Design Matters: Web Design vs Print Design
October 30, 2008 by aoelof · Leave a Comment
In this next edition of design matters, TILT will be touching briefly on the difference between web design and print design. In fact, we decided to write this post also due to a very recent incident that happened to us.
Very often, there are companies who had requested for a print media design to follow that of a web design or vice versa. Though this can be done to a large extent, companies need to be aware of 1 simple point. For print media design, permanence and stability can be achieved with ease. However, this simply cannot be done on the web.
The Web Design World Is Just Different from the Print Design Media
With CSS, it is possible to get very precise layout. However, no matter how precise the web design layout is, it can never be as precise as print design. This is something that is, unfortunately, a fact which companies need to accept.
The web design can follow the print design by breaking the grid, having specific layout, font and other design elements. But are the tradeoffs worth it? Have you considered the download speed and maintenance issues?
It looks different!
In addition, in the web design world, it is so easy to build a web page and test it on your browser and you get it looking exactly the way you want it to be. However, the moment you test it on a different browser, it looks different. Not to mention about moving it on to another platform. It can look differently again!
At times, we hear from clients that they have staff who view the web site using a specific browser and it does not show up properly. Upon checking, very often, we realise that these users typically belong to 0.5% of the world’s web browser users. Is it worth then to make a perfectly working site look that way just to cater to that 0.5% and then risk ruining it for the remaining 99.5%? Simple mathematics. You decide.
VersionCue!
In print, it is very easy to export under another file name or overwrite the original file. So long as you path the fonts, the end user will definitely see the file as it is. However, for web, it is dependent on cache as well. Especially if you are working on CSS, it caches longer on the servers and it can take a long time to be cleared for you to see the updated version.
In fact, recently, one of our clients insisted that we had not made any of the changes simply because they cannot see the changes. They even went to the extent of copying out the source codes and sending it to us to show us that the source codes are wrong. We explained politely to them that if you are viewing the wrong page on the server, naturally, the source codes which you extract will definitely be wrong. Time is what is needed by you. Give it a bit of time and the right web site will show up soon. The end result was that 4 hours later, the client called us to ask us to make more minor changes and they said that they finally can see the updated changes and reminded us not to take so long to make the new changes. We politely informed them that since our last email correspondence with them, we had not worked on the website and the fact that they can view the website correctly now is simply due to the cache being cleared.
This few key differences between print design and web design is something which TILT seek for all companies to understand. If you can understand the difference and optimise it such that your workflow can be better, we are sure you can have a good relationship with your design company and your web design can then be truly optimise to be like a print design.
Design Matters: Website Design Maintenance
October 28, 2008 by aoelof · Leave a Comment
Through our course of work as a design company, we have heard several questions with regards to website design and we thought that through this latest chapter of design matters, we can touch on one of the most common questions which our clients have usually posed to us: Website Design Maintenance.
Typically, in the quotation stage, our clients usually ask us to quote for a maintenance contract for their newley developed website design. From TILT’s perspectives, we had usually advised them that it is better to leave it till the job has been confirmed, when we are almost completed with the website design (i.e. the project is about to finish), only then do we quote for the website design maintenance contract.
The reason behind this is very simple. When it comes to updating the information on your website design, the client generally have 2 options.
In-House Website Design Content Management
This method is usually useful if any of the below is applicable to your company:
Engage A Company
If the above option is not available to your company, it will be useful to consider this option. There are several companies in Singapore who can assist you in this area. Typically, when you are intend to engage a company to do website design maintenance, you can consider asking the company to provide you the various options
When requesting for a website design maintenance period contract, do ensure that the company which is quoting you includes in the following:
Of course, should you require any quotation from TILT, just drop us an email at enquiry@tilt.com.sg and we will be more than happy to provide a non-obigation quotation.
Design Matters: Is Your Brochure Design up to it?
October 26, 2008 by aoelof · Leave a Comment
We have been discussing about brochure design in our past few posts. We certainly hope our readers have beneffited from it. As we all know, you usually get only one chance to make an impression with your brochure design. The stakes are high and you definitely need to ensure it is a favourable impression.
As a recap of all the things which we had discussed previously, an effective brochure design is not about spending your entire budegt on it, which is the way TILT functions as well.
Regardless of the size of your company, we will like you to take a step back and look at your most current brochure design and put your brochure design to this test for effectiveness. As you go through each point, score your brochure with a “+1″ or “-1″. If you have more than 3 “-1″s, perhaps you can drop us an email at enquiry@tilt.com.sg and we can do a makeover for your brochure.
Emotional Appeal
Does your brochure design strike an emotional chord with your prospects? If you can touch the heart of your prospects and connect with their pains or desires, chances are, they will not take your brochure and throw it into the rubbish chute. With the emotional connection, the logical justification will happen.
Professionalism
Does your brochure design look professional? When we talk about professionalism, we are not referring to the brochure design feel but rather more with regards to form. Are the graphics of poor quality? Do you make use of clip art? These will put you on the fast track to downgrade your brochure design.
Personalise
Does your brochure refer to the situation from the prospect’s perspective? With this, we are referring more to copy. If your copy is such that it spends more time talking about your business and not connecting personally with your prospect (from their perspective), then your brochure design is in trouble.
Readability
Is your layout neat and readable? This is with reference in terms of the actual designing. Your brochure design should be pleasing to the eye and where necessary, include bullet points, arrows, boxes or any other graphics. This will guide the prospect to the information which you want them to read.
Say It Their Way!
Does your brochure design include technical language / jargons which your prospect will not understand? We all know that sometimes, it is impossible not to include technical language or jargons but it is vital to remove as much of it as possible. You need to talk in a manner in which your prospect can understand. The simpler the usage of language, the easier it is to connect with your prospects.
Be Focus!
Does your brochure design have only a single message? It is tempting for companies to try to include as much information as possible. Again, this will put your brochure design on the fast track of being thrown away. Packing it with a multitude of messages usually confuses the market and the end result? A waste of money by your company.
Action!
Does your brochure require the prospect to take an action? This is the key item which most brochure designs missed out on. Your brochure design should always be able to direct the prospect to take specific actions (perhaps to email you, make a phone call to enquire or to visit your website).
Vital Statistics
Does your brochure design include vital information such as contact details? This is something which is very obvious and yet is sometimes left out.
The Marathon!
Is your brochure design worth keeping? Sometimes, your prospect may not need your services / products at that particular moment. Make sure when doing the brochure design, there is a reason for the prospect to keep your brochure design.
Brochure designs can really help to brand your company and is a good and effective marketing tool. We hope that through these series of design matters, your or your company have benefitted from it.
Design Matters: Optimising Your Brochure Design
In this next edition of design matters, we will discuss more on optimising your brochure design.
As discussed earlier in Brochure design results with just 3 simple steps, there are elements which can make or break your brochure design.
Optimising Your Brochure Design
Here at TILT, we do hear from clients pretty often that “We need to design a brochure.” When we probe further to ask for the materials, very often, we find that the information (especially copy) is not ready yet. To add on, the clients will usually ask for sample designs. There are several times where we will advise the client that the design of the brochure cannot be done unless we have sample copy.
Know Your Objective or Intention
The fact is, to optimise your brochure design, the objective or intention of the brochure needs to be determine first. Having said that, this does not imply that by knowing the target audience, the brochure design objective or intention is known. Of course, knowing the target audience is a must but knowing whether the brochure should be one of an advertising nature or informative nature will bear a huge significance.
Brochure Design Copy
Next up, the copy which will be used is of great importance as well. Should it be written in a formal manner or perhaps in an informal manner? Can we do it in an interview style? How long should the text be? All these are of great importance. This is where copywriters come in. Don’t save the money. Pay for the copywriters as they can better represent your company with the copy which they come up with. With better branding, it is a better representation of your company!
Look Good!
Elaborating from our previous post, Let The Brochure Cover Out, the use of images are also of utmost importance. This can be done through a photoshoot, purchase of stock photographs or usage of high resolution photographs from your stock library. If all things fail, we can always rely on illustration as well. The choice (whichever of the above it may be) can be complicated. Again, on numerous occasions, TILT get requests from clients to
In the former case, this is an infringement of copyrights. While for the latter scenarion, these will result in the loss of resolution. We could say that choosing an image or picture is more complicated than writing the text for the brochure.
The text and images have to be ready before starting with the brochure design.
Brochure Design Form
In the previous section, What’s in a Brochure, we had given some examples of form. To optimise your brochure design, this is one which has utmost importance as well. When your target audience receive the brochure, the sense of sight and touch is activiated. All that we had discussed previously was based on the sense of sight. In holding the physical brochure, we are now touching on the sense of touch.
The type of paper, format and size holds just as much importance as the concept. In using, for example, recycled paper, the design can be very different from designing based on a gloss artpaper. To illlustrate this, perhaps you can imagine a brochure that is to be printed on gloss artpaper to be very colourful. The material allows the colours to be brought out in a vibrant manner. Whereas for recycled paper, perhaps the design can then be more pastal to bring about a more rustic feel to it. Though in the marketing area, there has still not been a thorough investigation about the importance of senses, but through our experience, we do see the trend where a successful brochure usually has the abovementioned elements.
If you ever need a brochure design, do feel free to drop us an email at enquiry@tilt.com.sg. We will be glad to have a chat with you such that the brochure design for your company can be optimised in the end and you can have a successful marketing tool.
Sports Top 25
We recently posted some pictures of TILT’s sports photography of the Singapore Paintball Novice Series on a regional website which showcases only sports photography. The website is none other than www.sportsTOP25.com.
To our surprise, just a day after we posted the pictures up there, TILT received an email on our posting.
GREAT paintball shots, I look forward to seeing more of your work.
Jake
jake@SportsTOP25.com
www.SportsTOP25.com
We sure are glad our work is being appreciated. Kudos to Paintball Association (Singapore) for giving us this wonderful opportunity as well.
View the page here!
View our related post here.
Design Matters: What’s in a brochure
Typically used as a small, lightweight and cost-effective measure by companies, do you know that a brochure can be more than just that? A brochure can be a powerful and an impactful, yet informational and promotional tool for branding your business and thus in the process increase your exposure for your company, be it in Singapore or anywhere in the world.
Here at TILT, our cilents had requested at differing times to ask us to design corporate brochure, product brochure, product update brochure, event brochrues, sales brochure and others.
Most clients prefer their brochures to be of DL size, simply for the logical reason of easy letter-shopping. The truth is, your brochure can be in any size and comprising any number of pages. What is the most important is that the brochure carries the correct message and is able to catch the attention of the target audience. This can be achieved through form, design and copy.
At TILT, we specialised in advising the clients the unique forms at an affordable budget for the clients such that at the end of it, the brochure is something that can reach out to the target audience. This, afterall, is the primary aim.
Touching on the form of the design, below are some of the common forms.
Less common designs
Depending on the information available, purpose of the brochure, each of the brochure design has its own strength and weaknesses. To hear our professional advice, just drop us a note at enquiry@tilt.com.sg anytime and we will be more than glad to advise you on what’s in a brochure.
2 in a row!
October 23, 2008 by aoelof · Leave a Comment
This has been a very meaningful year for TILT. The number 2 has a huge impact and has significant meaning to us.
In May 2008, we were awarded the Official Photographers for Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon (SCSM) 2008. Together with Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon 2007, that made it 2 in a row!
In August 2008, we were awarded the Official Photographers for WaterFest 2008. This included covering the events such as Aviva 70.3 Ironman, FINA World Cup, World Wakeboard Singapore and many other events. That’s 2 in a row again.
Today, in October 2008, we were awarded the Term Contractor for Photography for Republic Polytechnic again. The 2 events above were more of sporting events while the term contract for photography for Republic Polytechnic will be more of the following:
Again, coupled with the term contract for photography which TILT was awarded in October 2007, this makes it 2 in a row.
Well, there is the saying that 2 is a company, 3 is a crowd. We certainly hope that next year, it will be a very crowded year!
Here at TILT, we thank our clients in putting their faith in us once again and we certainly hope that this relationship can continue on for a long time.
You guys are great!
October 16, 2008 by aoelof · Leave a Comment
We recently organised a paintball team-building event for GIC Real Estate on 7 October 2008 at Red Dynasty Paintball Park. As you may know, Red Dynasty Paintball Park is situated inside Bottle Tree Park.
The fact that TILT is the official photographer for Singapore Paintball Novice Series 2008, organised by Paintball Association (Singapore), which is coincidentally held also at Red Dynasty Paintball Park means that we have had a long relationship with the staff there. In addition, with the revamping of the website of Bottle Tree Park, we were treated with a very warm reception. This great service, of course, was passed on to GIC Real Estate. The guys from GIC were sweating it all out, constantly strategising on how to win. The weather held up and the guys simply had a blast of their time. We will like to thank Bottle Tree Park on truly showing us that they are the Venue of Choice, a tagline which we had developed for them.
We were glad that the folks at GIC had throughly enjoyed themselves that day and what pleased us more was a simple short thank you note from GIC throughly warmed our hearts! These small thank you notes really make our day! We thank the guys from GIC too for their kind gesture!
It has been great working with you and your team from TILT!
Greg Baptist
Vice President
Administration and Corporate Affairs
GIC Real Estate Pte Ltd
The Final Showdown
October 13, 2008 by aoelof · Leave a Comment
Organized by the Paintball Association (Singapore) PBAS, Singapore Paintball Novice Series (SPNS) is the first official paintball tournament held in the Singapore. First introduced to Singapore 10 years ago, paintball has developed from a recreational paintball activity to a competitive scene where teams pit their skills amongst one another.
The SPNS is a 3-on-3 paintball tournament. The aim of the SPNS is to create paintball awareness in Singapore and to allow more people to take up this activity as a lifestyle sport. The integration of plans and vision from the PBAS will path the future for paintball in Singapore. With the sport gaining in popularity in region, the SPNS is a good platform for paintball enthusiasts to take the sport to another level. TILT is honoured to be the official photographers for SPNS to witness this new beginning.
Over the 3 legs, we have been shot numerous times during the 3 legs, climaxing with the final showdown (coincidentally the name given for SPNS Leg 3, 12 Oct 2008) of us bleeding after been shot not once but twice on the forehead. Afterall, we still have a bruise on our tie from being shot from Leg 2 to show off at this moment even after 4 months. Nonetheless, we applaud PBAS for their efforts and are glad to be a part of Singapore’s history.
FLOATZ
October 12, 2008 by aoelof · Leave a Comment
The 5th annual Wakeboard World Cup Series features world-class invitational wakeboarding and waterskiing events sanctioned by the International Water Ski Federation (IWSF). The concept of the World Cup is to bring together the world’s best athletes in a showcase event in prime locations.
Here at TILT, having been the official photographer for the event for the past 2 years, we witness the event moving downtown to Marina Reservoir after being at Bedok Reservoir for the past 4 years.
What was key to the event was a new hip hop event, FLOAT. Presented by the Butter Factory, FLOAT was the 1st Hip Hop party on the water featuring the hottest DJ’s & Live Act’s from 7 countries!
Catch the action below!
Be a Fan
