Unicorn and Mimibot

Recently Michael spotted a tweet about a competition to win a “MIMOBOT” which is a USB drive character. This was a post by Dan Zarella, the Social Media Scientist, on his blog.

I love writing poems and I love unicorns so I felt compelled to enter. I could love Dan Zarella but haven’t talked to him yet (but I will!). Here is the poem – please let me know what you think of it?

My competition entry

If a unicorn came to you as you left the corner shop
Said “I am made of magic” and I can make your life “pop”
Would you believe him? Would you happily surrender?
Would you chase the rainbow – go on a rainbow bender?

Or would common sense prevail – and a sense of calm take over
Would you realise that there is no quick fix – no lucky four leaf clover
Would you think “this unicorn has told me that he can make a change
But I can’t place eggs all in one place – I have to have a range”

If this happened to me, here is my advice
You need to check if this is true – and figure out the price
Ask the unicorn to email you
and his proposal you’ll review
You’ll see if there is anything that proves his approach is new
Consider it carefully – get back to him soon – of course!
I would believe a unicorn more than I’d believe a horse.

Read on to find out how people felt about our last 2 seminar held on the 20th and 26th of January – all about Blogging, Twitter and LinkedIn for business. You will feel like you were there!

And our next seminar, in case you are interested, is on Social Media for Business – on February 17th

Yemi Osunkoya, bespoke wedding dress designer, said the following:

I recently attended a workshop organised and given by Keren of Top Left Design on Social Media for Business. Keren’s knowledge in this field is exemplary and she was able to deliver this in a clear, concise and easily understandable manner. I have already began to put knowledge acquired at the workshop to use and they have already started showing results. I highly endorse the services that Keren provides

Alicia Cowan, social media savvy VA said the following:

Keren supplied a fantastic (and free) consultation for my website and we have since worked together on social media workshops. She has a natural eye for design detail and a rare skill of creating websites that not only combine beauty and usability, but include up-to-the-minute marketing techniques. Keren is on a mission: to equip businesses with the knowledge to make the most of their online presence, and to look good doing it. A super networker, Keren has qualities that everyone wants from a business associate and service provider: integrity, loyalty, honesty, knowledge, skill and generosity. Her professionalism and passion for design are immediately obvious the moment you meet her.

Adam Cox, corrective exercise specialist and bodyshaping expert said the following:

After attending the TLD Social Media Seminar I have a much, much clearer idea of the strategy to use for my business when it comes to incorporating social media into my P.R campaign.
The venue, TLDs offices, is fantastic and makes for a very “comfortable” environment to learn.
Keren’s moral view is also refreshing when it comes to social media for business and shows you don’t need to bombard people with information they don’t necessarily want or need to create a fantastic network. I will be working with TLD again in the future and will be attending future seminars. I have no hesitation in recommending Keren or her team.

Darrin des Vignes, tech consultant
said the following:

TLD’s blogging seminar is a great platform to launch into the blogosphere! Keren and her team took into consideration the scatter of experience among the attendees and catered to their specific needs. The session covered everything from Do’s and Don’ts, types of blogs, the intricacies of time management and etiquette of the platform as a whole. It is relatively easy for anyone to start blogging but very difficult to do it effectively with optimal impact… and this is where TLD seminars excel. Keren has a wealth knowledge when it comes to social tech-networking and not only will she help you transform your business endeavours into an online tool but is a great personality, a hub, that is constantly creating connections between people and developing positive relationships. Conducted in a very relaxed environment with sofas, coffee, cupcakes and banter… the training sessions and seminars at TLD are highly recommended for those wanting to take their first right step into blogging! The cupcakes are awesome and lunch made me very happy.

Brendan Staunton, Copywriter
said the following:

As a writer, I was looking for ideas on how to make better use of blogging for my business. The Top Left Design seminar was excellent. Keren is a charming host and a fluent and accomplished presenter with a relaxed style all of her own. She explained the ‘who’ and ‘why’ as well as the ‘how’ of blogging and I especially liked how she encouraged participation without interrupting the flow of information. We all had an interesting and enjoyable time – even the food was well thought out. Highly recommended.

Michael Marks, Designer and Illustrator
said the following:

I knew I wanted to blog. I knew I wanted to share my insights, rants and quirky, yet endearing, humour with the waiting world. The only small obstacle between myself and my eager audience was not knowing how to blog, when I should blog or even the actual advantages of blogging – and whether it was right for me or not. I didn’t know my WordPress from Weblog or my Tumblr from my template. So, where to begin?

I can recommend Top Left Design’s Blogging Seminar as a very good place to start, where I went from blog-less novice to blog-ready acolyte in one painless session.

The seminar took place at TLD’s ambient and friendly offices in the west end. Comfortably snuggled between a blog-savvy copywriter – there to hone his blogging knowledge – and a laser-focused business owner – there to find out how blogging could increase her market share – I was relaxed and ready to discover how I could let the world share in my amusing observations.

Keren Lerner, TLD’s Director and our host, initiated us into the joys and pitfalls of the blogosphere, delivering a deceptively detailed amount of information in a relaxed and accessible way. The fifteen attendees each represented very different businesses – from a freelance movie producer to an interior designer – and required answers specific to them, but Keren ensured we were with her each step of the way, giving us a clear understanding if blogging was right for us and, if it was, how to start blogging for fun and profit.

Keren, with the assistance of case studies and real world examples, took us from the first faltering steps of blogging, through which blogging tools were right for each of us, to content, frequency and blog-etiquette. She also introduced us to the best blog-gurus on the web and the most relevant and appropriate resources for us.

The seminar was rendered even more painless by the comfortable and welcoming environment and the homemade cupcakes. Coffee breaks and lunch gave the attendees the opportunity to chat with each other and share our knowledge – or lack of it – about the world of blogging and to exchange business cards.

Rather than fill our heads with information and turn us out, blinking, into the world, we were given worksheets to complete during the seminar and take away with us. Even more impressively, Keren followed up the seminar with emails containing links to all the resources we’d discussed and a link to the entire presentation.

If you sincerely want to blog but have no idea how, where or how often, I suggest you book up for a TLD Blogging Seminar right now. After one session you’ll understand if blogging is right for you, what you should be saying, how you should be saying it and who you should be saying it to. The blogosphere is only a mouse-click away. Hmm, sounds like the title of my next blog post.

I was planning to attend this – but it changed dates. And now it’s planned for the 2nd April. Get in touch anyone else who is going.

The plan is that there are going to be so many high profile speakers (Including Zig Ziglar, Karren Brady, Mark Victor Hansen, James Caan, Julie Ziglar-Norman, Morris Goodman, Andy Hansen, Christine Hamilton, Adrian Webster and Rob Brown) and this is a weekend day in Birmingham – for learning and of course networking!

Check out the event here

PANIC! Too much work, not enough time.

How will I ever get through this in the time I have?

Sometimes working late is a necessity, but I’m not sure it’s completely healthy.

Therefore, in order to achieve a proper work/life balance one must find a way to speed through work like a demon.

Understanding what a speed demon is.

Demon is originally a Greek term which means a wise, guardian spirit.

Demons have since evolved into bad things. But a speed demon is both wise and crafty, a mix between old and new demon.

As Michael Jackson says “aint nothing gonna stop me, aint no stop and go, I’m speeding at the midway, I gotta really burn this road” – I think he could be onto something there.

Aint no stop and go.

How true of speed demons, a job is at hand and must be done. This requires some effort, head down, goals in mind, and a finish line that is in sight. Once you start you can only stop once complete!

My advice – LISTS – Lists make the world go round.

Lists mean you remember to get the milk while at the shop and lists can give me a sense of achievement.

Every task I cross off my list gives me a strong drive to complete the next task in record time.

So in order to speed through work like a demon here are some easy steps.

• Plan ahead. Decide what really needs to be done in record time. No use in panicking over work that can be done later.
• Make a list and cross each task off like a champion.
• Ignore the world as much as possible while in speed of light mode.
• Make sure a prize is waiting at the end. Whether it’s cake, beer, or simply putting your feet up and finally breathing again. All work is done better when a reward is in sight.

I hope this has helped you in your quest to be a speed demon at work, and I hope with the extra time you create for yourself, you spare a moment to comment on this post, share it around on Twitter and Facebook and other fun stuff.

A couple of weeks ago the whole team trekked off to Wales for a weekend to participate in our second Our Say Our Way Steering Group Residential, a project which is going along swimmingly! For those of you not familiar with the Our Say Our Way project, this a website we have just recently launched that will give Young People in the UK, involved in the Our Say Our Way project, a voice within their communities.

Welsh Rabbit, er.. Rarebit

The weekend in Wales was an opportunity for us to present our website design ideas to the young people, as well as being able to join them in death defying activities that involved massive cliff faces, raging sea waters and, once again, wetsuits (I’m beginning to smell a theme here to these weekends..)

After skilfully managing to avoid the wetsuit scenario on the last Residential, we soon discovered that we weren’t going to be so lucky this time. And to add insult to injury we were required to wear shorts over the wetsuits to ‘protect the wetsuits on the rocks’ (translation: hide our modesty so that any embarrassment was avoided!). The result of this was what looked like a huddle of clothes wearing, helmet adorned penguins slowly making our way towards what seemed like certain death… (Cue funeral march).

Seafaring adventures

Okay, so maybe I’ve over exaggerated this scenario slightly! Certain death it certainly wasn’t. More like an adrenalin fuelled coasteering adventure that involved us throwing ourselves off ragged Welsh cliff faces and rocks into the sea below. Suddenly wetsuits didn’t seem like such a bad idea! In fact I’ve never been gladder about looking like a penguin than I did at that moment. Loss of limbs to frostbite might have been a certainty without out one, and I don’t want to even begin to think about the state our backsides would have been in after all the slithering around on jagged rock faces we did!

The next day we dragged on soggy wetsuits again, this time to go sea kayaking. Now, if you ever wanted to build up those saggy baggy arms muscles then boy! Is this the activity for you! After a couple of hours of open sea paddling and general hooligan antics (I still owe Michael for his foul misdemeanours aimed at my poor self..) we dragged ourselves out to get changed, utterly exhausted, but rather chuffed with ourselves.. and I say dragged because at that point our arms were so buggered that it was an effort to lift a pencil, let alone find the energy to pick up a towel and pull a wetsuit off.

There’s method in the madness

In between all these activities we somehow found the time to spend a few hours presenting design ideas to the Young People (the true aim of our weekend there) that were to be transformed into the new Our Say Our Way website! Votes were taken, decisions made and as a result a brand spanking new website now stands proud, showcasing exactly what Our Say Our Way does and just how beneficial a project such as this one can be.

Once again an absolute blast was had by all, and we headed home exhausted but triumphant in our return, having conquered all objectives set out for the weekend! Now that the website has been launched our next step is training the kids (and adults!) on how to use the website and keep it regularly updated.. our goal for the next Residential, taking place in the next few weeks. Watch this space for our next adventure!

Penny on is the single most brilliantly simple way of enabling effortless giving at the point of sale. It supports local and lnternational sustainable initiatives that align with The Millennium Development Goals. The eight MDGs break down into 21 quantifiable targets that are measured by 60 indicators.

• Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
• Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
• Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
• Goal 4: Reduce child mortality
• Goal 5: Improve maternal health
• Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
• Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
• Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development

By focusing on the retail sector Penny On is maximising its scale and influence with the public as a whole.

As a Business Supporting Penny On, Top Left Design is now playing a role in providing working capital. This will mean that when consumers are invited to add a penny on when making a purchase, this money will go directly to invest in local and international development.

It was very easy to sign up – we invested a small amount of money and we are going to help spread the word via events and social media.

If you would like more information on how you can help out, please Get in touch.

Be sure also to Visit the Penny On Website.

- giving pragmatic advice
- reassuring clients
- managing complete projects
- quoting for any extra requested features
- invoicing
- proactively keeping projects moving
- managing suppliers

Its a tall order and not many designers do all of this in their jobs. But we like our clients to have direct contact with the designers who are working on their projects, so this means the designers have to be well versed in all the skills of customer care.

We recently held an open day to help us find our new member of staff. It was an “interesting” day and we had 11 candidates coming along. We got each person filling out a little questionnaire, with the hidden purpose of testing their attention to detail and instruction following skills as they had to save the document as a renamed PDF in a folder with their name and save it in a particular drive on our PC network. You would be surprised how many of the candidates did this incorrectly! In fact, only 2 people did it right!

There are 4 of us working at Top Left Design now and we each interviewed each candidate for 2-5 mins each. So we were able to get quick first impressions. This made the subsequent shortlist process surprisingly easy, as only a couple of people “ticked all the boxes”

Next step now is to get each of the shortlisted candidates in for a half day trial day, where they are given tasks to test their design skills, working under pressure, instruction following, attention to detail, and use of software. Many tasks require cross referencing. For example one of our blogs needs updating and the test will be if they can create a thumbnail image, upload it, find the correct information and enter it.

Anyway, the idea is that our tasks are all designed to test various skills. This week there are 3 shortlisted people coming in for the trial days. They are all equally likely to get the job so these days will be very very interesting.

Any questions? Please feel free to ask!

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“The team of Top Left Design is young, dynamic and very open minded and it was easy to get along with everybody. The team was so friendly and even thought of my birthday.
I was really impressed how quick the employees of Top Left Design could work with the graphic programs, I learned so much about using those programs faster by applying short cuts.
The whole team thought me so much only by analyzing my design work, giving me advice and making me think farther so that I could improve a lot of my designs.
It was a great pleasure to work at Top Left Design, the working atmosphere was very harmonic and sometimes pretty funny.
I really enjoyed my time and loved the work and I hope I’ll have the chance to come back someday. Working at Top Left Design encouraged me to be on the right way in life.”
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What I learned at Top Left Design

Working at TLD was definitely a learning experience, not only did I learn HTML and Photoshop, I learned a whole bunch of simple skills that I have been using in almost every job that I’ve had afterwards.

Effective Email

Email communication doesn’t have to be complicated or take a long time. After writing many emails at Top Left Design, I learned that in order to avoid confusion increase efficiency, emails have to be formatted properly and be clear and simple. First, let’s start out with format. It is so important to start out an email with the person’s name. You could say “Hi Martin” or “Martin,” some sort of introduction. When you start an email out with information it can be confusing and not to mention it can seem a little rude. The rest of the email should be broken up into paragraphs and finish with a sign off like “Thanks,” or “Regards,” or whatever you are comfortable with. As for simplicity and clarity – this is the most important part. Unless you want to be writing back and forth all day with questions, its best to be clear about what you are talking about. This means to get the main points out separately. So, if you have to mention several points and ask questions it is good to group them together. When you are asking questions you have to make it obvious that you need an answer. If you say “I was wondering” and trail off with a long complicated question it isn’t clear in the end what you are talking about. On the other hand, writing an email with a quick one line answer can be even more confusing. If you follow all of these simple rules emailing will be less work and people will appreciate the ease of reading your emails.

File in Style – it takes a while but saves a mile!

Another important part of working with emails all day is keeping them organised. An organised email program on your computer means that you can respond faster to clients, colleagues and have a clear idea of what you are working on and will need to work on. By keeping a clear filing system in your inbox you will be able to find an email quickly and easily if you need it for reference. Not to mention that if you keep your inbox clean you can see what you need to work on and what’s new. Once you are finished working on something you can file it away and not worry about it anymore. If you have loads of emails that are in different stages of being complete you’ll have no idea what you are working on. You could also file based on urgency levels, i.e. 3 being least important (maybe ongoing projects that aren’t client based) and 1 being the most important (projects that have a deadline that is quickly approaching). If you are able to do this you will increase your efficiency level at the workplace significantly.

Mean well with a manual!

Another skill that I acquired working at TLD was manual writing. In any position it is important for someone to pick up a piece of paper and be able to figure out how to do a certain task. If you are the only one who knows how to do a certain procedure at your workplace it can be stressful if you are sick or going on vacation. The best way to work on a manual is to break down the process very clearly into bullet points or steps. Once you are complete try to do the steps based on your own instructions, or better yet get someone who knows nothing about the process to do it. That way you will see whether your manual has holes and how you can fix them. Once you have this information down on paper transitional periods will be much simpler at any job.

Overall, keeping organized is not something that everyone knows how to do. By following these easy steps you will be begin to be more efficient and dare I say happier at work. If you know what you are doing and what track you are on things will definitely start to go your way at the workplace.

People who visit websites are a mixture of FICKLE and PICKY.

They are fickle in that they will quickly scan information, flitting from page to page and quickly absorbing only selective information.

They are picky in that they can see something like out of date information, a squished image, a layout that doesn’t appeal and isn’t relevant, inconsistancies, missing or confusing information – and they completely lose trust in the business/organisation which owns that site.

We call this the Pickle Syndrome.

This is why the care, design talent and attention to detail that we at Top Left Design provide for our clients is so VITAL to a company’s success through their website!

To continue along those lines, Nick Sera-Leyva (who is working with us here at Top Left Design for a few months) had this to point out:

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Pickles are fresh, green cucumbers that have been withered and salinated by a vinegary brine.

Similarly, websites overcome by Pickle Syndrome are websites that have become withered and salinated by the brine of bad design.

Good design=freshly picked, spritely, crispy green cucumber.
Bad design= emaciated, lumpy, sickly green pickle

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We hope you all agree – comments welcome!