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.

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.”

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!

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!)

Here are my top 11 so far (in no particular order):

Get yourself out there!

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!

Shortcuts

Designing can be a very long process – unless your equipped with the magic shortcuts!

I’ve learnt a countless amount of shortcuts whilst working at TLD for a range of programmes, shortcuts don’t only save you time but also give your mouse a well earned rest.

*Please note we never take shortcuts when thinking up the brilliant ideas behind your designs, and also recommend to never take shortcuts in life!

Design is where the heart is

One of the best things about working at Top Left Design is being surrounded by a team that are passionate about design! Without this passion and drive we wouldn’t be able to produce the beautiful, professional and unique designs which we’re known for.

Size does matter

When designing it’s always important to have a balanced hierarchy of text and images. We always make sure that all elements work in harmony with one another creating a well balanced design.

The size of text, and fonts are fundamental in establishing headings,  subheadings, and  body text. The key is to use font styles, colours and perhaps two different fonts consistently to represent each section of text, it’s also always important to make sure the text is legible and balances well with images.

A good eye for balance whilst designing really does make a difference  – so you see, size really does matter!

Attention to detail

Good design requires a meticulous eye for detail. Its no use creating a beautiful design with those awful mistakes which make your head feel like its going to pop!

When designing we always check that the line height of text, and alignment of different elements is consistent, it’s also important to allow your design to breath. And of course we always look out for those dreaded spelling mistakes, missed full stops and bad grammar!

The importance of presentation

At Top Left Design we’re always presenting new ideas and designs to clients so its important that these designs are presented clearly and professionally.

Creating storyboards is one way which we present website designs. Live storyboards allow clients to view their designs in a browser, they can then compare each design and are also able to see what their site could look like live.

It’s also a handy way for them to get feedback from a friend or colleague, they can simply forward the link for a second opinion.

How to communicate with clients

Communication is key in any business and here at Top Left Design we make sure we’re always able to communicate clearly with clients through emails, phone calls, and meetings.

I’ve learnt how to structure emails which effectively communicate to clients any changes that have been made to their designs, quote for design work and have also learnt how and when to include polite suggestions for further changes/work – its always nice for clients to have input from the designer to help them along the way with the development of their design project. Phone calls – of course I mastered on the first day! (the traditional – Hello Nichaela speaking, how can I help-pen-paper-message) although the in-depth discussion and meetings are still yet to come…

When approaching a new design project it’s essential for both the designer and client to feel comfortable in developing the forthcoming designs. Its important for us to know the style of design the client desires, so we can feel confident in delivering the designs and making changes. Good communication is what makes your design perfect.

How to spot a good image

When including images on websites, in blogs, newsletters etc. its always important that you choose images which are eye catching, attractive and don’t look ‘clip arty’.

Below are three different types of photography, and two tips which will never fail you – what to look out for when your sourcing images :

Bokeh Photography
Bokeh is an adaptation from a Japanese word meaning blur. Photographers create this effect using lenses to adjust focus in the foreground or background, essentially highlighting one object and blurring and expanding areas of light. Just type Bokeh photography into your search engine and see what comes up – the images are amazing!

Macro Photography
This close up style of photography is always good if you want to show attention to detail. For example if your a restaurant or food company this type of photography will effectively show off your delicious food, or if your a florist it will highlight the beautiful detail of  your flowers in a very sophisticated way.

Tilt Shift Photography
Tilt Shift photographers cleverly create ‘toy like’ scenes using a special lens and movement of their camera. This type of photography creates an interesting and dynamic picture, turning your everyday scene into a miniature world.

Image source: www.smashingmagazine.com

Image source: www.hongkiat.com

Photography with interesting perspectives, arrangements and use of focus
Images with objects or people just plonked in the center aren’t very interesting and don’t draw in peoples attention. An interesting perspective, and arrangement of objects or people and use of focus will always catch someones eye.

Photography with ‘good’ backgrounds
Try to avoid images with white backgrounds as these can look very clip arty – unless of course you need an image with a white background. A nice scenery or textured background is always a great choice.

*remember its always good to think outside the box when choosing  images, make sure they’re interesting, but also relevant to the message you’re trying to convey.

How to mask!

For all you non Photoshoppers out there masking is a very handy tool which can be used in Photoshop, and other Adobe software which I recently found out exactly how to use it!

A mask can be made of one object e.g. a box for an image slider on a website. This mask can then be applied to another object such as an image, this will effectively make the image fit within the exact same space as the box – very handy in maintaining a precise and consistent design! See my example below:

Finished! or am I…

Its important not to get ahead of yourself. At Top Left Design we always encourage clients to let us know of any changes they want to their design work. We do whatever we can to create a design which reflects what they envisioned and recognise the jobs only finished when the clients are happy with their final product.

And last but not least… How to make a good cup of tea (I think)

One of the very first things Keren taught me! I’m petrified of making tea for people in case they don’t like it, but no complaints so far! Looks like Keren’s magic paid off.

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:

Composition

Align, align, align! Well-aligned elements within your layout make your website look tidy and organized. You can see an example of this on the Performance Resolution website.

Colours

Choosing the right combination of colours in reference to the client’s brief, and referring to the colours of their existing branding, is a difficult and important task in order to create visual harmony within the new branding and website. It’s also good to have some contrast between different elements to highlight important sections of the website, you can do this by using a combination of bright and dark colours, and this can also help to guide the reader through the site.

Visual Hierarchy

You should highlight things important like the services offered by your company, and keep less important things more simple. You can see on the A Business Innovation website that there services are highlighted in boxes making this section stand out to people.

Consistency

The website should be consistent, each page should be identifiable as part of the whole.

The little things matter

Details are very important in any type of work. It is the same with the design: details are the difference between a good design and great design.

When I started working on design layouts, I realised that every final site produced perfectly reflected the final design. This means the margins, padding, backgrounds and borders have to be perfectly consistent through your designs, it’s also important that the colours and fonts stay consistent throughout the site.

At the beginning of my internship it was very hard for me to follow these rules, I found it easy to make small mistakes in a layout, such as remembering to make sure everything is aligned exactly, making sure the right colours are used throughout, and ensuring the titles are consistent sizes. And the fact is I didn’t understand why it was so important because by definition, it was only small details… But now I know why.

Looking out for the little things whilst designing and remembering your ‘rules’ whilst designing really does have it benefits:

• The most obvious: The work looks more professional, if you always make small mistakes your reputation will suffer.

• You don’t waste time explaining these little mistakes when the client is viewing your designs. Everything is perfect and so you can focus spending time discussing the things that really matter.

• It makes you more organized. If you’re organised and have named each of your layers in Photoshop, and grouped these into folders it means when you come to making small changes you save a lot of time. Naming your layers in Photoshop is really important when you are working in a team as it’s not only you that will be working on those files.

• Faster development. For example if you design a blog which is not correctly aligned and you send it off to the programmer to be built, the programmer doesn’t have to waste time figuring out if you made a small mistake or if it was intentional.

Check your work

This tip is linked to my previous point. The final design has to be perfect to avoid a dissatisfied or disappointed client. Everything is double checked to be sure the result is as expected. Sometimes when you work for a long time on a design you can’t detect mistakes easily. That’s why it’s important to have someone else in the team to take a look over the design, and see if there are any little tweaks which need to be made.

Keep it simple

A design can look sophisticated and professional without many design elements which may just prove to be useless. Personally when I’m looking through a website for information about a company, I prefer to see a clean and minimalist design where it’s easy to find what you want, and not be distracted by things that are not as important.

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.

Of course at University I’m used to working on many projects at one time. But the big difference between school and an internship is that here, there is always somebody to help you to improve your work, and also to explain to you why it could be improved and above all HOW. It’s not just a mark at the end of a semester; it’s a real explanation – a great way to learn how to improve your skills, so each time you design it gets better and better.

Is 10 weeks too short a time to have a well-rounded vision of the world of work, and significantly develop your knowledge surrounding design? Do you really think so? If so, I hope I can persuade you to change your mind…

The 3 common mistakes that I made at the beginning of my internship:

1.  When designing I either made the line spaces too big or too small, but never the size they were supposed to be.

Solution: Be patient and analyse carefully existing designs to find the perfect spacing for yours. You always have to check what size the font is and adapt the line space accordingly. It’s the same for the spacing between the different design elements e.g. image sliders and boxes. The spacing needs to be consistent throughout allowing your design to breathe.

2.  Designing without enough individuality or character!

Solution: Add colours to the design and noise to the background, this makes the website background look textured and helps to make the website look welcoming. The best way to be inspired whilst designing is to have a look at great examples of website design which already exist on the web.

3.  I would sometimes design using too much text – nobody wants to read a page like that!

Solution: Put 2 or 3 colourful boxes to catch the viewer’s attention, and always try to find good images to space out the layout, this will make the page more harmonious. Plus you can always add a read more link.

The 3 types of tasks at Top Left Design which helped me to learn more about design:

1.  Creating a homepage layout using the brief filled out by the client

Even if you have never met the client, you have to be able to understand their brand and brief to be able to create a design which is fresh and new, but also very personal and relevant to the company. It’s important to include all of the design elements which the client has asked for within the layout, e.g. a blog feed, image slider and side navigation.

2.  Design all of the inner pages of a website even if you didn’t create the homepage

When designing inner pages it is important to follow the final design of the homepage. You have to make sure the style of design throughout the rest of the site is consistent with the homepage. It’s important to be really conscientious to ensure that the fonts, colours, and small details such as borders of boxes and so many other things are the same across all of the pages.

3.  Working on the creation of a logo

Such hard work! Of course you need to create a design which suites the clients brief and brand, but you need to have THE idea which will make the logo unique. It’s important to create something recognizable and also distinctive, however with a small amount of intricate details ensuring the logo will remain legible when used at a smaller size.

As you can see, you need much more than simply just knowledge of software to be able to create a great design. University taught me technical skills; Top Left Design gave me the opportunity to go beyond that.

To conclude, my first impression was that the team seemed to be so friendly… And now, the last thing that I can say about Top Left Design is that the team is definitively, extraordinarily friendly!

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

“Top Left Design exceeded my expectations ten-fold. I wanted a new website because mine was old, outdated and didn’t represent the style of weddings or clients that I typically represent. Plus, I had done the website myself so the fonts, designs and SEO was not up to par. Top Left Design finished my website in record time and within three weeks I had two new bookings and four enquiries- a huge increase in enquiries from my last website! Top Left Design have kept my brand consistent by designing my twitter page, and they sat me down for an afternoon to teach me the etiquette of blogging! I highly recommend them for any website or graphic design project. Thank you Tamlyn, Keren, Tina and team.”

The site has a gallery displaying some beautiful images from weddings that Erika has organised, as well as a blog she regularly posts informative, wedding related articles on, keeping the Flutterfly Events website regularly updated.

Here is an illustration I did at the end of February for Top Left Design’s Facebook fan page. We used it for the  banner image on the page and you can see it in all it’s glory here. Keep a look out for more themed Facebook banner illustrations soon from the team here at Top Left Design.

Summer is officially over and the TLD team have been up to all kinds of outdoor shenanigans in 2010. We’ve jumped off 30 foot cliffs in Wales with the young people at Our Say Our Way and hugged trees at Go Ape. Our latest team building experience included a trip to Brighton for a bit more water action and quad biking. Want to hear more? Well here you go!

Things stated off peachy, Keren, Tamlyn and Michael came by car with Anders (Keren’s hubbie) at the wheel and our good friend, Chris taking my seat in the car (No, don’t worry I wasn’t abandoned, forgot about or anything like that, it was just quicker for me to take the train!).

My train journey was pretty calm, collective and peaceful. The car journey was slightly more, shall we say “energetic” with rock music, Radio 1 on loud and a few strong words when they got stuck in traffic jams. To top it off though, and I only found out once we had all arrived, that the directions to the hotel that I had carefully planned in the itinerary were all wrong! Haha! Never mind, we all make mistakes!

After we’d unpacked and been fed and watered, we headed along to our first activity of the weekend, paddle boarding at Hove Lagoon. As we walked down the long promenade we were all looking out to sea to try catch a glimpse of this idyllic blue lagoon we were hoping for. Turns out that Hove Lagoon is more of a large outdoor lido, around a meter in depth and full of very salty water indeed.

After we had shimmied into our wetsuits it was time to grab a kayak and get paddling. We split down into two teams (girls v boys) and played British Bull Dog water style and team relays. Feeling quite exhausted from all the splashing around, we then had a go at “stand up paddle boarding”.

For those who don’t know, stand up paddle boarding consists of a 12 foot board and one long paddle. The aim is to start on your knees until you are confident enough to stand and paddle. We all managed to stand and before long we were paddling the length of the lagoon with the wind behind us.

To finish the session off we had a bit of fun and spit into 2 teams again and had a race to build a raft, get it in the water and round a buoy in the middle of the lagoon. The boys took a more tactical approach using nearly every piece of equipment to hand while we, the girls took a more hosh bosh approach using lots and lots of rope to thrash our raft together.

The test was to carry the rafts to the edge of the lagoon and hop on. We (the gals) managed this successfully but alas the boys raft disintegrated underneath them and Michael and Anders were left floating on their backs with their feet in the air.

After the water activities we went back to the hotel for a quick shower and headed to Brighton for a meal and then some shape shifting on the dance floor at Ink Bar. That’s as far as I will go here as I wouldn’t want to embarrass anyone!

Sunday started early with a full cooked breakfast, tea and toast. We then all headed to the car/taxi for our 15mins (by my itinerary) journey to the quad bike centre.

We were the first group to go out in our white overalls and smelly helmets. We got shown the basics of quad biking and then we were off. The gals took the larger quads and the lads had the smaller ones. Apparently the small ones went faster, however, Tamlyn was flying on hers!

We started off easy, going round in a figure of 8 in crocodile formation. Then we went cross country, up some manmade ramps and though some woodlands. It was at this point that our first accident of the whole 2 days nearly occurred when Keren managed to wedge herself on a bank while going down a rather steep hill. Luckily she managed to stall the quad and hop off the bike stopping it from bumping into the back of me. Pheww!

Anyways after all the high speed quad biking we thought we deserved a nice lunch back in Brighton before heading back home.

All in all the weekend was a hit and we had some proper time away from the office to bond and do things we have never done before! Hopefully there will be more fun times ahead of us next spring summer to look forward to. Watch this space!

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!