Wednesday, January 25th, 2012
You may have seen Keren’s blog post about Pinterest last week. Well over the weekend I blogged about her “Owl” board and found some inspiration for my first illustration of 2012.
Here are a few of my favorite “owly” delights from Keren’s Pinterest board.
And here’s my “Twit Twoo” illustration, inspired by all the “owl” talk here at Top Left Design. Hope you like it!
Monday, January 9th, 2012
Today, Michael put up his iPhone 4S with Olloclip fisheye lens up on our office door using a Gorrillapod and Glif+ mount to hold it in place.
Then he took a timelapse movie of us working away like the busy bees that we are. We also wanted to send a special mention to Amy who works in our Cape Town Office and hasn’t physically been in our new London office yet.
We did have time to wave at all you lovely folk. It’s good to be famous! Check out the video. it’s truly awesome!
And here is a picture of the kit!
Friday, December 23rd, 2011
This year I set myself the challenge of of writing a blog post everyday this month. The posts are inspired by the “12 Days of Christmas” rhyme and have opened my eyes to all things Christmassy!
I chose to blog about different designers festive gifts from “brooches” to biscuits, cards to Christmas wraps, and along the way made a few new friends too!
Here are a selection of some of the lovely treats I found on my journey:
Have a gander at my 22 festive blog posts so far and keep your eyes peeled for 2 more!
Thursday, December 1st, 2011
By now you must all be aware of Movember – it’s been hard to ignore this year, thanks to a great marketing campaign, fantastic use of social media to increase involvement, and all the dodgy moustaches you’ve been seeing for the last month!
In case you’ve been living under a rock though, Movember is an annual charity challenge, whereby men grow a moustache in order to raise money for Prostate Cancer.
Movember
This year was my 3rd year of participation, and I’m extremely happy to announce that I smashed my target of £1000 – by raising over £1200! Of course I wouldn’t have been able to get to that figure without the help of everyone who donated, and supported me along the way – with words of both encouragement and mockery… So thanks for that!
You can see my donation page here – with a load more pictures and other such moustache related nonsense!
Movember Mike 2011 Website
I took it upon myself to redesign and rebuild my “Movember Mike” website this year – a fresh lick of paint is always a refreshing change, and this time around I built it responsively. Before you ask, a responsive website is one that will re-arrange it’s content depending on the screen size of the device that you’re looking at it on. So it looks great on everything from an iPhone to a 40″ TV screen – give it a try by dragging the corner to make the site larger or smaller! Oooooh…
Digital Sizzle Moustaches
Not satisfied with simply having a new website to promote my efforts, I raised even more “cash for tash” by running an event in aid of the charity – Digital Sizzle! This is a side-project that me and 2 other guys set up, which we run in our spare time: a quarterly networking event for tech-types and media-moguls. We hosted the evening at the Adam Street Private Members Club on The Strand, and had over 250 people in attendance! We even had some moustache judging awards, with our special guest judging panel consisting of Omid Ashtari from Foursquare, Stephen Sobey from Yahoo, and Steve Webb from Google. Needless to say, much fun was had on the night, and a lot of money was raised for a worthy cause – over £3,000 in total from our team!
Me and Chris Shanahan, Top Left Design friend!
The next day saw no rest for the moustache, as I was off to the Official Movember Gala Parté – in full 1940′s military costume! I say this every time around, but it’s the best night of the year without fail – and I look forward to each and every one. There’s something quite special about a venue full of thousands of costumed men and women, all in a great happy charity mood! Nothing quite comes close in my opinion – there’s a fantastic atmosphere, and my kudos goes to the Movember events team for consistently throwing a brilliant party every year.
The Finished Article
And with the end of the month, out comes the shaver once more… Last night I said goodbye to my furry friend, and washed him down the plughole with my own tears – at least 3 times today I’ve gone to stroke my missing follicles… Nevermore, nevermore…
Until next year, that is!
Wednesday, November 9th, 2011
How did it all start that every seminar we have freshly baked branded cupcakes? You should first know that we have them baked and iced by our very own, very creative lovely Tamlyn.
Below is a picture of her holding branded TLD owl cupcakes. Proof!
It started when for a “Make My Lunch” – Tamlyn made them for dessert. This is when one of the team at TLD cooks lunch for everyone and we all eat together. Every company should do it!
Here is what that iconic first batch looked like:
I was so impressed, so I commissioned Tamlyn to make them for all of our seminars. And so it became a tradition! They really taste delicious too. Have a look at just a small selection from recent seminars.
Cupcakes with our logo and the Enthuse Marketing logo for our joint seminar with Tamsin Fox Davies
We had a special owl with sunglasses for our "Pimp My Website" seminar
There was even a unicorn!
TLD cupcakes in the making - an arty shot
Owl cupcakes and hairy cupcakes
We also asked Tamlyn to make them for my cousin's baby shower
Some people come to our seminars just to try them! And they aren’t disappointed!
If you would like to try them, you can! Our next seminar is on the 8th December – Social Media for Professional Services. If you just came for the cupcakes, that would be fine (but you may accidentally learn some stuff too!)
Saturday, October 29th, 2011
We have just sent our latest newsletter masterpiece and this newsletter was dedicated to the number 8. We all worked on it – writing copy, coming up with all the little details, checking for typos, putting together the HTML and images – a real team effort! Thanks to all those who helped with proofreading our test previews!
Friday before Halloween – our newsletter is very much Halloween themed. We have our TLD owls dressed up in pumpkin costumes.
Henry the Octopus – as it’s the end of October we wanted to create a new character for our TLD zoo – an Octopus. We named him Henry and put a moustache on him. This is him without the moustache!
End of the month and nearly “Movember” – Every year, Michael grows his moustache to raise money for charity as part of November. Have a look at his “Movember Mike” website – we welcome all donations! This means we have to explain to any clients who come and visit us why he has a thick “mo” but it’s worth it, and our clients are really understanding. We also wanted to link to our team page – as we have 8 members of our team now – and also because we updated team page with moustaches in time for November (or Movember)
Tamlyn is off to run the NY Marathon – we needed to let every one know that she is off – before she went – so all sorts of positive vibes could help her in this grueling run! And so, we featured this in our newsletter.
Cupcakes - Tamlyn is also the genius behind our amazing illustration work and also our branded cupcakes. We first discovered her unique talent when she made lunch and cupcakes for us on a “Make My Lunch” day, which is a thing we do here at Top Left Design – we have lunches where one member of the team makes lunch for the others. One day, she made branded cupcakes for us and we definitely wanted to have her make them in time for Halloween!
Weekend reading – we know that on weekends it’s time for relaxation and this is why we want our newsletter readers to be able to sit back and read our newsletter in a relaxed fashion over the weekend. Or, on a Friday afternoon when they getting ready to finish work for the week. Or, when they get in on a Monday morning, before the madness of the week happens. So, Friday afternoon was the perfect time!
8 websites - As we dedicated the newsletter to the number 8 (based on the month October) we wanted to showcase 8 new websites we launched since our last newletter. We may be launching a couple more next week so we didn’t want to risk having too many showcased sites! Clever, huh?
The number 8 - this is the 8th reason – I think it is apt to dedicate the last reason to the number 8. Simple, yet effective, don’t you think?
Tuesday, October 11th, 2011
Now a full time member of the TLD team, I first came to Top Left Design as an intern for two weeks when I was just 14 years old. I’ve spent a lot of time with the team helping out for the past four years and have learnt countless amounts of new and interesting things, and still have much more to learn!
Here are my top 11 so far (in no particular order):
Networking, blogging and social media are the way forward! At Top Left Design Keren and the team frequently update followers and clients with the latest events, offers and daily office going-ons.
Through this constant contact with people, TLD are continually establishing new contacts, friendships and exciting new ventures.
If you get yourself out there and approach marketing with confidence it will reflect on your business and also your own personal confidence – don’t be afraid to be the boldest of the bunch!
Thursday, August 18th, 2011
Julien is one of the two french students (Julien and Caroline) who spent a 10 week internship at Top Left Design. In this post he shares with you a few new things he learnt about design.
Hi everyone! I’ve just finished my 10 weeks internship here at Top Left Design. Usually I work more with the programming side of things, and have never really learnt much about the design process. I like coding because I’ve learnt a lot about how to do it, and so now it’s easy for me. But during this internship I saw that design is not so different from coding, you have to always keep in mind some key rules and guidelines to create a good design.
Here are the 7 most important rules I learnt at top left design during my 10 great weeks:
Thursday, August 18th, 2011
Caroline and Julien are two french students who spent 10 weeks with the team at Top Left Design on a summer internship. 10 weeks have flown by! They have sadly left and will be truly missed by all of us at Top Left Design. In this blog post Caroline shares a little bit about her experience at TLD and the new things she learnt.
Here we are: 10 weeks have gone by, and it’s already the end. When I look at the pieces of paper which I wrote all of my tasks on each week, I think we can say that it’s been amazing. From tasks which took me several days to complete to some which only took me a few minutes, each week has been a new experience.
Tuesday, June 14th, 2011
Many of you already know that we are a teaching company and we regularly take work experience people who love to learn about designing and building websites and all the wonderful things that includes. This week we just took on 2 new interns, who are from France, and I asked each of them to give us one paragraph about their experience here.
“Hi everybody!
One week ago, I came from France to do my internship inside Top Left Design. I was a little bit afraid because I have a lot to learn about English, more particularly because of my accent. And if nobody understands me, how can I do?
In fact, the team of Top Left Design is so friendly that all my apprehensions are gone the first day. They take time to explain my tasks to me, and given that they are always smiling, the atmosphere is really nice! I’m sure that I will learn a lot with them.
I worked on Photoshop layouts, I learn’t things about WordPress that I didn’t really know before and I updated information on a website. The work is varied and I do several tasks the same day. Moreover, I noticed that all is really organized and that there is a real project management. It’s nice because it complete my formation at University which is more scientific, even if there is an artistic side too.
I’m sure that I will enjoy my internship in London!
Caroline”
“Hi! I’m Julien, I’m French (from Paris) and I just arrived at Top Left Design for a 10 weeks internship.
My first impression when I arrived in Top Left Design was astonishment. The office is great and I have never been in such working environment: it’s very well located, the place is very nice, and it’s well equipped. So we have everything we need in the flat, lacks only the weather…
For my first week I had to adapt myself at a new way of working, and try to figure out how the team worked. Fortunately everything is really well organised so it was really easy to quickly be productive. Moreover there is always someone in the office to help me if I need something. During this week, I’ve mostly done some maintenance works like adding new content or making small changes on some web designs.
It’s really important when you want to put a website online, to ensure that’s all is fine and work perfectly, so I checked some of the new website that TLD is going to launch soon. I also helped at the creation of website manual for these websites. To produce great content, clients need to have the possibility of update or create the content. It’s sometimes a little bit tricky, that why TLD helps them after the launch of their website, giving them all the instructions and great advices to provide an efficient content.
Hope it will continue in this way!”
We of course use Photoshop for resizing images but I wanted to include this as their pictures and this blog were the example in the recording. In fact you could say that this blog post starred in the screen cast, and Caroline and Julien are now YouTube stars!
