fit.

I think we need to start at the Death Star. This is the hub of your company, it needs to hold all of your services, case studies... you know what a Corporate Site is all about, I'm not going to waste your time here.

So how do you get people to the site?

You need to create dynamic, interesting and diverse content, and house this somewhere that's a bit more mobile than the Death Star, somewhere like an Imperial Cruiser. This is the power house of your attack, this is where your original content will promote you as a thought leader, and drive these brainwashed Rebels into the clutches of the Death Star.

How do we get this message out the people?

I've created amazing content, I need a nano targeted mobile attack force. Well this is delivered through your Social Media, these microblogging sites need to scoop up followers, advertise your original content to them and pull them into the blog for conversion or death.

Your Social Media arsenal should include the 3 basic's, Twitter, Linked In and Facebook, once you have these covered you'll have a solid platform to promote your content, and if this content is good, and regular enough your power will start to grow.

So, that's how the Dark Side do it, how do you work your Social Media strategy?

Feel free to download and use by the way.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

Dadvertising - Mum's Not Dead Honest. Pt. 2

2011-11-09T09:00:00.000Z

For the second part of my Dadvertising piece I bring you the brilliant Lego advert, Build Together (watch below). This is a masterpiece in Dadvertising, brilliant script, great tagline and what really blew me away about this is it's placement. It's not on in-between The MilkShake Girls, no, it's on when Dad's watching the TV on his own and it's reigniting his passion for Lego by appealing to his selfish nature, and, sorry, but it works. I want to build this house with my son.

The strapline is brilliant as well, so simple and totally inspiring. Build Together (nice typography as well while we're at it), is positioning Lego as a social activity, rather than a toy, it's an easy way to spend time with your family and everyone have fun at the same time. I mean has anyone ever played Elefun? It's hard to feel challenged as an adult catching butterflies out of a 3 foot long Elephant trunk. This Advert sells the idea that products works across all ages.

If an advert is only as good as it's product, then the advert is great because Lego has always been great. That's another thing I like about this, it's back to basics for the product. Lego has lost it's way over the last 10 years, there's too many movie tie-ins and too many specialist parts, and that's taken the imagination out of the bricks. But this advert goes a long way to building it back in, it's a triumph for Lego, for Dadvertising and for imagination.

What makes this the pinnacle of Dadvertising is Mum doesn't poke her nosey little face in at the end to prove she's not dead, no she's probably out doing the Christmas Shopping, buying this little chap a big rubbish plastic oven.

Let us know what you think? Are Dadverts going to take over TV, is the word 'Dadvert' annoying you?

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

Dadvertising - Mum's Not Dead Honest.

2011-11-07T09:00:00.000Z

It's finally happened.

Fathers, at last, after burning our papooses at Westminster we've battled our way into the public consciousness, we're being represented in non-tragic scenarios and it feels great.

Dad's have at last become a worthwhile adverting proposition for products other than toiletries and power tools. We have created a new breed of advert that a picks a hole at the notion 'Mum does all the shopping' and finally recognises that Dad does a bit as well, our hard work has lead to the long awaited birth of 'Dadvertising'.

The first strike in our campaign was the below advert for Sainsburys

I really liked this advert from the start, the first time I saw it, it was shot beautifully, the music was great, and without being overly sentimental, it managed to intelligently steer a path through real situations that a father aspires to share with his son.

In fact, it made me feel so happy to see a father and son interacting this way that I was sure it was going to be a Cancer Research advert and the Dad was going to turn out to be a ghost. Such is the way advertisers have ignored us for so long.

OK, so maybe the message is secretly aimed at mums, and, at the end when the Mum pokes her head around the door is probably backs that up. Personally, I think that last scene devalues the ad a little, but, you can almost hear panicked Account Managers saying; "WHAT IF EVERYONE THINKS THE MUM IS DEAD!", which is why these kinds of ads never happen, but nobody ever wonders if Dad's dead when they see Mum washing little Timmy's clothes do they?

The depiction of a Father-Son relationship like this for a major retailer that has no motive other than to sell groceries is a bold step, and one that genuinely warmed my heart, this was the first big success for Dadvertising, there are more and my favourite will follow on Wednesday.

Let us know what you think? Are Dadverts going to take over TV, is the word 'Dadvert' annoying you?

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

You'll 'Like' This.

2011-11-04T08:00:00.000Z

I've just created this Facebook infographic for a client of mine and I thought I'd share it with you.

There's literally thousands of Facebook stats flying around, but maybe there's something in here you didn't know, the only bad thing is before I've clicked publish it's going to be out of date.

If you haven't already, give Citizen a Like over at: facebook.com/CitizenStudios

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07764 898 010

Murder on the Quark Express

2011-11-02T08:00:00.000Z

Last month a friend contacted me, a piece of his work had been butchered in his absence. It was horrid, a once beautiful spread lay there covered in clichés and bastardised typography. I had to turn away, but he wanted answers...

I instantly had 3 suspects, The Designer, The Account Manager, or the Client.

The Designer, he's the one doing the work, his fingerprints were all over this, he'd seen the page, he'd laid the type, he knew exactly what he was doing, it had to be him. HOWEVER, a trained designer could not have taken this once beautiful work and turned it into this, 4 years at university, 10 years in the industry, surely not...

What about the Account Manager, they're are notorious for destroying work right? They say they're just following orders, but really you know they're trying to cram some of their personal opinion in there. HOWEVER good account managers do have good ideas, they stand up to clients and guide them in the right direction, this had to go deeper...

Maybe it was The Client, some seem to harbour a deep underlying grudge against creativity, and are desperate to ruin every piece of work they can, they pretend they're paying an expert to do something, but they can't escape the fact that they know best. HOWEVER good clients know what they want, they know their customers, and they're entitled to their own opinion, you can't blame them, they're paying AM's and designers to make sure this doesn't happen.

They were all strong alibis. It was a tough case, but this weekend I saw Murder on the Orient Express, and incase you don't know this, (SPOILER) they all did it. It hit me, just like that, they're all responsible, a great idea died because:

• Nobody wanted to take a very small Risk.

• Nobody had the Passion to say, "you're wrong, this is brilliant, we should go with it".

• Nobody could properly Communicate why it was great.

Risk, Passion and Communication are key to a successful and creative execution being accepted, across the board, but clarity of information is the key to how great work is received, and it needs to happen at every level.

Good designers have to articulate a proposition clearly, and properly talk about their work to Account Managers (instead of hate them), Account Managers have to understand why this work is great, and feed it to the client with passion (instead of buckling at the first "ummm") and Clients have to understand from the outset that if they're playing to use a creative company they should embrace a creative response to their brief.

Case closed.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

A Working Social Media Model

2011-10-31T08:00:00.000Z

I've got a client who owns a wedding invitation business, they have no advertising budget, an amazing product and it's all run by a really annoying woman, who also happens to be my wife (which is just a massive coincidence). The company is called Original Wedding Tea Towels.

We set her company up 2 years ago, with no idea if the idea was going to be of interest to anyone, or any kind of business and marketing plan. As time passed we soon realised that it was of interest to people, and because it was in a crowded market full of the same kinds of ideas, it really started to cut through and get some attention.

Early this year, we formulated a Social Media and SEO strategy that has seen both our Facebook and Twitter account become the hub of the marketing drive, the numbers have grown exponentially and we've generated some amazing contacts and solid orders all from a marketing budget of hard work and patience.

The theory is this, our site is the goal for our traffic, to get people to the site we have 3 main streams of traffic and several smaller lines.

Google & Search Engines

We researched what kinds of phrases people were using to find search of invites on Google, and picked a phrase 8th on the list, this was 'Unique Wedding Invitations', we felt this summed up our product nicely, and wasn't overly contested, but was still clocking up around 8k of entries a day. Our goal was to try and snag 10% of that traffic a day.

To achieve this we began planting the term in all of our blogs, both conversationally, and in tags, we hid it in Meta Tags, page headers and links, as well as using the phrase when talking about the product on other people's blogs.

Social Media

Our Twitter strategy was very different from our Facebook strategy, here we targeted the industry, and the kinds of people who brides were looking for, this meant we could exploit people's contacts without having many of our own and rely on these blogs to feature us giving us a direct line to our end customer.

Our Facebook Strategy was more geared towards our end customer, we used FB ads to target people who have just changed their status to 'Engaged', females, and people interested in the Art and Carfts, we also targeted Graphic Designers and Artists, people that we knew loved our product.

Traditional Press

Using traditional press has one great benefit in the wedding industry, brides keep these magazines and swap them around, so the lifespan of a feature is really impressive. We've never paid for any placements, but we've been picked up by around 8 different publications all over Europe, the returns on this have been good, but it's not something we plan to push for going forward.

There's plenty of other tricks in our marketing box including Google Alerts, sampling and 'Word of Mouth', but the key thing people get from the company is a Unique Wedding Invitation (see get it in where you can), and good honest, dependable customer service. The only reason any of the above works, is because Wedding Tea Towels have a unique proposition and skills to deliver it professionally.

If you'd like to talk to Citizen about developing a Social Media Strategy please get in touch below.

ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

Briefing a Better Logo. Part 3

2011-10-28T09:00:00.000+01:00

This is a 3 part guide for Small Business Owners, and new business start ups to guide them though how to work with a freelance designer or agency when setting up their brand. Part 1 was published on Monday 24th and Part 2 on Wednesday 26th of this week.

Parts 1 and 2 covered the how to approach the brief when putting together the scope and direction of work for briefing a designer, you should now have a very detailed page of answers that give the designer enough guidance to be creative, but doesn't strangle the life out of the work.

Now we're going to look at how to select the right designer or agency for the job, and touch on some of the warning signs.

1. Portfolio

Clearly a good portfolio is essential here, look for experience with a variety of brands, some big brand touch points, and some start up brand creation. Look for actual product photography of brands in-situ, and don't be afraid to ask the designer which work is conceptual (so didn't make it to the real world) and which is operational, and being used. It really doesn't matter, good work is good work, but there should be a good mix of both.

2. Be Honest

After an agency has pitched their work they should always give you 3 options;

1. Pick one design and develop it further

2. Combine 2 or more of the ideas

3. Back to the drawing board.

Don't be afraid to send them back if nothing hits you in the guts from the start, you can't hurt a good designers feelings (that's probably not true, bet you could if you tried), and it's important you get something you love. This shouldn't cost you extra, but it depends on your agreement.

3. Pitch Options

In my experience it takes about a day or two to produce 3 good options, but I've seen designers promise so much more, and it's alway made me question how much thought they're putting into the work. Beware of designers promising 10+ variations of your logo, this is bad for a few reasons, firstly they clearly haven't understood your brief and secondly they're probably using stock logos, that they alter the wording on, and submit as bespoke work. If you've followed all of the steps on the Brief Builder in parts 1 & 2, your designer should be able to hit your requirement in 3 carefully crafted options.

4. Always get a Full Logo Suite

Once the logo is created and signed off, make sure you get it in all of the formats you'll need, these are;

• Full Colour Outlined EPS (Saved as Illustrator 10 to be safe)

• Black Mono Version EPS

• White Version EPS

• Full Colour Outlined GIF

• Black Mono Version GIF

• White Version GIF

• Full Colour JPEG

• Black JPEG

5. Develop this into a Brand

The next step is to develop this into a full blown brand, with a manual that any designer or agency can pick up and work easily with, we'll look at this next month.

Right, now, did I mention that Citizen design logos? Take a look at our work here, and if you want to meet up and go through a more extensive portfolio then please get in touch.

Read the whole Series.

Build a Better Brief Part 1

Build a Better Brief Part 2

Build a Better Brief Part 3

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07764 898 010

Briefing a Better Logo. Part 2

2011-10-26T09:00:00.001+01:00

Now, if you've been good and read Part 1 of Briefing a Better Logo you should have your answers to the Brand Foundations Questions, these are what your designer will start to build their ideas on, but before we let the creatives loose, we need to drill down into the brief further, and look at the form we want to logo to take.

There are 6 basic logo forms, let's go through these now.

1. Wordmark

A wordmark consists of the company name in a stylised type and may include small abstract or pictorial elements. A famous example of this would be the FedEx logo.

2. Pictoral Mark

A pictorial mark uses literal or representative imagery to symbolise the brand. A famous example of this would be the Apple Logo.

3. Abstract Mark

Uses abstract shapes and symbols to convey an idea or attribute about the organization. An example of this would be the Olympics logo.

4. Letterform

An example of this would be the Olympics logo. Typically uses a very small amount of letters (1-2) to represent the organization.

5. Emblem

An emblem features the name of the company typically enveloped by a pictorial element or shape. An example of this would be the StarBucks logo.

6. Web 2.0

Although there is no official description of "Web 2.0" logos, some common elements can include: vibrant colors, subtle 3d feel, bold type, color transitions, and shadows. An example of this would be the Skype logo.

Armed with this level of detail, and your Brand Foundations from Part 1, you'll be on the right path of creating the perfect brief for your designer, they now have the tools to deliver exactly what you're looking for. BUT WAIT, there's a few things to look out for when choosing the right designer for your brief.

In Part 3 published on Friday 28th, I'll outline some of the thing to look for in a designer or agency, and some of the common bullshit they'll start to drop on you when they're looking for the work.

Read the whole Series.

Build a Better Brief Part 1

Build a Better Brief Part 2

Build a Better Brief Part 3

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07764 898 010

Briefing a Better Logo. Part 1

2011-10-24T09:00:00.001+01:00

This is a 3 part guide for Small Business Owners, and new business start ups to guide them though how to work with a freelance designer or agency when setting up their brand. Parts 2 and 3 will follow on Wednesday 26th and Friday 28th of this week.

In Part 1 of Briefing a Better Logo I'm going to look at how to prepare a brief for an agency when you want a new logo, later we'll talk how to develop this, and some of the hollow promises to look out for from crappy designers.

I'm not going to talk about specific design, form or typography, but the route to a successful logo through the focussed communication of ideas.

To begin with you need to consider three questions, you need to discuss these internally and form succinct, honest and non-bullshit responses all of which avoid the terms 'Out of the Box' and 'One-Stop-Shop'.

Brand Foundations Questions.

1. What do you want to say?

What is your proposition, what do you do, what is your Twitter Pitch?

2. Who do you want to say it to?

Who is your target market, what do they do, what do they like, how do they talk?

3. Why do you want to say it?

What makes you special, what makes your products different and what can you leverage from that?

With these questions answered you have the foundations of a solid brief, and something that a designer will be able to instantly start putting ideas together with.

Everything you've learnt here should go into each tiny form of the logo, these answers will help evolve the colours, the typography, the emblem and the wording on the logo, but this isn't enough, to get exactly what you want you need to drill down into more detail, and I'll tell you how to do that in Part 2 on Wednesday 26th October.

Read the whole Series.

Build a Better Brief Part 1

Build a Better Brief Part 2

Build a Better Brief Part 3

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07764 898 010

POP Goes the Logo

2011-10-20T14:18:00.000+01:00

I'm currently working with Perfectly Organised Parties, and we've just finished an EDM campaign that promoted a recent piece about the company in the October Vogue Magazine, we decided maybe this was a good time to give the company a facelift, so we got busy working on logos.

I've created a logo that's a badge for the company, it's something what can be used in it's above form, or with copy (below), but most importantly we can use the space for patterns and illustrations that can help keep the brand fresh, react to seasonal trends or gear themselves towards a client.

The Logo is like an event, it's a blank canvass, and together we can decorate it and present it exactly the way we want it. It's a mini event, perfectly formed, unique sometimes, functional, when it needs to be.

UPDATE.

Just created some Stationery concepts to support the brand:

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07764 898 010

You'll like this, not a lot...

2011-10-18T13:19:00.001+01:00

Just found this this statistic on All Facebook, it confirms what I think we all knew, that Paul Daniels Facebook page is the 15th least popular page in the world.

I'm not sure how this is calculated, but it's a sad statistic for the one time magical-pint-sized-TV-mainstay.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07764 898 010

Make a Newsstand - On The Edge

2011-10-17T18:07:00.002+01:00

The recent upgrade to iOS5 bought the virtues of Newstand to my iPod, which got me thinking, newspaper and magazine sales have been on the decline, you only have to look at these figures for the first half of 2011 from the Press Gazette and you can clearly see that a lot of publications are in decline.

The launch of Newstand (and other similar platforms) is a genuine lifeline for a suffering industry, and has made what was a confusing proposition for online content, into a clear and future-proof revenue stream.

That must be great if you're a magazine publisher, however that doesn't mean BADLY PDF'ING YOUR MAGAZINE AND SELLING IT FOR £6!

I've purchased a few online publications, my favourite being The Times, which makes full use of the iPad screen, divides sections up clearly, has a beautiful drop menu and navigation system and supports video content. The Guardian is also good, but lacks a little clarity in the structure, and isn't as easy to browse through. The worst, and the reason for this article, is Edge Magazine, which has literally PDF'ed the print edition and supplied it to Newsstand. The detailing of this is so bad, that double page spreads aren't even matched up properly and you end up with pages looking like this:

It's worrying to think that these publications have been given a life-line and they're risking throwing it away by not embracing or understanding the technology or the user. Along with the poorly aligned pages, there's no other functionality to the magazine, so no embedded video, and only one clickable link. There really is so much potential here, especially with a publication for a visual medium like games, it's a huge risk to launch your product half-baked like this, how did nobody understand that?

So, the big news is, Mr Benjamin Brown will not be buying a digital copy of this particular magazine again, and it'll make me think twice before spending money on any publication through Newsstand. It's disheartening to think that being given a second chance in what must be desperate times at the publication, they've not recognised the potential of the proposition and consequentially damaged their brand in this way.

Thank god Karen subscribes to the paper copy of Heat, which is course I never read.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07764 898 010

Deconstructing the new JJB Sports Logo

2011-10-12T11:23:00.000+01:00

OK, I admit this is probably an easy target, we're not talking about a very prestigious brand here, but you can't help what annoys you can you?

As soon as I saw the logo on TV it stuck in my throat like a half eaten cough sweet, and I've felt the jagged edges sliding down my esophagus ever since, I'm hoping this article will be the drink of water that washes it down into the pit of my guts forever.

JJB are probably the only business to have benefitted from the riots this summer, so perhaps their clientele don't care much for the way a logo looks, as much they as they care for how it makes cheap pair of tracksuit bottoms cost, but guess what? I do.

So, what was it? Was it the 2.0 ness of it? The cheap multi layered plaque effect? No, it was the angles created by the type that made this such a awkward piece of work.

The above diagram shows what leapt out to me when I saw it, the first two J's create 'Angle B' which contrasts against 'Angle B', but this could have been OK, if they didn't use the same typeface, but smaller for the word 'Sports'. By Shrinking this typeface down, the angles no longer match with the typeface above, and they create 'Angle C' which when put all together make a real mess that's genuinely uncomfortable on the eye. This is demonstrated where angles A and C intersect.

The solution to this would have been to use a different typeface for 'Sports' to negate the angle problem and smooth the whole thing out. But then again, what do I know, I don't even own any tracksuit bottoms, do you?

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07764 898 010

The Bad Sleeves. No.1: Kasabian - Velociraptor

2011-10-03T17:18:00.000+01:00

In the first of the series of what will obviously run into the thousands, I've decided to tackle the cover for the new Kasabian album, Velociraptor, a cover so woeful that upon seeing it, this (soon to be) long running feature was born.

Kasabian have a sordid history of terrible covers, and themselves are a terrible cover of every single rock and roll cliché ever written, in every copy of Mojo they've ever skim read. I've always believed that if you want to make a credible sequel to Spinal Tap, you could not go far wrong than to follow these bozos around for a year.

The reason I hate this cover, is because I know exactly how it happened. I've been there when you've got an 'alright' illustration, but it's a strange shape, somethings you can't make it sit interestingly on the page, so you try juggling it around and then duplicating it until you end up with something like this. You briefly have a moment of thinking it's good, then you get a cup of tea, sit back down and delete it. This last part tragically never happened, and somehow it's been (probably) been pressed to 20,000 gatefold pieces of vinyl, that the band insisted on releasing (probably) at the budgetary detriment of the jobs of two juniors at the record label.

There's two things that I thoroughly dislike about this, the first is that all the heads are the same, I think if they'd all been different illustrations, I'd have just thought it was terrible and forgotten about it. The worst thing about it is, the negative space that the heads create, it's a shape that's nearly a swastika (that could have been so Bowie man!), but it's not, it's the most eye catching part of the design, and it's NOTHING but a hole for the typography to sit in (which is terrible by the way).

A great designer would have created the heads in a way that when put together created something relevant to album and the band, and made this work visually on a another level, this could have made this potentially a great cover.

It annoys me because this kind of work is nearly impossible to get these days, and these sleeves literally stay around FOREVER, and designers have to think about that all the time they're working on it. The work is so half-baked, so nearly a good idea, and so lazily executed that I'm as cross as I'm jealous that someone has so many opportunities they can afford to let even one slip away and not produce something beautiful.

Let me know if there are any covers you'd like me to review, or if you've got one you want to rip into for this blog.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07764 898 010

A New Urban and Rural

2011-09-15T12:01:00.003+01:00

Around 6 months ago I met with Urban and Rural to discuss the generation of some new templates for their advertising. This was quite a straight forward brief, but I instantly saw a bigger opportunity for both of us, for Citizen this could be a local brand for me to work closely with, and create a great case study (you can't deny you're reading it), and for U&R, a chance to rebrand, and refresh a company image that was slightly out of date.

My starting point was to define the local market, segment the competition, and establish a space we could aim for. I did this by creating this matrix;

By dividing the brand focus into Brand Perception and Property Portfolio, we started to see where the crowding was, where U&R currently sat, and an area that we should attack.

The old brand was...

- In the most crowded part of the matrix, making it harder to stand out.

- Too low down the Brand Perception axis cheapens your low-end property perception and potentially damages your high-end property perception perception.

The required shift therefore was up the Brand Perception matrix, and to achieve this we need to...

+ Brand repositioning: Creation of new more current, and equally timeless logo and brand

+ Better, more consistent, advertising both for product and brand.

+ A brand strategy based on 4 solid pillars, of ‘Personality’, ‘Quality service’, ‘Technology leader’ and ‘Urban and Rural’ properties.

+ A Brand that is carried through every consumer touch point and consistently enhances the Urban and Rural experience

And so the new brand was began to grow from these touch points. Citizen started to design a logo that ditched the parts that weren't working, and kept the parts that had helped establish their market presence. The logo began to take shape and spawned a suite of usable options;

Because U&R is a franchise operation my next job was to make sure we had the support of the managers throughout the chain. Do do this I put together a comprehensive Brand Guidelines document, that outlined exactly how the brand should work, why it's important and how to use it. This included a more in-depth explanation of the brand proposition;

Once we had the support of the entire group, it was then the hard work began, with the creation of a range of newspaper templates, stationery, brochure covers and advertising templates, all created from this studio and all built from a starting point of some solid brand guidelines, along with the support of a forward thinking and organised company. The end result looks amazing, and here's a quote from the Owner, just in case you think I'm making this all up;

"Citizen offered an in-depth and interesting brand clinic, following which they created some great work which was presented beautifully.

Citizen took the time to understand and then reposition our brand to a place we wanted to be. Because of this care and attention they have delivered a fantastic result, and Urban and Rural are moving boldy forward."

CRAIG REYNOLDS. URBAN AND RURAL OWNER

This is what Citizen does best, and working with clients that are prepared to listen to our guidance, we can make brands come to life. Give me a call on 07764 898 010 or drop an email to ben@citizenstudios.co.uk and let's create something.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07764 898 010

My Big Face

2011-09-08T17:20:00.000+01:00

It's really quite odd seeing my face on People Per Hour every time I log in. Good though I suppose.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07764 898 010

The Daily Torygraph

2011-08-24T13:35:00.002+01:00

Today marks the official launch of the DailyTorygraph.com a site planned and built by Citizen Digital and populated by Dave Waters and Bertie Miller from The WaterMill London.

I've been aware of the Torygraph for quite some time now, it's existed previously as a Tumblr site, and has been running close to 2 years. In that time it's built up a small following of fans, but we felt that it hadn't reached it full potential, nor did it have the infrastructure to achieve this. Tumblr is a nice platform, but to push out into a bigger audience we felt it deserved a more sturdy, versatile infrastructure.

We decided to rebuild the site in Wordpress, and make full use of Facebook 'Commenting', 'Liking' and 'ADDTHIS' sharing facilities, and use data on these options to drive content from the site into key areas of the page to extend the visitors time on the site. From this data-stream we built a 'Most Shared this Week' and 'This Month' section and did the same with the tags to flush the first page with as much interesting content as possible.

Once we had the site built we then set-up the Social Media pages on Facebook and Twitter. The Twitter site was especially interesting to do, as after a a bit of research we found the account of most of the Telegraph journalists and Photographers, and painstakingly went down the list and followed all of them. We did this for all the major newspapers, and the results were amazing, they loved the site, and retweeted the link, in fact this was such a success that it knocked our first server over and we had to quickly upgrade to a more robust option.

The site launched officially today with a redirect bringing in more traffic from the old Tumblr site and the figures have been outstanding. We've done close to 5K unique visitors this week, and they're staying on the site too, with 8k page impressions as they drill down into the content.

It's a great site, but as with any site, it's only as good as it's content. We were lucky to find a content stream this rich that was laying idly in the wilderness, just waiting to be reborn. The Watermill team deserve all the credit for diligently doing this every single day, and for having the foresight to listen to our proposal, and let us get on with the building of a platform that's going to generate great rewards for them, we've got some amazing ideas to push the concept further and are in talks about developing an iPhone/iPad app amongst other things.

If you want to talk to Citizen about Social Media marketing, or web design and build give us a call, or drop us an email.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07764 898 010

Question and Answers

2011-08-05T17:27:00.001+01:00

Here's a transcript of a recent interview I did for one of my friend's dissertation, very interesting topic, I enjoyed answering the questions...

Can design elements from the past ever look truly new? Should Victoriana for example, stay in the 1800s; the past stay the past?

New elements and genres are born out of developments and changes in technology, and things have been the same for quite a long time, meaning that designers have had to look backwards to go forward, this has resulted in regurgitating the past and blending it with different periods has become something of an art form, and this cross-pollination of styles is what’s constantly driving the field forward.

So yes, elements from the past can look ‘new’, but only when they’re combined in a way that hasn’t been seen before and no, they cannot stay in the past, we need everything we can to drive the field forward.

Unfortunately our generation is stunted by the lack of any kind of development in technology that we can use to develop anything like a unique style, so we’re force to look backwards.

If a designer actively takes influence from historical sources, can their work ever be labelled as more than 'kitsch' 'ironic' or 'parody'? How do you feel about those terms?

Of course, if it’s done badly. Unfortunately the terms 'kitsch' 'ironic' or 'parody' have almost become sub-genres in themselves, if you look at current trends in TV Idents on ‘youth’ channels like E4, they’re all styled in this way, pooling references from the 70’s and 80’s and mashing them together to make something that looks purposefully dated.
The result, I think they’d like you to think is on-trend and cool, but I find it offensive, and boring. For me, it’s always been pointless to look backwards and purposely pick out the things that didn’t work, it’s the most boring approach to art, it’s dull when bands do it and dull when creative’s do it.

What about the public or consumer? Some say that the modernist approach to graphic design, where tradition and ornament were shunned in favour of simplicity, offered a degree of 'neutrality' to the promotion of products and brands. Is there then any benefit that you can see for returning to past graphic design practices in the modern design age?

I think to leverage a feeling of the time can be beneficial to a piece of product advertising or branding.

The brands I work with are starting to come back to more wholesome and people-centric looking logos and typefaces, and moving away from a clean modernist approach that saturated the 90’s-early 00’s.

People are no longer desperate to look like cutting edge, web-savvy companies, and the focus is moving more towards their people and the idea that they’re approachable and real. That ‘neutrality’ has shifted more towards a 1950’s and 60’s style of ‘we’re here to help’ branding and away from the fake monolithic stylings of the corporations, that promised security in scale, but offered no sense of tactile contact with people.

Have you ever tried to emulate design styles from the past in order to present a 'fake' sense of traditionalism? If so how?

Yes, running a Wedding Invites company (www.weddingteatowels.co.uk) we do this all the time, people are obsessed with the having a 1950’s kitsch street-party, country pic-nic styled wedding, so we’re always looking for ways to illustrated this feeling.

Another good example of this would be the Royal Wedding this May. Almost across the board in Supermarkets, high street stores and Merchandise, the approach to it was to style it in the ‘1950‘s British Street Party’ style. People wanted to feel that kind of post-war camaraderie that we’ve all see on TV and heard about from our grandparents, the wedding gave a chance at some togetherness within out community that we don’t have anymore, and the chance to experience it bleed out into all the branding and promotion around an event that ultimately failed to deliver on a social level, because in reality things are desperately different now to how they were in 1950.

Conversely have you ever tried to emulate design styles from the past in order to be ironic? If so how?

No, never to be ironic.

Are you particularly proud of a piece of work that has a direct path to something old? If so what was it and why are you proud of it?

I’m proud of all of our Wedding Invite designs, simply because of the success they’ve been with the public (we’ve printed over 25k towels for nearly 300 customers in the last 2 years), and the happiness they bring to the couples getting married. They’re all infused with an old fashioned 50’s and 60’s feel and really hit the mark with our customers.

Another piece I’m proud of would be:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shakedown/4577348021/in/set-72157624584066657

This poster for the band Slipstream was inspired by an old diagram I have from a 1950’s science journal, I completely redrew every layer and added all of the texture and copy back into it, the finished piece I always find striking and is one of my favorite pieces of work. For me it has a timeless feel to it, it’s scientific, and informative while at the same time (the original was) beautifully crafted with a delicicy that looks natural.

Have you ever directly referenced or parodied a design work from another time? If so what and why?

Yes, many times. Sometimes you have no choice. When working with the Band The Moons, who are a 60’s inspired pop band, and they release a single with a track called ‘Rear Window’ on it, and one of your design heroes is Saul Bass, what are you going to do...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shakedown/4843798273/in/set-132377

Sometimes these things write themselves, and to hit a brief, there’s no other way to go.

When it comes to traditional graphic design processes Rick Poynor said of letterpress designer Alan Kiching:

‘In an age of fleeting digital simulation his projects are a constant reminder of the seductive power and tremendous tactile satisfaction of ink pressed to paper.’

Do you feel the same way about techniques such as screen printing or traditional letterpress? Do ‘hands-on’ processes really add to the visual value of a piece of design or is it mere 'fluff' or 'aesthetics for aesthetics sake'?

I do like screen printed posters, but you can’t screen print a piece of terrible design and think that it’s great casue you did it by hand.

When you break everything back to it’s purest form, if it stands up like that, then it’s a good piece of work. You can’t expect to hand print it on a piece of parchment from 1921 and suddenly you’re a genius.

That said a great poster design, hand printed can be a beautiful thing. So, these techniques make good work better, but don’t make average work good.

In your opinion, are there benefits to visually referencing elements of 'traditional' (for want of better term) graphic design? Do you think that speaking to an audience in a visual language that they may have experienced before in their past, helps you to get them to sit up and notice whatever it is your are designing today?

That’s a very complicated question, it’s different across all brands to all demographics. For example Stannah Stairlifts don’t advertise in a 1920’s style to their customers, and if you look at the new Cher Lloyd video, (which I assume is aimed at 15-18 year olds) they styling for that is straight 80’s, so that’s aimed at an era before their target market was born.

Of course it is possible to reference periods that people yearn for to attached that associated nostalgia to your brand, but this is dependent on the attributes of your product. For example working in the IT sector we’ve never been allowed to do something even vaguely retro, even when a concept calls for it, and it’s aimed at a specific age range, as it would be damaging to the brand, but in the consumer space, this is much more flexible. Brands like Cadburys can look back to older versions of themselves and leverage the feelings that people used to have for their products to hang campaigns off of. A good example of this would be the Whisper relaunch in 2010.

When was the last time you saw a modern take on a historical design style that was ‘done’ really bloody well?

I have to be honest I no longer look at any design publications or keep up with any modern designers. I’m really not interested in other people’s work, if I see something good it makes me angry, and if I see something shit, I have an urge to get into a fight about why it’s so bad, which is a total waste of time.

I do quite like the work of Kate Moross, I think she’s taken that Psych poster of the 60/70’s and made something bold and interesting out of it that looks modern and dynamic.

http://www.katemoross.com/work/detail/tom-vek-poster/

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07764 898 010

SIlent Guns Artwork

2011-07-15T16:21:00.000+01:00

At the start of the year I was approach by old friends The New Cassettes and asked to create some artwork for them for a album and single release on an affiliated MTV label based in the US.

They wanted something with a Punk feel, that bought in some of the ideas used in the early Roxy Music art. The first thing I did was get each member of the band to pick 5 images that they attached to each song, this gave me a huge collection of things make massive collage. I then used as the theme across all of the artwork.

I've then taken different girls poses and layered the patchwork image into each scene without ever revealing the entire canvass. Then shaded the shape of the legs back in, and shifted the poses to make it feel awkward and suggestive.

There's more releases to follow and the album cover gives away the most, so stay tuned to see how it all turns out.

You can buy the single Silent Guns on iTunes here.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk
Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07764 898 010

Citizen becomes Apple Design Vendor

2011-06-17T11:46:00.001+01:00

Great news for Citizen today, after months of negotiations amongst my contacts at Apple, and waiting for the right project to come along, I'm proud so say that this morning I've signed off on Citizen becoming an official vendor to Apple.

This is good good for Citizen for so many reasons, being able to legitimately say I work with Apple is a massive plus for the business, and working with Apple is always fun, their approach to creativity in design is one of the reasons they're such an amazing company in the first place.

Not a bad acquisition for Citizen Yr1.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07764 898 010

The Daily Torygraph

2011-06-10T14:11:00.002+01:00

The Daily Torygraph is great site, take a look. It's published by Dave Waters of Watermill who has been responsible for some pretty impressive work, he was Creative Director of Top 30 Ad Agency D.F.G.W, back in 1989, which eventually sold to Freud Communications. Watermill have had a hand in some of more memorable ads on TV for companies like Audi, XBox and John Smiths , as well as the opening credits for Die Another Day, and Dave himself was part of the creative team that worked on the Millennium Dome project when that opened in 2000.

I wanted the logo to show exactly what the site was about. It's a simple premise, it takes the front page of The Telegraph, and, each day subverts the headline to form some satirical comedy. This made the premise for the logo quite simple, I took the technique used by Dave for manipulation of the headline - Tipex and a graphic pen, and applied this to the masthead of the Telegraph.

Look out for the site, there's posters going up around London soon, and it's clocking up an astonishing amount of daily hits (30k last count). It's a great project to have been a part of, and backed by a truly creative force.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07764 898 010

Erm, 'Drumming up Business'

2011-06-01T17:12:00.001+01:00

I was recently interviewed for the Freelancing site PPH, here's a link to the article. It's been pretty good for my profile, and a few people have been in touch to say they've seen it, or they'd like my advice on starting up, it's really nice when people make the effort to appreciate your work.

I do regret sending that photo in though, to say I've got a Moon Face in it is a huge understatement. I know I was happy that day but it's no excuse.

I'm a little more conscious of my 'Moon Face' these days since we took our 2 year old Archie to the Space Centre in Leicester at the weekend, and bought him a little Space Shuttle. I carried Archie out of the museum after lovely day, on my shoulders, and on the way out he kept trying to say (in his broken baby English) "Land, shuttle, on Daddy, Moon Face." I mean he's 2, so he can't lie.

Anyway, where were we? Oh yes... Interview, yeah, it was good, have a read.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07764 898 010

Nordic Opulence at One Marylebone

2011-05-17T15:02:00.004+01:00

Today was the official press launch of the Dune Group Autumn/Winter range 2011, a launch that I'm proud to say Citizen played a part in by branding the event, and producing the press books for the three brands; Dune, Bertie and Pied-a-Terre.

It's been a great project to work on, from the start the client had a clear brief, and aim for the artwork, with a realistic budget and timeline to get things right. This made the process, streamlined, efficient and enjoyable to work on.

It was a big step and slightly risky for Citizen to move into the retail sector and deliver on a project like this. With very little experience in the women's fashion market, getting my head around 'Nordic Opulence and 'Romany Chic' was a daunting challenge at first, but I'm totally into it now. I've got my bearskin boots on as I type.

Being at the press launch today and seeing happy clients and a buzzing venue I'm going to say Citizen delivered, and it's without doubt our greatest achievement so far. Working with three major high street brands like Dune, Pied-a-Terre and Bertie, really puts us on the map, and before you ask, no I can't get you free shoes.

The finished launch pack looks great, and I even got a goodie bag at the end, with a clutch bag, lip balm and moisturiser in it, what a lucky little lady I am.

This ends the first 6 months of Citizen on a massive high, and with some exciting meetings coming up and a steadily building client base I happy where we've got to, but there's a long way to go.

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk or email me on ben@citizenstudios.co.uk and let's create something.

Talk the Line

2011-03-29T20:39:00.004+01:00

Right, we want to set up a brand, and we want to inspire such blind loyalty to it that people will queue up for every new product launch, they'll entertain openly being verbally abused by passers by, and they'll wait there for 5 hours, for no perceived advantage other than the experience of buying it from one of our stores (even though they could stroll into John Lewis or Argos and pick one up).

So, how do you do this? I'm not exactly sure, but last week I experienced it first-hand and although I felt partly ashamed at the beginning, by the end I was fully onboard with the whole experience. Eventually the whole drama of the precision orchestrated occasion actually had me pitying a passing couple who'd just bought their iPad straight off the counter in John Lewis, 'idiots'. In retrospect I have no idea how I could have been this brainwashed. It's frankly embarrassing.

The queue itself was fascinating, lots of snorted laughs, iPhones, and alive with ideas about how to reduce a queue everybody seemed to be enjoying. What nobody seemed to consider was, Apple had us just where they wanted us, a living, breathing, snorting, Tweeting advert for the iPad.

While everyone in the queue was busy Tweeting and FBing their queue stories they're generating content for Apple. People walking past the queue filming 'the nerds' on their phones are all generating content for Apple. People asking what the queue was for, was another great message for Apple, they all found out. All of this precisely orchestrated, and importantly free, exposure creates a buzz around the launch that, you could pay for, but when you're Apple you don't have too.

Now, I'm not a maniac, I'm not blindly loyal to Apple, and I'll gladly switch to another brand, the day someone else starts making products that fit into my life better, and work in a simple way, that works for me, but at the moment there's nothing close, and those excited people in that queue were testament to that. The 3DS was launched that day as well, I could see Game from my plot in the queue, and you wouldn't have know it.

So how do you build a brand that inspires such great loyalty? It's easy, you brainwash millions of people by slipping drugs into the free coffee and muffins you give them as they queue up for your new products. Easy.

Contact Citizen on ben@citizenstudios.co.uk or visit the site at www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Contra Versum Poster

2011-03-09T17:34:00.004Z

This was a nice brief I won through PPH, movie posters are kind of the ultimate career goal for me and this is the first one I've had a chance to do. I think it's a 'One Sheet' which I'm informed is something a writer takes to a pitch to help them sell the script.

It's made from an illustration I did about a year ago for Paul Weller's album 'Wake up the Nation' which he didn't use, and went on to have one of the shitest covers I've ever seen (it wasn't designed by me BTW).

I'm really happy with how the artwork came out, but would have liked more access to the actual film visuals, and more logos and cast information to typeset on the poster, just to give it a more authentic feel.

Still Weller's loss is someone else's gain, I'm sure he's gutted.

Client Services Diagram... WAIT! Don't switch off!

2011-03-04T13:54:00.004Z

Today I'm working on a pitch for a web site, and, as part of it I needed to create a 'Client Services' diagram. Normally I hate doing diagrams, but today I felt very inspired (and a little bit weird), so I've decided to pitch something a little bit different to how I'd normally approach this. Monsters as services, makes perfect sense to me.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07764 898 010

Our Survey says...

2011-02-14T17:29:00.001Z

I'm a delicate flower, so this is probably a huge mistake, but I've decided to survey my customers, post project completion, and ask them 5 questions, so far the results are looking positive:

Believe me, I've spent far too long fretting over those 'Good's', however, I know this is a good idea and it's going to make sure I'm always pushing myself to please clients. Also I'm hoping it can guide me on my pricing, to make sure I'm getting it spot on, if people are saying my pricing is 'excellent' then I'm probably too cheap, so the 'Good' on this, is an excellent thing, I think.

Just remind me not to be a baby if I ever get an 'Average'.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07764 898 010

N13 Logo

2011-02-09T13:04:00.002Z

I'm very busy currently working on the New Cassettes album and single artwork, (which is looking really great, and I can't wait to share with you on here,) we're working with N13 Music in New York. Everything was progressing nicely, until, we got to a point where the pack art was finished and it was time to drop the logos on, and they remembered they didn't have one.

No problem, Citizen do logos.

And that's how it happened.

Plugged in and switched on.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07764 898 010

Howdy Partners

2011-02-03T19:47:00.001Z

I've recently updated the Citizen site to include a list of partners that I work with, I'm hoping this will increase Citizen's offering and expand the size and scope of work we're able to go after.

You may also notice that we've gone from an 'I' to a 'we'.

The first person on the roster is Maria Ingram. I've worked with Maria for many years. She's a creative copywriter who's got a good eye for detail, and a sound conceptual brain. She's great for bouncing ideas around with, and then sewing a concept up with a neat little strapline.

Next up, Karen Brown. Yes my wife, but also my partner in business and someone I've worked with at my previous agency. Karen is a great help to me at Citizen, she's an incredible organiser, and solid strategic thinker. Previously Karen worked at BBH, on the British Airways and Audi accounts where she was named 'Project Manager of the year in 08 and 09'.

Finally (for the moment) Phil Sharp. Phil is a magnificent photographer, I've worked with him lots of times over the years including on the One Leicester campaign in 2009.

Phil's work had been all over the place in The Guardian, Wallpaper, Time Out and NME, and he's recently been directing the photography on some short films. What makes him such a great portrait photographer is, (along side his technical skills) his ability to relax his subjects, and really get the best out of them. I really enjoy working with Phil, the best work I've done has come from this partnership.

So, there's the basis of the Citizen team, and I have no plans to stop there. If you think you have something to offer us, please get in touch and perhaps we can create something together.

I've taken some pretty big meetings in the last couple of weeks, and I've got some interesting projects lined up, so far so good. One month in and Citizen is still standing, I'm proud of that.

www.citizenstudios.co.uk
Ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Back to the drawing board

2011-01-28T15:16:00.001Z

As mentioned previously I'm trying to work more and more from paper beginnings. Especially with logo design I'm starting to explore the relationship between the letters and words more with a pen; rather that darting around in Illustrator.

I think my lack of formal training has meant that I've never really done this, and the need to get jobs done quickly has always been a barrier. Since the start of the year I've done 5 different company logos and all of the best results have been from paper to screen. (Not that these are the ones that got chosen).

I wonder how many designers really work like this anymore? As stated previously, it's my aim to bin the laptop and send all my work in the post by the time my laptop (which feels like it's on the way out) dies.

Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Life on Earth Alternate Cover

2011-01-20T11:12:00.000Z

It's coming up to a year since I finished the artwork for The Moons 'Life on Earth', and I thought now was a good time to reveal the first idea I pitched to Andy. It still resonates with me, and personally, I think is a more iconic design than what we eventually went with, (which I do still love by the way), but just feel like this shades it. It's more striking, and for me, looks more genuinely 60's than the final execution.

I remember finishing it and having that excited feeling the my stomach, then emailing it off and it getting rejected. That feeling when you really love something, and your client doesn't, and nothing you say will change their mind is really crushing. I think sometimes it's a problem of working on email, face-to-face you can really demonstrate your passion for a piece, and it can be infectious.

It takes me about a week to pick myself up after a debunk, and generally I can't sleep very well during that time, it's very dramatic I know! Anyway, we kept some of these elements for the artwork throughout the booklet, so it wasn't entirely wasted, and, together with Andy we forged a great campaign that I was really happy with.

You can buy the 'Life on Earth' with it's actual cover here, it's a great piece of work.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07764 898 010

RAW Productions logo

2011-01-19T20:15:00.000Z

"Simple, modern, and conveys something about what we do."

The 'A and W' represent film strip, in pervious versions they has beading along the edges to look more like film, but after some discussion we decided to drop that and go with a subtler approach.

This is the second logo born from the pad, as part of my New Years Resolution, all conceptual logos are starting life as pencil drawings. For my sins this isn't something I've always done, it's always been too easy to jump straight onto Illustrator and take it from there. It's working out nicely, one day I hope I can get rid of the Mac all together and send my client their designs in the post.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07764 898 010

Glasgow Wedding Collective

2011-01-18T13:03:00.001Z

This was a nice little job that I got through our Wedding Tea Towel contacts, the brief was really well constructed and GWC sent me so many ideas and references that I really got a good flavour of what they were looking for.

The basis of the logo was a font called 'Handmade' and from this starting point we worked to embellish it, creating a decorative 'Rococo' feel that works well in the industry while at the same time eluding to the companies 'collective' nature.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07764 898 010

Week One.

2010-12-06T16:16:00.001Z

I'm not planning to update every week on how I'm doing, but week one of Citizen was interesting, and at the end of it I was happy for people to tell me I looked 'tired'. I've realised that I'm happier when I'm working, and when I'm busy, creatively.

Sunday night I filled my blackboard with all my jobs and meetings and spent the week hammering through it. (Taking the odd beak to smash snowballs over my own head with Archie.) The variety of work made it so much fun, I pitched freelance design for Motorcross Helmets, and for an online Portrait company (which I won), as well as picking up 3 small logo jobs.

I've learnt that it's very competitive out there. people want a lot, for as little at they get away with, and even after they've had it, they'll keep coming back for more. I've been working from some of the freelance sites and the scope of work to budget ration is at times amazing. It's clear that when people aren't dealing face-to-face with folk, they really do take the piss, but, on the other hand the worldwide pool of designers mean, there's always someone, somewhere to do the work.

So, I was happy I wasn't sitting round with my hand down my pants, I've got some great meetings lined up this week that I'm really excited about, and a big project about to kick off. Last Friday bought with it a nice meeting in a coffee shop with my wife, and a whole raft of opportunities that I hope will come to fruition in the New Year.

I can see how keeping things in perspective mentally, going forward could be my biggest challenge, but I hope the positive energy from the first week will keep me, keeping on. Here's to a new week, a new year and a new way of working...

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07764 898 010

Citizen is ready to go.

2010-11-16T19:37:00.001Z

What more does a young business man need? A laptop, a desk and now some business cards.

Citizen is all ready for launch, December 2010, 9am I'll be at my desk looking at my business cards.

Who want's a meeting?

www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Nice little mention.

2010-11-10T16:46:00.003Z

It's was nice to get a mention on Mudkiss for The 66 artwork I produced earlier in the year, here's what The 66 said about Citizen:

A very talented guy called Benjamin Brown created the artwork. He’s worked with a number of high profile names and acts for their artwork over the years, so we were delighted to secure his services – it felt like a missing link. When I gave him the brief for the logo via the label, he told Mark ‘that is the most insane fucking brief I’ve ever had in my life, I like it’ it’s rife with meanings and symbology that I can’t, and possibly never will go into! But it means something to each of us – a hint? The Fly is actually a rare ‘Black Bee’. With the EP cover, Ben simply took all his talent and came up with something that was exactly right and was visioned – and then some! All the credit goes to Mr Brown for that one.

You can read the full article about here at http://www.mudkiss.com/the66interview.htm

Find out more about my band artwork and the kind of services I offer by visiting www.citizenstudios.co.uk

I'm a free Citizen again...

2010-11-05T11:05:00.004Z

Monday November 29th Citizen version 2 (it's not called that, that would be horrible) will be born again. I'm building on Citizen as it was, and expanding the whole thing out to 3 core areas of activity:

Citizen Corporate will deal with the day-to-day business of a normal Marketing agency, I'll be looking for branding, advertising and corporate literature projects, all the kinds of things that have been paying the bills for the last 10 years.

Citizen Arts is really Citizen as it was, a softer more artistic side to the business, that'll deal with record companies, bands and clubs, and anyone that needs a creative piece of work doing and doesn't want to get bogged down in briefs and PO numbers.

Citizen Freelance is a freelance design service that's going to give people the experience of my 10 years in the business, working for them in their company - the way freelancers do, but booked direct through me you can avoid the agency fees.

The new Citizen site is up and running, and from here you can find out more about all my services.

It's been a furious few weeks of evening activity so far and I want to thank Karen, Dad, Maria, Ellie, Skelly, Rik, Parker, Jon, Stacey, Tracy, Jack, Brian and Chris for all your help setting up so far, I really appreciate it, it's inspiring to know I have great people around me from the beginning.

We Are Low Culture Poster

2010-09-29T10:39:00.004+01:00

Low Culture's a new web site launching in West Yorkshire, it's all about music and the arts. It's not online yet, but check out the Low Culture Facebook site the real site goes live in October and it will be www.wearelowculture.com.

The brief for this was pretty laid back, I wanted to work something around the idea of 'Low' and 'Underground', and started work on something that was quite a direct take on that. I'm actually really proud of this piece because rather than coming from a starting point of something I'd seen or a piece of stock photography it all came from my head and a blank sheet of paper.

I wanted the objects to all represent a part of the sites focus and culture, some of them are obvious like the instruments and comic (American Splendour - my favourite, RIP Harvey Pekar), but others like the Viewfinder and kite hopefully offer an insight into the idea of writing styles and perspectives of the contributors.

Each layer was built up with textures blended on top of one another, the sky was drawn in, and the grass was created using a Photoshop brush. All the objects were found on Google searches and I chopped parts of them away to make them look half buried, then shaded around the back of them and Vivid Lighted the shade to tone it all back in.

I'm also pleased with the 'lead line' on this, it happened quite naturally, trailing from the kite down to the logo was a bit of a happy accident:

I love making artwork that's creating something from nothing but an idea like this, I'm really happy with the finished poster, I hope the people of West Yorkshire tear it down and blu tack it to their bedroom walls.

Brew: In The City Poster

2010-09-21T15:50:00.002+01:00

I've started working with Leeds based label Brew Records, who I saw mentioned in an article in the NME, contacted and I've done a few posters for ALL FOR FREE! Yep, I know how to put the 'free' in freelance alright, but they're good briefs, and if the client's not paying, then it kind of gives me total creative freedom, which is worth its weight in gold to me.

This particular brief was for Brew: In The City, which is like Babe: Pig In The City, only with bands instead of bacon. There was no brief, so I decide to take it on an invasion route, like these Leeds bands were invading Manchester. My first step was to be inspired by this image from Pink Tentacle:

I liked the composition and the colours of the sky, I thought it suited (rainy) Manchester as well, so now I needed a picture of Manchester from a similar angle, I decided on this one:

After a massive clipping path, and lots of work on the colour and sharpness, I managed to get it into a similar state to the Pink Tentacle image, now I needed some texture for the sky, I've got a collection called 'Painted Skies' and used one of them for this:

I blended this in and dropped it right back so its affect was minimal, the next step was what to put in the sky as the focal point. I tried a number of things from Hot Air Balloons, confetti and Victorian Airships, but nothing sat right in the frame. Eventually I stumbled upon this image, and it was a perfect fit:

After that there was a load of Blending, Colour Correction and they typography until I got it into the finished state, it was quite a struggle in the end, but I'm really proud of it. Brew were pleased with it and had no changes and that's where was project finished and invoic... no wait. Anyway, one day all these favours will pay off, I've been saying it for nearly ten years now, just another ten maybe? Who knows.

An Escape Plan Live Poster Two

2010-09-07T19:51:00.000+01:00

I love working with An Escape Plan, I used to play drums for them, so I feel they're in my blood ( I hope my blood is still on their drums), and if I need inspiration it drips from their beautiful recordings.

This poster was built from a few bits I've been playing with recently. The main character is a montage of different body parts found on Google, the shoes and head are then hand-drawn in solid black to negate the need for too much detail. Then there's a grunge texture laid over the top of it to bring it all together.

The smoke is done using some really effective spray can brushes in Photoshop, and over the top of that I've laid some white particles from a stock file I have to just scruff the whole thing up a bit.

One complete idea, no amends, one sign off. My kind of job. I am a big subscriber to ditching your first idea, my first idea was to do something around this Wind Costume photo, but it wasn't working out. Nice though eh?

The poster is a companion piece to this previous gig poster.