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Archive for the ‘Our Work’ Category

The evolution of a logo – Recognise & Relieve

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

Your logo is the main element of your branding which you’ll use pretty much everywhere along with your brand colours. Two people who understand the importance of logo design and brand colours are our very own Tamlyn Hall from TLD and colour consultant Karen Haller.

Karen Haller is an Applied Colour Psychology Specialist.  She helps business owners to communicate their brand’s authentic business personality in colour, further strengthening their marketing message to increase brand recognition by standing out from the competition and increasing sales.

BEFORE: Recognise & Relieve old logo & brand colours

Recognise & Relieve old logo

Recognise & Relieve old brand colours

In analysing the old Recognise and Relieve brand colours Karen Haller found that the brown colour palette is from the colour family related to the Autumn season. The monotone variants of brown give an overall subliminal message of safety, seriousness, reliability and support.

Looking at the brand’s core values – aiding positive change, healing and self awareness in a calm and nurturing environment, the old brown monotone colour palette may have, over time, reflected a feeling of heaviness, reluctance for change and seriousness.

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“Make Do and Mend” – 8 free or almost free ways to improve your presence online

Friday, January 27th, 2012

We have been working hard on our newsletter, as we always do. And it’s ready to send! In this one the illustration was done by Tina and Amy worked on the graphics for the rest of the newsletter. Other newsletters often feature illustration work by Tamlyn – who drew our owls! Those of you who dont subscribe, you’re missing out! We almost always do special offers, games and prizes. Our latest creation involves a theme – “Make Do and Mend” which goes with the whole “January Austerity” feeling. No point in being frivolous and overly extravagent – it’s just not the done thing! So, in our newsletter we have listed “8 free or almost free ways to improve your presence online.” We do like the number 8!

We also like the number 3 – so watch out for the 3 offers within the newsletter.

Read it here and let us know in the comments below what you think!

Launch of the Thanks and Recognition website

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

Thanks and Recognition website

At the beginning of January we launched our very first website of 2012 for Thanks and Recognition.

Thanks and Recognition help to create an environment of trust where people feel empowered to thank one another for good deeds they have done in the day.  It works very simply, if somebody does something that you value and want to recognise, you send an email thanking them for what they have done. Thanks and Recognition can then calculate how many times you say thank you in a period of time. There’s lot of theory around the subject and you can find out more on their website.

Thanks and Recognition blog

The site is built in HTML/CSS and has a WordPress blog. We used fading statistics on the home page and also embedded Thanks and Recognitions “Yum Yums & Employee Engagement” video which is a big hit in the Top Left Design office! There is also a blog feed integrated on the home page.

Thanks and Recognition were also kind enough to provide us with a nice testimonial too! Thanks guys!

“We are delighted with our new website. Top Left Design were friendly, helpful & professional throughout the process. They made sure we stuck to the schedule to get it finished by our own deadline and gave us very good advice. Tina was brilliant to work with, she guided us through the build with ease and professionalism. Thank you.”

The 5 things your newsletter must include

Friday, August 19th, 2011

A regular newsletter is the best way to let your clients and contacts what is new in your company, whether it be new products and services, or changes to the way your company works.

As the majority of your clients will not pro-actively check your website daily for updates, you sometimes need to reach out to them to get the information across.

A good newsletter can not only inform, but also convert readership into sales – you should use a combination of striking graphics, pertinent information, and (depending on your brand) humour.

There are many things you should include in your newsletter to make it stand out from the crowd – here are 5 of the most important:

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A collection of websites for Food Businesses (designed by Top Left Design)

Tuesday, August 16th, 2011

Food – Its yummy and we can’t live without it! (even if you tried). Designing a food website presents an interesting challenge – the design has to look good enough to eat!
Whether it be for a restaurant, or a company that sells food online, the focus has to be on the product, which in these cases, are the food itself, or the venue in which you will be eating the delicious consumables.

Good professional photography is essential for this genre of website, and thankfully, our clients recognise this with the beautiful images they have supplied to us in the past.

Read our blog post on professional photography in web design for more about that.

So without further ado, below are a range of fantastic food business websites that have been designed by Top Left Design.

Carmen Bar De Tapas

Carmen Bar De Tapas is an intimate tapas restaurant located in Clapham, London. The decoration and the friendly attentive staff create an atmosphere that will make you feel right at home.

A perfect venue to enjoy a romantic dinner for two, while also catering for larger groups of family and friends – It is a place to come and relax, and enjoy food as it is meant to be.

Carmen Bar De Tapas Homepage

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Websites for Law Firms and Legal Companies in the UK

Thursday, July 7th, 2011

Earlier we put up a post about Websites for UK Financial Advisers and Financial Planners and I wanted to do a showcase of the work we do with lawyers. With the new Legal Services Act there will be a real shift in the way law firms market themselves. We are looking forward to being on hand to help with this task!

Berkeley Law

Berkeley Law is based in Mayfair. They are a boutique practice serving high net worth private clients and their families, advising on wealth structuring, tax efficiency, trust issues, asset protection, succession planning and relocation to the UK.

Berkeley Law

Berkeley Law

Saunders Law

Known for their many years of experience in criminal law, this firm recently relaunched itself as a limited liability law firm, owned and managed by English solicitors. We used different colours for each section and the website comes across as bright yet still professional.

Saunders

Saunders

Curry Popeck

This is a firm based not far from our offices in the west end, and we worked on making sure the colours were bright and fresh while still making it extremely clear about their services and why clients would want to work with them.

Curry Popeck

Curry Popeck

The Brooke Consultancy

The Brooke Consultancy specialises in acting for Small Growth Companies and Social Enterprises from start up to generation of significant revenues – and this website is actually designed as a long scrolling page, whole website is on one page with anchor links.

The Brooke Consultancy

The Brooke Consultancy

9 great “Meet the Team” pages designed by Top Left Design

Thursday, June 9th, 2011

We pride ourselves in making an effort in designing each page with a purpose. This way the website doesn’t look templatey and the information on the page gives the information it needs to and looks visually appealing. Below is a specially compiled collection of Team Page Designs we have done here at Top Left Design. Feel free to comment and enjoy!

Aprirose

With this site we made a super cool script where you click on the person’s face and the box expands to show more information – check it out:

Aprirose team page

Aprirose team page

Fish Financial

For each member of the team, there is a unique testimonial which you get by clicking on the Read Testimonial link – genius!

Fish Financial team page

Fish Financial team page

Long Way Round

We kept with the textured postcard look and feel on this page that you can see on the whole site, and included nifty little “more” links.

Long Way Round team page

Long Way Round team page

OLIM

The profile pictures taken by their photographer were a unique landscape shape which makes this one a little bit different. And we have the little “More” link as well!

Olim team page

Olim team page

Petrus Financial

A cool little rollover script allows you to meet all the team by rolling over their heads!

Petrus Financial team page

Petrus Financial team page

Prescience

More outdoorsy shots of the team here.

Prescience team page

Professional Financial Centres

The team here each have their little note card which we think is a nice touch!

Professional Financial Centres team page

CWB IFAs

Close up shots for all and another rollover script for support staff.

SWB team page

Association of Women Art Dealers

This allows an at a glance look at the current members of AWAD

Association of Women Art Dealers team page

Introducing the new Flutterfly Events website!

Wednesday, May 4th, 2011

Recently we launched a website for another one of our lovely clients – Erika Unbehaun from Flutterfly Events. Erika is an American wedding planner in London who puts luxury, elegance and sophistication into everyday practice and wanted a website that reflects this. This project had an amazing turn around time – aided by some super speedy work from Erika with regards to getting content to us.

Flutterfly Events - Home

Along with being a lovely lady to work with, she also gave us a fantastic testimonial here at Top Left Design to share:

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Launching the Carmen Bar de Tapas website and their lovely testimonial

Monday, March 28th, 2011

Carmen Bar de Tapas website

Our lovely client at Carmen Bar de Tapas sent us a very nice testimonial last week after we launched their new website.

Here’s the testimonial they gave us here at Top Left Design:

“If you think that having a new website or renovating an old one is a bit of a headache think twice; Top Left Design understood my wishes, adapted to my requirements at once, and for me, dealing with them is a pleasure. Above all, they are so creative that they have highly exceeded my expectations in improving my site. They gave me a quote that suited my budget and once you see what they can achieve, you know it’s definitely worth it.”

We have also included Carmen Bar de Tapas as a case study on our website as we’re very proud of this site (as we are with all the sites we produce!).

Here are some more images of the site.

How Top Left Design is like Lionel Logue from the King’s Speech – helping clients communicate

Monday, February 28th, 2011

King's Speech - on the homepage of our website design for Prescience Film Finance

You may not know this, but we created a website for Prescience Film Finance, which is the company that financed the extremely popular and successful Oscar winning film – The King’s Speech.

A long sentence

For those who have not seen this movie yet, The King’s Speech is about King George VI and his early years as king where he struggled with stuttering and worked with Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue who helped coach him to be confident and competent enough to make those all important speeches as king of England! (whew!)

Communicate key messages with confidence

Here at Top Left Design, like Lionel Logue we  help with communication and help our clients communicate their key messages more clearly though our clean and clear straightforward websites, and we offer them the possibility to express themselves better, and feel more proud of their online presence. The more clear and prepared your message is, the more relevant and effective it is.

This movie is a good example of the importance of communication to achieve your goals. So if you have nothing planned for this evening, run to the closest cinema, buy a large basket of popcorn, make yourself comfortable and enjoy this movie, you  won’t regret it and in the back of your mind, you can think about Top Left Design and our amazingly clear communicative websites the whole time!