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Posts Tagged ‘Design’

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!

11 things I’ve learnt at Top Left Design so far

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):

Get yourself out there!

Onwards & Upwards

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!

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The designer tips I learnt at Top Left Design – by Julien Michot (one of our interns)

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.

Julien on his last day at TLD

Here is what Julien wrote

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:

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3,2,1… London 2011! You don’t need to be a sportswoman to develop your skills – by Caroline Campan (one of our interns)

Thursday, August 18th, 2011

Caroline Michot - on her last day of her TLD internship

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 is what Caroline wrote

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.

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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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Should we have professional photography in our website?

Tuesday, August 9th, 2011

Yes!

Having good quality images on your site can set you apart from your competitors in a big way. Have you ever been to a website and thought “those pictures are awful”? How did that affect your impressions of the company? I’d be willing to bet that your perception of the company went down some – the quality of your content is directly linked to how your visitors perceive the overall quality of your company.

There’s nothing worse than having a great website designed, only to populate the pages with low quality clipart style stock imagery, or dodgy team pictures.

  • If you are a venue – people will want to see the venue in all it’s glory
  • If you have a physical product – then show off the product with high quality pictures
  • If you have people in your business – (yes we know this means everyone!) – adding team pictures creates trust and transparency

Professional photography really does add a sophisticated and unique feel to your company and products. Below is just a small collection of  professional photography used throughout websites TLD has designed – now you’ll be able to see why professional photography is a must!

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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

I just emailed to say I love you – Our February newsletter

Monday, February 14th, 2011

With February being the month of love we decided what better way to spread a little love amongst those nearest and dearest to us than through one of our special TLD newsletters! A lot of love and effort always goes into them and this one is no different.

Top Left Design - I just emailed to say I love you

From stories about French boys, Make My Lunch and special branded cupcakes…

Make My Lunch

…to TLD Social Media seminars and giant urns (not in that particular combination or order!) we promise you won’t be disappointed!

Introducing Urn-ie!

Go on, have a read! You know you want to to! And if you’re up for a bit of a challenge, read to the bottom of the newsletter and do as it says.. you might be in for a pleasant surprise! Happy Valentine’s Day!

Our latest newsletter – Season’s Greetings

Thursday, December 23rd, 2010

We always work really hard on our newsletter and we want to show as many people as possible. So what better way than to blog about it!

Top Left Design Season's Greetings for 2010