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Whilst websites can serve a multitude of purposes they are typically used in business as an information repository that promotes your services and/or products online. What this means is that anyone with an internet connection can quickly and easily find out information regarding your company and what you can offer them.

  What are the benefits of having a website?

With internet access being standard in most households; website ownership has become necessary for business’ to compete with competitors and ensure that their services are seen by as many people as possible. A website in particular allows you to inform and educate viewers with clearly structured and engaging content; whilst other forms of promotion may not allow for such depth.

Updating promotional material is often troublesome, requiring re-printing and rendering all prior material irrelevant. With a website the flexibility to edit, add or remove content means that prospective customers are always met with relevant and high quality information that highlights your company in the best possible light.

With so many different types of website it doesn’t take long to find one that suits you.

What are the different types of websites?

Whilst all websites promote your company in some form they also often serve more specific purposes. For most business’ a brochure website is usually the type of choice; serving the function of informing and promoting but nothing more. For other business’ an e-commerce website may be the better option; allowing for the sale of products/services on the website itself and making it easier than ever for customers to make a purchase. Other types of website less commonly used in businesses include blogs and forums amongst others. Blogs essentially consist of multiple ‘posts’ that each cover their own subject matter and are usually used to talk about what is ‘happening’ each day. Forums are websites that allow for community discussion in the form of threads and posts; a thread being a topic discussion and posts being individual comments within the thread. With so many different types of website you can be spoilt for choice; but this doesn’t necessarily mean your website will be good.

What makes a good website?

Whether or not a particular viewer would consider your website ‘good’ is completely subjective. There are however things that you can do to help you site stand out amongst the crowd. Augmenting your website with interactive elements, for example, helps to engage and stimulate those viewing your website. Making your website responsive means that it will intelligently detect the size of the screen upon which it is being viewed and then proceed to dynamically scale the website content to fit on that particular screen; ensuring that your website can be seen on any device including mobiles and tablets. Even more simplistic is the usage of high quality and bespoke graphical assets, making your website look visually distinct and representative of the quality of your company and services.

What is Augmented Reality? Augmented Reality is a new type of mobile phone application that strives to bridge the gap between the digital and physical worlds. Augmented reality apps utilise the cameras found on almost all modern day mobile devices to experience the world around you in new and unique ways. You can virtually superimpose anything imaginable into the physical world. Using Augmented Reality Applications present a sure way to improve awareness of your brand or promotion campaign. By using this service you are guaranteeing to give your event or brand an extra dimension, allowing users to engage even more fully by simply using your branded app. How does Augmented Reality differ from Virtual Reality? Virtual reality replaces the real world with a computer simulated environment. This could be anything from a lifelike immersive experience such as a cockpit visualisation for pilot training to a completely imagined world. Therefore, whereas Virtual Reality seeks to replace the real world, Augmented Reality seeks to add further dimensions to the already existing environment. How can Augmented Reality benefit a brand? Customers will talk about your brand for one of two reasons; either because you have failed to meet their expectations or you have surpassed them. Augmented Reality is one way to ensure the latter, and demonstrates that you are an innovative and forward thinking company. Furthermore, with the accelerating smartphone market and shift to mobile devices, implementing Augmented Reality is an investment which can only continue to pay off in the future. This technology gives your target audience the richest and most interactive experience possible, and tells the story of your brand without commission driven sales advisors looking over their shoulder. The beauty of Augmented Reality is it puts the fun back into engaging with a brand, the novelty factor is exciting and gives customers a sense that they are accessing special or private content, making them feel valued rather than coldly sold to.  The icing on the cake is that recent research suggests that Augmented Reality increases the perceived value of products/services.  *need to add source Aside from wowing potential and existing customers, Augmented Reality technology can benefit a business behind the scenes as well. This technology could help to keep costs down; huge screens and media players required for 3D promotional activities are rendered obsolete when a customer can access the content directly through their mobile device. Furthermore, the vast amount of behavioural data available can help a business to truly understand how their (potential) customers are interacting with their brand, and areas they might consider improving. What are some practical applications of Augmented Reality?

Whilst the possibilities truly are endless, here are a few examples of how Augmented Reality could be used in a promotional setting:

Augmented Reality enabled packaging could activate an animated product demonstration, such as 3D spins and the product in use. This could be highly useful in cases whereby it is impractical to showcase each product.

A promotional stand could activate a video of real customer testimonials. Frequently customers search for reviews when they have left a shop setting, with a view to potentially making a purchase at a later date. Reading testimonials whilst viewing a product acts as strong social reinforcement, and may encourage a purchase there and then. 

Marketing material such as posters could activate exclusive time based promotions (e.g. valid for today only), again encouraging spontaneous purchasing.

As an alternative to customer help lines, support could be administered using Augmented Reality. For example, an app which acts as a virtual instructor for basic problem solving.

In an educational setting, certain historical and cultural locations could activate extra information and interactive learning resources

Your website proudly presents your business and its services, elegantly filling the screen with engaging content harnessed to a clear structure. You confidently refer your clients to your website, safe in the knowledge that it will efficiently direct them to all of the information they require, and more. You have ‘kept up’ with the digital revolution; you have an online presence and connect with clients using social media platforms.

So, what could possibly go wrong?

The Mobile Shift

Now more than ever, we expect information to be readily available at our fingertips. And I mean literally our fingertips; website engagement with a keyboard and mouse pad has long been losing out to touch screen mobile devices. A responsive web design is one way to ride with this mobile shift. This essentially means that the site layout adjusts in order to better suit the size of the device screen being used to view the website. Not that long ago, mobile optimised sites were rare, now responsive web design is an expectation.

Here’s an example of how a responsive website (www.paintingpixels.co.uk) adjusts to a variety of screen sizes:

The shift from laptop to mobile device (including tablets) can cause all sorts of things to go wrong. Horrors include overlapping content, pages falling off the edge of the screen, extensive page loading delays, illegible fonts and navigation rabbit holes to name a few. Needless to say, these are annoying and may cost you an interested customer.

  But what if your website has not been unusually distorted, and just looks like a miniature version of the pc site? Also problematic, this is an example of a desktop site rendered on a smartphone, and normally features overly wordy content and difficult navigation. Small buttons and drop down menus are designed to be used with a nimble mouse pointer, and such tasks do not translate well when attempted by clumsy fingers. However accurate mobile touch screen technology, rows of tiny buttons combined with a slightly impatient touch do not mix well.

  A client’s first experience of connecting with your business digitally should be effortless and enlightening, not frustrating. They don’t want to have to pinch the screen to adjust for tiny buttons, and they certainly don’t want to endlessly scroll sideways in order to view the site at a legible size. Unfortunately, as consumers we are impatient and have high expectations; if we haven’t found what we are looking for (or something interesting) we will quickly move on to another site and our return will be highly unlikely. Even worse, we are likely to associate this single negative mobile experience with the entire brand.

  Why lose out on interested clients simply because you have not provided an easy to use and engaging online experience? Fantastic content and stunning website aesthetics are wasted if they do not translate across the variety of devices customers are using to view it. Combinations of different brands, models and devices could put the number of different screen sizes to over 500. A business has seconds to make a great first impression; one that is hopefully not memorable for the wrong reasons.

  Painting Pixels Multimedia Design Studio specialise in web design in Ipswich, and all of our designs are tailored to, and work perfectly with, each device your customers may be using to connect with you. Whether you want to simply ensure your website looks great on mobiles, or completely update your digital presence with fresh graphic designs and engaging animations, we have the experience to make sure your first impression is a great one. 

Colours are not simply important, they are vital, and play a tremendous part in capturing people’s attention, their imagination and even evoking certain feelings. It’s important for us as designers to know about colours and their effects.

In Colour Theory there are a couple of core concepts that you must understand before beginning to think about designing something; the concept behind the colour wheel and also the kind of feeling each colour represents.

The colour wheel is simple; it shows what colours contrast each other and what colours that are nearby will create a colour harmony. Colours which are not on the colour wheel such as Black, White, Brown, Ivory and Cream are known as neutral colours. These colours generally work well as a backdrop for other colours.

Colour theory is a broad subject, but at its most basic it can be understood as two colour groups that evoke particular feelings. There are warm and engaging colours, and also those that are cool and relaxing. The warm colours are Red, Yellow and Orange and the latter are Green, Purple and Blue.

It’s vital to know how colours interact with each other; if combined in certain ways they have different effects on each other, for instance a red dot on an orange background will appear small and limp whereas that same red dot on a green background will become embellished, bold, and more fierce. This is called colour contrast or colour compliments and it’s used frequently in pop art, however it is also often used in visual design.

The reason you want to be aware of colours and their properties is because of how it will affect your brand image. Debatably the biggest part of your brand image is the colours you choose for your brand because colours are usually the first thing a person notices, and unfortunately quite often are books judged by their covers. For example, why would anyone want to do business with someone who is in the baby accessories sector but uses an aggressive colour like red in their branding? Who would want to invest in a heavy metal band that uses baby blue while promoting? Ideally you will be using colour theory to create a special aesthetic that doesn’t confuse the message of the colours with the product you’re branding.

Of course you are open to using more than one colour and hue in your branding but having a coherent colour theme and continuity throughout your branding is essential. If you’re a business promoting children’s clothes or toys it may be a smart idea to use warm and exciting colours like yellow and orange, yellow being a very hyper active and bright colour that likes to have fun while orange is attention grabbing but not overbearing and aggressive like red.

The Home-Start Shepway Website is a good example of great use of colour theory in branding; the organisation is a charity which gives help, friendship, advice or support to parents during when their children are young, and features a happy and warm colour scheme.

Apple is a very good example of colour in branding done right. Apple products mostly feature a white and grey colour scheme. The apple logo itself is mostly grey and because of that it allows apple to have a very formal, professional and desirable looking brand. People who see it want to be a part of it because it presents itself as the provider for essential personal and professional equipment. The utilisation of white really helps to emphasise the professional colour scheme too.

In essence using colour theory in branding is about sending a message without saying anything. That is the general idea of what you should be trying to accomplish while designing your brand image. You want to let people know what kind of business you are and who your target demographic is, just by the colour design of your brand.

Graphic Design is the art of communicating a message to people by utilising imagery, layouts, and typography. It is the art of making something that is attention grabbing, or directs attention. In all of its incarnations it must be able to communicate with the person experiencing the design.

Graphic design is utilised in almost everything that is produced for you to look at. Websites, for example, utilise graphic design as well as posters, user interfaces for phones and tablets, 3D environments and much more. It is a designer’s job to communicate where the visitor is supposed to be looking using the design of the layout in addition to the colour scheme. A website’s design has to be eye catching and efficiently direct a visitor towards important content so it is not missed due to irrelevant distractions.

For posters and leaflets, graphic design is used to inform you about a certain business or event. Much like in websites, your eye is supposed to be lead to the important content whilst not downplaying everything else that it is being advertised. In this instance, typography and layouts may be used to their full potential to achieve this delicate balance. The focus may be a lot more on pop art in posters and leaflets if it is trying to promote and artistic product, and this is where colour theory really comes into play when designing something graphically.

In logos and merchandising, design is used to convey the brand’s target demographic as well as demonstrate a particular brand concept to customers and potential clients. Basically, it is used to inform, rather than direct your attention. Of course there is no reason it can’t be attention grabbing as well.

A brand is something that people relate to a product or business. It is, in essence, the image the consumers and businesses look at while interacting with a particular product or underlying business. Branding is what makes the product recognisable; it is what gives the business the image and reputation it needs to succeed. The brand is your product identity and the branding is the core business concepts and imagery which allows customers to differentiate your company from its competitors.

Having a recognisable brand is critical for businesses that want to stick around indefinitely, and the way to do that is to have exceptionally good branding on your side. I would like to go a little into what good branding will yield for your organisation.

Branding will build recognition for your product and company, which is important because it allows customers to quickly identify a product with your brand. One of the best examples of great brand recognition is Coca-Cola, whose branding endeavours are so successful that they basically own the colour red (read more about colour and branding here) and Christmas (Santa was green before the famous ‘Holidays are coming’ ad!). The purpose of building brand recognition is for your brand to stay in the mind of the consumers. The more familiar the consumer becomes with your brand, the more loyal they will be and they will return to you to buy your product.

  In addition, you increase the legitimacy of your brand as you get more and more loyalty and familiarity from customers. This means that people will perceive your brand as being more reliable, leading to greater profits as your company becomes the go-to place in your niche.

  Having a good brand essentially means that your product is rooted into the publics’ mind. Branding inspires customer loyalty and it also influences your company’s staying power if the brand is strong enough.

Hyper-Threading is a technology that has been around for several years now; readily accessible on a wide variety of specialist and home computers. But what exactly is hyper-threading? Hyper-Threading is a feature introduced by Intel that attempts to increase computer processing power without the need for additional cores. Having existed for a short period of time on certain Pentium 4 and Xeon processors it was discontinued after Intel realised that the architecture on which these chips were based was incapable of achieving the goals they had set themselves. This isn’t to say that hyper-threading was a bad feature and as such Intel found the time and resources to integrate it into their latest processor architecture – Nehalem. This is the architecture on which all current Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 processors are based.

Looking back at all the technological advancements that have been made with processors; we have come a long way. Despite this, they still have one major limitation – an individual process can only execute one instruction at a time. When you use your computer and you have multiple programs running at the same time it is often referred to as multi-tasking. Such a term is somewhat misleading as in actual fact the processor is only executing one instruction at a time; it is the incredible speed at which is does this that leads you to believe you are truly multi-tasking. There is, however, a delay. This delay is due to the fact that each stream of data – or thread – in the processor must be scheduled and executed by the core individually. This is where hyper-threading can help, allowing the core to schedule and assign resources to two threads at once.

Imagine a building in which there are two meeting rooms. Both of these meeting rooms have been scheduled for use at the same time but for different purposes. It is the responsibility of one person to confirm the details of each person attending and show them which meeting room they will be going to. However all attendees are in one queue with no particular order; as a result the queue moves slowly and people may arrive at the wrong time. Hyper-Threading is the concept of adding an additional queue so that there are dedicated queues for each meeting. There is still only one worker but this means that people can get through more quickly and efficiently.

People often mistake hyper-threading with having twice as many cores. This is because Windows Task Manager and the like read additional threads as being logical processors. The term ‘logical processor’ sounds fancy but by definition is a processor with no physical existence. Windows can send threads to each logical processor but it is still just the one core carrying out the execution. It is important to note that the difference in performance is substantial. You should always be wary of people trying to make you think you have purchased a 4 or 8 core processor when it is actually a 2 or 4 core with hyper-threading.

So where does hyper-threading stand? In terms of your day-to-day tasks like web browsing, emails and word processing, hyper-threading won’t have much of an impact. Theoretically hyper-threading is better at multi-tasking but when you consider the processors available today they are so fast that basic programs are rarely limited by their speed. It is also important to consider that a lot of programs are often only coded in a manner that allows them to utilise a single core as that is all they need. When you’re trying to do some heavy lifting, however, hyper-threading can be more helpful; benefiting 3D rendering programs, heavy-duty audio and video transcoding and any other demanding applications with a boost in performance of up to 30%.

At Painting Pixels we utilise such demanding software on a daily basis, this is why our workstations feature both 8 physical cores and hyper-threading. This power means that we can produce stunning high quality 2D and 3D graphics, animation and visual effects for use across all of our services without being limited by the capabilities of our machines.

What is HTML5? If you work in the web design and development industry then by now you will most probably be familiar with the term and its definition; HTML5 is the latest version of Hypertext Markup Language, the code that describes web pages; but what is so great about it and what does it actually do? The first thing to note is that the term HTML5 actually encompasses three different coding languages; HTML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript. Each of which plays their own role in the construction of a web page. HTML provides the structure; CSS defines the formatting and JavaScript executes functionality. These three coding languages existed within website development long before the arrival of the term HTML5; the terms itself makes reference to the combined functionality of the current versions of all three languages.

So, what’s so great about it? Up until now access to most online application based services has required the acquisition and installation of third party tools and programs. These services include but are not limited to animation, music, movies and applications. HTML5 has been designed to deliver all of these services to the end-user without the need for such third party tools. On top of this is the universal nature of HTML5; capable of functioning on any device with an internet browser that supports HTML5.

So now you know what HTML5 is; however, we haven’t looked at its practical uses and how this benefits you. HTML has evolved from being a simple coding language that could barely handle the structure of a simple web page into a developmental tool that allows us to write powerful and complex applications for both online and offline use, to stream audio and video to your internet browser in stunning high definition, to produce and display extraordinary real time animation that requires no additional software and to offer a universally identical experience for everyone, regardless of the device they are using.

HTML5 is an evolving standard; with additional functionality being added as time goes on and its usage become more widespread. At its core HTML5 serves as a platform for superb website development, however, the possibilities really are limitless.

At Painting Pixels we consider HTML5 to be a massive leap forward in the advancement of website design and development; truly offering the user an engaging and unique experience that isn’t plagued with messages such as, ‘you do not have the latest version of Flash Player installed’. It allows us to design and develop websites that represent our clients and their businesses in whichever way they see fit, and that is something that everyone can benefit from.

The landing page of http://www.brandedcuppa.co.uk; a brand new website developed in house at Painting Pixels for one our clients demonstrates what HTML5 can do. The first page you see contains a bespoke animation developed in house which requires nothing more than an HTML5 complacent browser to render fast and fluid real time animation promoting our clients services.

The market leading internet browser solutions such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera all support HTML5, including the mobile versions of Safari for Apple devices and Androids own browser found on all Android based tablets and smart phones. Not all of these browsers support the same features and with the rate at which new HTML5 functionality is surfacing it would be safe to assume that none of them support everything; but for the purpose of visiting the website above any of these should suffice.

As technology advances the costs of having a large monitor or TV becomes far cheaper and nearly everyone has a phone capable of playing rich multimedia. Helped by new hardware, software and desktop browser technologies, the types of content that people receive have become far more visually appealing. Gone are the days were you had to describe your products or services with multiple paragraphs of text, confusing your potential clients or customers.

3D animation and product modelling have become very affordable and businesses are turning to this useful technology more and more every day. 3D animation is a great way to visualise any product, process or service in a more visual, easy to understand and clear manner. Also people are far more willing to watch a 30 second animation describing a business or product than spend even 5 seconds reading about what a company does.

The possibilities of creating and visualising anything in a virtual 3D environment is endless. It allows you to demonstrate anything imaginable form a new product, which is still to be manufactured saving costs on prototyping to creating a full 3D animated cartoon for TV or even bringing a presentations to life.

Once an animation has been created it can be used in many ways including being displayed on TV big or small, included in a presentations and even uploaded to a website.

Utilising 3D industrial modelling and animation is a great way for industrial firms, engineering companies and manufactures to demonstrate how a complicated industrial product or process works. There is no limitation to what can be created by using 3D modelling and animation, It’s possible to create anything from large scale factory setups to small intricate devices.

As 3D technology advances, compatibility between 3D engineering packages and 3D visualisation packages have become far greater. It’s possible to accurately create a complicated industrial unit from 2D CAD drawings or even directly take a 3D CAD model and transfer it accurately in to a 3D visualisation package where it can be visually simulated.

3D animations are invaluable to the industrial sector and serves best, when a complicated process has to be described to clients or staff for tendering or training. 3D animations provide a detailed visual element to any presentation and helps to clearly demonstrate how a procedure would work, creating a clearer understating and making for a better learning experience. 3D industrial animation also provides a level of flexibility that cannot be produced in a real life situation, for example in a situation where it’s necessary to understand and see what’s happing inside an industrial furnace, where it would be too dangerous or impractical to a get camera crew inside.

Creating an industrial product or scene in 3D space allows for a less cluttered environment where only the necessary components are created and simulated. The unlimited nature of what can be produced and simulated and the flexibility that 3D industrial animation provides, also allows for any kind of theoretical product or process to be created and so is a cost effective and practicable way to demonstrate how something would look or work before going into the large expense of building it.

The Land and Water 3D Dredging Animation is an example of using this form of media to simply and effectively demonstrate a product or service, or the 'dredging process', in this particular case. 

Every manmade object in the world had to start somewhere and it almost always starts with an initial graphic design, whether it be a quick sketch, illustration or concept drawing. A graphical design is a quick and cheap way to visualise and advertise a product, service or business brand.

No matter how good a company and or its services are, if a competitor with equal service qualities has a better graphical appearance they will almost certainly win your business. So when a customer or client does not know a business personally, the first point that they will judge on is its visual appearance. Even though that judgement may be only a second or two , it is still long enough to make that critical judgment and decide if they want to progress further and invest their time browsing your website content or picking up and reading your advertising material.

Using clip art to represent your company or service is never a good idea especially when used in logos. A company logo is a major part of a company’s brand identity and getting a professional graphic designer to create a bespoke brand identity will allow any company to look more professional, reassure a client or customer of the quality of product and or service that the business offers and ultimately give the business that extra edge in gaining and keeping customers.