Top 10 design trends for 2008 (and not just for the web either!)

Another year brings another set of trends in the world of design and all things cool. Often, the web and the offline fashion trends show a lot of similarity, so we’ve put together our top ten design trends (on and offline) for 2008 – come back and check how accurate our predictions are at the end of the year!

The Top Ten

1. Illustration

In 2007 we saw elegant flowers and swirls, 2008 will bring geometric shapes. Graphic design will be more organic and strong in colour.

2. Web Design

Out with shiny buttons and gradients. Big fonts and simple graphic elements are the way forward.

3. Wall Art

Everywhere you go you will see wall art, my advice is to go for something that looks edgy and hand drawn.

4. Music

Pop is making a comeback! Out with Indie and Rock & Roll and in with Take That, although personally I think I’m gonna stick with what was cool last year

5. Colour

Whether it’s the clothes you wear, the paint you put on your walls or the colour of your website – be brave, go with something bright and energetic – red, green or purple are good.

6. Typography

Once again go for something hand drawn, things don’t have to be neat and perfectly aligned like days of old.

7. Iconography

Simple, abstract shapes are the way forward. Try drawing them by hand and scanning them in, it will be a welcomed move from web 2.0 speech bubbles!

8. Get an iPod shuffle

If you don’t have one already then you may need to go and get one, they are small, easy to wear and look great.

9. Trainers

Retro is in and Gola is making a comeback! Canvas pumps are also cool although they do remind me of the plimsolls that we used to where for P.E as kids (cringe).

10. Accessories

Girls: Get a new bag – the bigger the better. Go for something bright too, yellow is cool.

Boys: Get a studded belt, hopefully 2008 will bring the return of wearing your jeans around your waist and not having them hanging below your boxers.

So, there you have it. Stick with these tips and you won’t go far wrong – plus, you’ll be one step ahead! If you don’t mind not keeping one step ahead, then feel free to forward this article onto a friend!

Brett

Ten steps to a cooler website

As hard as it is to believe, dinosaurs, aliens and lasers aren’t always appropriate on websites. So when these sure-fire instillers of coolness are taken out of the equation, what can we fall back on?

In no particular order, what follows is a short list of things I feel, if properly executed, can give sites an edge in the coolness stakes.

1. Video

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If that picture is updating itself 24 times a second, and is saying words as well, there is a tremendous amount of information it can convey.

2. Games

Natural proponents of the “woosh” factor, games are cool. Again it ultimately comes down to execution, but games are more often that not worth the investment they require.

3. Drag and drop

It’s not always appropriate, but allowing users to build queries or complete forms can greatly improve ease of use and enhance the user experience while still eliciting the “hey, that’s cool” response.

4. Motion graphics

Wait, isn’t that just video? No – rather than filmed / edited material, here we are talking about computer animation to give a bit of life to the page. A huge amount of complexity isn’t always required, sometimes it’s the simple things that aren’t noticed at first that impress. Then again, something of great intricacy will produce the “wow” the first time…

5. 3d

Almost by definition, 3d is cool. Displaying products? It will allow the user to explore the item with unparalleled freedom. I have also seen some particularly cool proof of concepts for 3d user interfaces.

6. Interactive applications

Quite broad sounding, fun little applets can be cool, and quite viral in their own right. I have lost count of the number of people who have their own Simpsons avatar, for example.

7. Customisable layout

Allowing the user to configure your site to suit their own needs and preferences is very Web 2.0. As much as buzzwords like “web 2.0″ are en vogue at the moment, this is still a cool feature which isn’t used as often as it could or should.

8. Customisable sharable content

Allowing the user to personalise something and then share it with others can be natty feature which drives traffic and gets others interested. An example of this I have just been pointed to is http://www.potatoparade.co.uk

9. Responsiveness

If you are suffering a slow connection, the graphics heavy site you are perusing can take ages to render every time you update a page or submit a form. Some well placed asynchronous AJAX goodness can alleviate this and give some cool results.

10. Design

It can have the best features, the most wooshy noises and still suffer in terms of coolness if the appearance isn’t up to scratch.

There you have it – probably not comprehensive, but I only had 10 spaces so I had to drop gems like a friends’ suggestion of ice cubes in the server. Nonetheless, this could useful if you need to up your coolness ante…

Nick

The best of retro web…

Not all of us have been surfing the web since 1994 like Spencer Gallagher our MD, but we all have our favorite retro moments from the past 14 years! Here’s Bluhalo’s top list of the best (and the worst!) of retro web, so cast your mind back for a moment…

Bluhalo’s Top Ten Retro Memories

1. The horrible dial up internet noise – bi-dong bi-dong!

2. Animated gifs – smiley faces, animated flags, the road sign and the man digging…lol

3. IRC (internet relay chat)

4. Google in 1996!

5. The Dot Com crash….(Lastmintute.com the last to get all the cash! The crash of http://www.boo.com/ )

6. Plenty of blink and marquee html tags, “this site is under construction” – probably with a gif of a guy digging – everywhere was ‘Under Construction’!

7. The Java script clock on website (JavaScript: browser took time from local computers) – then broke in the millennium, all the website javascript clocks went wrong!

8. Mosaic browser, the first free browser for the world wide web as it was always called then.

9. http://www.geocities.com/, if you wanted a free web page, you did it here…remember bourbon street?

10. In 1995, whatever you searched for a porn site came up!

Spencer’s London Marathon Sponsorship Update!

A massive thank-you so far to everyone who has been so generous and taken the time to sponsor me! You’ve helped me raise 75% of the £1,200 I have been trying to raise in less than three weeks! AMAZING!

As a reminder to everyone else, I’m running the 2008 London Marathon for the registered charity “Vision” http://www.visioncharity.co.uk/.

I started my official training two weeks ago and have already run over 75 miles in the past three weeks!

With 12 more weeks training to go, I have to also run Reading and Fleet Half Marathons as well as an 18 mile run the Saturday in between the two half marathons.

I am going to be running a whopping 500 more miles over the next 12 weeks and I am aiming for a time of 3 hours 59 minutes! (well I did say ‘aim’)

If you haven’t done so already, if you could please find the time to sponsor me online by visiting http://www.justgiving.com/spencergallagher that would be fantastic!

As an added incentive the individual person that sponsors me the most by the end of this month (January 2008) will be able to bring three friends to a premiership game of “their choice” next season in the Bluhalo box at Spurs with full hospitality as our guests.

No matter how small every £1 counts, thanks for any support you can give!

All the best

Spencer Gallagher – Founder and Managing Director

Ten ways to keep your staff happy

In this week of Top 10’s its now time to shift the focus back on the people who make Bluhalo the success that it is and the things that we do to keep our staff happy and motivated.

1. Clear mission

This seems very obvious but if you went and asked a group of people I would guess that probably all of them wouldn’t be able to say what their companies’ missions were. For some businesses this is inscribed on a plaque in reception or briefly mentioned in the staff handbook or not at all. Here at Bluhalo our mission and goals are very clear and are communicated to staff on a regular basis. Regular Team Kick Off Meetings led by Spencer Gallagher lay down the goals and the ambitions so that everyone knows where we’re going and why we’re doing it. Weekly team briefings also reiterate that message so it filters down in to everyday working life at Bluhalo and it becomes relevant and realistic to the team.

2. Culture

At Bluhalo we pride ourselves on our unique and addictive culture. We even bottled it this year as ‘Creativity Cultivated’! Many agencies in our industry are wary of having customers visit their offices however we recognised very early on that customers who came to our offices, left our offices as Bluhalo fans. They weren’t just buying products and services but also our culture and our team. By seeing a team who are happy, involved, motivated and creative is a potent and winning combination.

3. Communication

Its incredibly important to ensure that you communicate effectively to your team and also about what you tell them. Many businesses conduct their affairs behind closed doors and you never hear about the good and the sometimes not so good things. Here at Bluhalo we have an honest MD in Spencer Gallagher, who will when we all need to pull together as a team, let everyone know whats going on, this makes the team feel involved and are probably more likely to be motivated to succeed, likewise when we get a great deal/customer on board Spencer is likely to be seen whooping and yelling very loudly before cracking open a couple bottles of champagne for everyone!

4. Listen

In the same way its just as important to make sure that you listen to your team. We have an approachable management team and we operate an open door policy. If someone has a problem no matter how small we will take the time out to listen to everyone, issues that crop up later can more often than not have been avoided if it had been discussed and dealt with early on. Likewise we always try to encourage the wannabe entrepreneurs within the business and Spencer will always make time to hear someones great idea.

5. Autonomy and responsibility

As part of our culture we encourage all of our team to be autonomous in every thing that they do and to take ownership and responsibility for their work and themselves. Aren’t you more motivated and happy when you know that you have done a good job and your manager recognises it?

6. Goal setting

In line with point 5, goal setting goes hand in hand with responsibility. Our team has regular goal setting sessions which have proved to been very successful and popular. By goal setting you are empowering your team to empower themselves and obtain that satisfaction you can only get from achievement.

7. Recognition and reward

The obvious one here is salaries and yes it is important in keeping your staff happy. There are also other ways and the simplest of them all is recognition. Emails come out from Spencer Gallagher on a regular basis praising groups and individuals; or at the weekly team meetings there is always someone who gets a shout out! We also like to vary rewards for example by giving extra annual leave to someone who may regularly work long hours, get a gaming addict the latest console, or paying an bonus for those people with excellent attendance records. It doesn’t have to be costly motivating and recognising your staff. There are plenty of ways to do it!

8. Learning and development opportunities

At Bluhalo we don’t believe in the culture of changing jobs every two years, and we do everything to retain our staff for as long as possible. A key factor in this by having an excellent learning and development strategy. We want our team to grow and develop with us so by providing books, courses, conference passes, seminars, webinars, qualifications etc. we are investing in the quality and longevity of our team. This in turns help to keep them happy and feel that they are not stagnating and need to get a new job to initiate change.

9. Having fun!

Those of you who know Bluhalo and have had the pleasure of attending any of our events know that we value the importance of letting our hair down! Its important to have a balance of work hard and play hard. We have our regular Birthday Party and Christmas Party which gives everyone the chance to chill out, have fun with their colleagues. Another successful event is our Christmas Family Party where everyone is welcome to bring partners and children along to the offices. Everyone is also encouraged to socialise inside and outside of work time and we work hard to ensure that everyone has a good work-life balance.

10. Talent Management – this really encompasses all of the above and is becoming more and more popular as a buzz phrase, and we at Bluhalo wholeheartedly believe that we have a talented team who if they are happy will be motivated to succeed and the business can only benefit!

Our top ten fat footer sites revealed

This is the week of top 10’s. Today it’s the turn of the fat footer. With footers in the past being a matter of necessity and nothing more, with the usual t’s&c’s link, legals and maybe a contact us link, the arrival of the fat footer hasn’t come a moment too soon!

A fat footer is simple to build, increases your website’s usability, is very en vogue and increases clicks around your website.

So, what’s the point, it’s below the fold? These days, the average web user is used to scrolling. And let’s face it, we scroll a lot! Think about how long it takes you to scroll down your facebook page to get to your wall?!

So, today’s top ten features our top ten fat footer sites:
(If you want to improve your site with a fat footer of your own, give us a call on 01252 70 11 11 or email getintouch@bluhalo.com)

1. Waitrose

2. Colour Lovers

3. Jek2k

4. Spoongraphics

5. Apple

6. Intabill

7. Barack Obama

8. BBC

9. OMG!

10. Adobe

Don’t forget, if you want a fat footer of your own, give us a call on 01252 70 11 11 or email getintouch@bluhalo.com.

Digital Marketing in 2008 – 10 Things you should be doing

What a year 2007 was!

In the digital arena, most critics are saying it was the year of Facebook, and I’m inclined to agree. They were by no means the first to market however their intuitive, easy-to-use interface and clever information sharing tools meant that it was adopted by millions of people in a very short space of time. Facebook did what no other social network has ever done particularly well – they made it easy to network and share information. Such was the ease of use that viral word of mouth was one of the key drivers in making the site the success that it is today.

However, Facebook is only a tiny slice of the pie; there are thousand of other ways to share, syndicate and market key information and messages online, all of which with their own merits, so here’s my list of the things you should be doing in 2008…

1. Embrace social media

We’ve all heard the buzz about Web 2.0, Social Media, Facebook etc, however these new channels should already be part of your online marketing mix.

2. Write a blog

You’re reading this one, so that’s proof enough that they work! Blogs are a great way of informally communicating with your audience, and they cost nothing more than your time! They’ll also improve your SEO, which is always a good thing!

3. Keep your content fresh and interesting

Regular updates and site content is the key to the success of any website today – consider outsourcing your news to a specialist agency who will be able to provide daily news releases for your site. Content forms a key part of your SEO strategy, the more frequently you update your website, the more frequently search engine will index it.

4. Get into Social Bookmarking

Add social bookmarking tools to all of your news and product pages which will allow your visitors to easily bookmark and share your content with their own networks. Sites such as www.digg.com and http://del.icio.us/ are a good starting point.

5. Know your enemy

Regular competitor analysis is key to keeping ahead, look at how many sites are linking to your competitors, how regularly they update their sites, keep track of their special offers by subscribing to their newsletters.

6. Start regularly emailing your customer base

Build an opt-in email list and start sending regular emails out to your customers to keep them informed of your offers and promotions – from experience, one-off emails rarely get good results – the art of a good email campaign is to regularly broadcast to build affinity and a relationship with your customers.

7. Create a search engine strategy

Pay Per Click or Search Engine Optimisation? Ideally you should be doing both, you’ll see instant results with PPC however long-term, you’ll see more for your money from SEO – however seeing results can take many months. Look at multi-layer marketing; don’t just rely on one channel for your promotions. Look at clever ways of tying in your on and offline activities to better communicate your offering.

8. Use your own website

It’s amazing how many people don’t use their own websites on a regular basis. It may sound silly, but it’s an important thing to do – look at your site from the point of a customer and see if there are things that stand out in terms of usability – are your buttons clear enough? Is your shopping cart easy to use? Does your search engine return accurate results? If you’re answering no to these questions, you might want to look into the reasons why and correct them. Visitor to customer conversions are key to the success of any online business, therefore making your site as easy to use as possible is paramount to their success.

9. Measure your online performance using Google Analytics

It’s free and incredibly good at what it does. The web is the most measurable form of marketing, you should constantly assess your web stats, understanding where your traffic is coming from, what visitors are looking at, where they may be potential problem areas on your site and look at how to improve your content based on these results.

10. Get the right agency

Even if your agency is brilliant technically, they might not be experts at marketing, advertising or PR – it’s not uncommon for many companies to outsource different areas to different agencies, to get the best of both worlds.

To see what Evolve can do for your business online, please drop me an email: oliver@bluhalo.com

Cheers, Oliver

Bluhalo to Sponsor London Facebook Developer Garages

Bluhalo are pleased to announce they will be Silver sponsors of Wednesday the 23rd of January’s London Facebook Developer Garage.

This group is for any developers and entrepreneurs interested in the London Facebook Developer Garages. This is the place for feedback, discussions, organising thoughts around the events.

Please join this facebook group to be invited to developer Garage events in London.

Tickets are on sale now for January’s garage on. Get yours from http://longarage05.eventbrite.com/.

Join us as the group talks about extending your apps to more platforms and more language communities. Great speakers lined up:

1. Last.fm talk about their Bebo apps
2. Facebook head of internationalisation jets in
3. Ebay app showcase,
4. Latest from Spencer Gallagher at Bluhalo
5. Exponetic on fb:mobile
6. People4Web2
7. Vanessa Barnett from BLP Law
8. Toby Beresford on what’s new
9. Sal Khan’s top ten countdown.

Deloitte’s State of the Media Democracy Survey — Rethink What You Know!

Interesting read on current US trends

http://tinyurl.com/26gwsf

Back to the office for a moment…

So this blog started many months ago when our office move was in full swing to keep everyone updated on the latest developments in our new office. You’ve seen the empty shell, the cabling going in, the walls going in, the glass going in, the people going in!

Well, now the initial excitement is over, we’ve been in a while now and we still love it!! Our offices have been likened to those of Skype and Google, which can be seen as nothing but a compliment, and thanks to our office fitout team who designed and built our interior – Grey Interiors – we have some final images of the office looking its best!

If you haven’t seen the new office in person yet and fancy coming down for a look, just give us a shout on 01252 70 11 11.

Reception area with Bluhalo-designed wallpaper

One of our cactus friends…

Looking across the starfish to the White Room

The White Room window

The kitchen area