We're ashamed to admit that we've recently missed out on a potentially large project because the client concerned didn't know, or had forgotten, that we did that sort of work. So we thought it would be a good idea - at least from our point of view - to remind you of the main areas of design in which we are experienced.

Corporate identity

We include under this heading, branding, logotype design, stationery, branding guidelines, in fact anything that relates to how you are perceived by the outside world. We produce corporate identities for companies large and small but perhaps the most famous name for whom we have designed a logotype and developed branding guidelines was Ernst & Young's international network of lawyers. It was a complicated exercise and had to take into account the legal stipulations in countries all over the world. We won an award for our work so if you'd like us to look at your corporate identity and set up branding guidelines to help maintain the consistency of that identity then we're the team! Even if you're a one-person start-up business it's still very important.

Web sites

As with other areas of design, each project is linked to the client's marketing objectives so each site looks quite different - except that they all look pretty good! The best way to check out our ability with web design is to go to our web site www.fletcherwarddesign.co.uk and check out what we've done for our clients. We are experienced in the design and construction of both Flash and HTML sites

Report & Accounts

We have been designing and producing R&As for longer than we care to remember. This expertise with the presentation of numbers is also utilised in the design of Financial Memoranda.

Newsletters

We currently design newsletters for some of our clients and feel that they are a frequently under used part of the marketing mix. Give us a call if you're even just thinking about a newsletter - we might be able to help.

Printed material

This means all those leaflets, brochures, advertisements and posters - anything that ends up being printed.

Charts, diagrams and Graphics

Another under appreciated area of design, we feel that we're pretty good at them! The World Cancer Research Fund obviously felt the same. We had produced all the charts for the previous edition of their 500-page tome "Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity and the Prevention of Cancer" and they came back to us for the latest version. When clients come back it means we're doing something right.

Design - it's what we do. So call us.

Eco friendly font

In the August issue of the National Geographic magazine there's an article about a so-called Ecofont based on the Bitstream face called Vera (quite nice actually!). To quote from the article, the font has been designed to use less ink than other faces thereby saving money and resources as well as money. The Dutch marketing firm Spranq says that a company with 5,000 workers could save up to £75,000 a year from its printing costs. That's around £15 per person per annum - around 28p per person per week. More realistically perhaps, a 5-person office could save around £75 per annum!

The type has small holes that reduce the overall printing area of the type by 20% at 10pt without reducing the readability and this is the optimum size for its use. Anything much larger than this and you can see the holes and much smaller you are not making much of an ink saving. As somebody else says in the article, "it makes you think hard about ink, not just paper and printers."

We think it's great that somebody is thinking about things like this and, after all, if we only use it for home and internal office emails, we'll be contributing just that little bit. You can download the font at ecofont.eu.

What do you feel? Is the trade-off between aesthetics and reducing your damage to the planet and its resources worth it?

SEO

Does anybody out there agree with us that the system that the web crawlers apparently use to decide on a given site's importance, and therefore its ranking, seems somewhat invalid?

Apart from the site itself and the way it's constructed, the most important thing, we're told by Google, is the number of backward links to the site.

This means that there are lots of companies out there employing cheap labour to build links - sometimes spurious - to their sites to get the number up. There are, at least from what I read online, lots of companies outsourcing to emerging nation firms to establish links.

How does this contribute to the genuine validity and authority of a site?

Of course there are a number of other - genuine - contributing factors to moving your site up the ratings and these at least seem to make more sense but to rate a site by the number of backward links seems somewhat unfair and old-fashioned.

And almost every company that approaches clients says that it can get them on to the first page of the search engines but how can this be? You only have to think about it for a moment or two to see that this is impossible for most normal sites. You can almost always get yourself to the top of a search list if you type in a very specific phrase that is included on your site but if somebody searching for a general product or activity types that into a search engine window then the chances of you being at the top of the list is extremely remote.

How do you feel about this situation? It would be interesting to at least know that we're not alone!

Are you interested in commercial property?

One of our clients has just sent us an email relating to the services they offer in the property market and it occurred to us that somebody out there might be interested.  They are not a large firm and from personal experience we can tell you that you receive the best of attention.  

They aren't aware that we're putting them on the blog so if you do have reason to call them you can surprise them by letting them know where you heard of them!

Their email read:

I want to ensure that you and your colleagues are aware of the full range of properties we regularly handle and our areas of expertise for these property types.

Adlers are regularly involved with

• Petrol stations

• Car dealerships

• Roadside properties

• Restaurants

• Leisure premises

• Casinos

• Offices

• Property and Asset Management

Our areas of expertise include:

• Acquisitions

• Disposals

• Rent reviews

• Lease renewals

• Compulsory purchase

• Valuations

• Managements

• Expert witness reports

If anything in these lists strikes a chord, please contact me and I will introduce you to the relevant partner.

 

I have also attached a copy of our Web brochure, this provides contact details for all Partners and a further insight into our work.  Each section of the brochure is accessible from the green headers and the side bookmarks.

 

Regards

 

 

DAVID R HUNTER BSc FRICS ACIArb MEI
ADLERS - CHARTERED SURVEYORS
29 Gloucester Place, London W1U 8HX
Tel: 020 7224 2244    Fax: 020 7998 1417

Mobile: 07973 817107

www.adlers.co.uk

View our specialist areas:

Roadside   Restaurant/Leisure   Office   Management   Property Instructions

WHO CARES ABOUT YOU?

Probably not your clients! They’re not interested in you having just bought the latest Hokey Cokey 2000 or even in the products you’re trying to sell them. And yet so many companies go on in their literature or on their web site about when they were founded, how they make this product or that and that they have just moved to a magnificent new site.

What your clients need to know is what you or your products are going to do for them. What are the benefits?

So many advertisements and leaflets talk about the companies themselves when all the people reading them want to know is:

what are these products/services going to do for me?

what will they do for my business?

how much money will they help me to make?

I saw it amusingly summarised by the phrase, “Everybody is tuned in to one radio station - WIIFM - What’s In It For Me?

If you’re not too sure what it is that your customers want, there’s a very simple technique - ask them.

This may involve you in discussing the problems facing them and their business but you can then use the information to give them a product or service that precisely matches up to their expectations. And your clients will get to think of you as a listener who really cares about their business and how it can grow as opposed to you keep telling them about yours.

WEB WRITING

Because the web is a casual, laid back sort of medium, there’s a temptation to be more casual in the use of language but there are some good reasons to be considerate about what you write.

Firstly, well written copy keeps people reading for longer,

secondly, people will trust you more if you can spell and write properly, and

thirdly, it makes you more intelligible to the search engine “spiders”.

Make sure that the person you select to create the copy is able to write in a reader friendly style. They may well be somebody who understands the main features of your company and/or product (perhaps somebody who sells?) but probably not a person who knows the products in the most intricate detail. Please don’t use technical language (unless you’re selling something technical to technicians!) when ordinary English will do. Keep the sentences short and simple.

Following on from the using the right person to do the writing, make sure that your site tells the customers what they want to know - as opposed to what you think you ought to tell them. There’s a difference. Of course, if you sell a wide range of products, the writing becomes a matter of organising the products in logical order but if you’re selling a relatively small company or one product you can afford to emphasise the benefits to the customer.

Make sure you explain things from the customer’s point of view - don't assume that they know the things that you know.

Reading lots of wording on a computer screen can be hard work so do include pictures and/or graphics and make sure the pages are designed by a professional designer. Well, we would say that, wouldn’t we!