Persona

Posted at: 12:18 PM by Hammad

The recent exhibition stand we produced for Picsolve has been so sucessful that it's been sent out to their Far Eastern division in China and we've been commissioned to produce another one for the European market.

The design of the stand included a number of innovative ideas and combined with the striking artwork throughout is clearly world-class. Some of the things we did on the project:

• Engineered a new wall hanging / hook system to create a seamless and roll-top finish.
• Built a centre console in-house for their kiosk, that can be packed down into standard flight cases.
• Embeded mini-touch screens to make the stand interactive; including artwork.

Labels: exhibition, marketing, picsolve

Posted at: 12:14 PM by Hammad

This month we've completed an update to the ever growing Diva Telecom brand.

Since we first worked with them (almost 3 years ago), Diva have always been keen to keep their brand and communications fresh - a strategy that has clearly worked, as they're enjoying phenomenal growth (including a new home in their super-environmentally friendly offices).

In parallel to the growth of the product and service ranges Diva Telecom carry, we've produced a new suite of illustrations to bring life and identity to each one. The bright, modern styles keeps within style we previous set in the brand, justifying the approach we took (which was to plan for scale).

The new designs are already in use on a refreshed web site at www.divatelecom.co.uk

Labels: branding, creative, diva telecom, illustration

Posted at: 12:02 PM by Hammad

If you're a small, growing business that could benefit from some equity investment, you wont find a better place to research and contact the right people than the new Growth Investment East Midlands web site which was launched this month.

www.ginem.co.uk

Following a formal tendering process, the EMDA backed organisation commissioned Persona as their brand stewards and communications agency.

Our remit has been fully integrated and so far we've delivered a new visual identity, marketing material, advertorials and event signage.

The key channel though is the new web site at www.ginem.co.uk which has been developed on our Content Management System (CMS) for easy maintenance and longevity. The site has a clean, professional and modern design that's aimed at entrepreneurs, along with a suitable wealth of no nonsense news, articles and resources. It's worth bookmarking this one, as already the site content is updated regularly with events and videos.

Don't forget, if you need to regain control of your web site and could benefit from a more user-centric communications strategy, speak to us and we can have a friendly chat to see if we can help.

Labels: advertorials, cms, illustration, signage, technical, web design, website

Posted at: 2:07 PM by Marianna

Persona is involved in a new IA project for the redesign of one of a partner's client website. The deadline for designing a new sitemap for the client's website was tight so we conducted a card sorting exercise to identify possible ways to design the navigation layout.

The Card sorting method was chosen among other user-centred design methods as it is a useful tool Information Architects' use when they have to design a website sitemap in a quick, inexpensive, and reliable way. Card sorting helps efficiently structure the information you have. Furthermore, it gives suggestions for navigation, menus and taxonomies. (Donna Maurer)

The card sorting method usually does not provide results that can be used in the final structure of a sitemap, but can help to resolve several initial issues as:

• Structure the Information under the same group
• Find names for the groups
• Identify categories that the Information Architect might have not included
• Identify whether users want to see information structured with focus on subjects, audiences, or both

In order to organise the test sessions, we formed a list with items that could be placed in each card. Then we created 53 different cards with short labels that participants could quickly read but were detailed enough for the card content to be comprehensible. Seven individuals were invited to participate on the exercise. They were advised to carefully read the cards and try to group them accordingly. Throughout the sessions, we tried to answer some of their questions and took some notes to keep track of insightful comments they made. Finally, at the end of each session, we encouraged each individual to add any other cards he thought would be appropriate, or exclude any he thought were not relevant within any group.

Some individuals preferred to organise the cards in groups and then decide which will be the name of each group (picture 1, 2) while others chose to form a sitemap by first identifying the main navigation sections and place each card under them where appropriate (pictures 3, 4, 5). None of the individuals added any new card, though some of them excluded some which proves that we might have added more cards than those needed.

Picture 1

Picture 2

Picture 3

Picture 4

Picture 5

After the completion of the exercise, we gathered all the results and designed a sitemap, taking into account most of the users' preferences. The whole card sorting procedure proved to be very helpful as we wanted to form a navigation layout that would be more user- than project-driven. This method of involving real users before the design helped reach that goal and it also reduced the research time.

Finally, we would like to thank all the participants involved for their time and clever suggestions.

Labels: card sorting, experience, ia, sitemaps

Posted at: 2:56 PM by Lewis

I often try to keep up-to-date with the latest developments at the W3C, and in particular with CSS. There are many useful and promising features outlined for CSS3 (the next spec for CSS standards, which are in development as I speak) that have already got me excited probably more than is really necessary. One of the more obviously inspiring advancements though, will be with web fonts.

For years web designers have been mostly stuck in a rut with web typography; restricted to a only a handful of fonts because developers such as myself have to keep a tight reign on what's possible, knowing that fonts on one particular computer will not be the same on another's. Although the solution to these restrictions has traditionally been to create imagery to represent such fonts, this and other methods present their own set of problems and required work-arounds for developers, and in general we remain restricted - stuck in the past. It's amazing how little progress (though some would say obvious given the circumstances) has been made with web typography over the years, despite the capabilities being there for some time.

CSS3's font selector should eradicate all of that. With it, it will be possible for developers to specify not just another boring old font, but actual TrueType fonts. How? By simply referencing the location of the font file itself in a CSS, so if the user has the font installed on their machine or not, it won't matter because the CSS can pull them in accordingly and render them on the page (providing they are using a web browser which supports CSS3, of course.)

Currently, only the latest version of Apple's Safari browser has implemented the spec - but it's there, and it works. Both Opera and Firefox plan to include the selector in upcoming versions of their browsers.

Problems? As always, Microsoft (in their own non-standard ways) are unlikely to be keen on such a method, and instead propose a font format of their own. Although they are beginning to demonstrate better understanding and willingness to comply to standards with their upcoming Internet Explorer 8, only time will tell if the specs are properly implemented. Hey, we can hope, right?

In the mean time, we can all declare support for features like this by supporting, using and actively promoting the use of standards-based browsers such as Firefox and Safari, which do take the time to follow these exciting proposals, and in turn send out a clear message to those who don't. Because in the end, designers, developers and the general public want feature-rich functions like this, making the web just that little bit more engaging to use in the process.

Labels: css, css3, safari, technical, web, web typography