Having been around since the early 1980s it has proven it self to capture and engage peoples attention and be an inventive way to promote your brand. Guerrilla marketing can be used by large organisations or small start up companies.

One of the earliest campaigns was from Adidas having struggled with promoting the brand after changes in management they needed to pull something big out of the bag and their answer was to give pairs of Adidas trainers away to rappers in New York and if you are a child of the 80s you will remember Run DMC bringing out a single called “My Adidas”.  If you don’t remember the song then see the bottom of the post.

Todays guerrilla marketing has changed from the early days and is now more inventive and sometimes challenging.

Here are some of my favorites:-

The important thing to remember about guerrilla marketing as a technique is it becomes ineffective once it has been used, marketers need to keep ahead and find new ways to grab the attention  otherwise what was a surprise marketing campaign that everyone was talking once will soon something that people have forgotten and are bored with.

Whether you like this marketing technique or not you have to agree that it does make you stop and stair – it works!

Just in case you don’t remember – you’ve got to love the 80s.

Hello,

When you start your initial design concept there are areas of the design that you don’t always consider initially, as the site is designed around what concepts the client needs to get across on the homepage.  Most websites follow the same page structure throughout having the nav and content positioned in the same place to maintain a consistent design throughout the site.  There are one or two exceptions to this consistent design where you are able to think outside the box and one of those is a 404 page.

404 or page not found is an error message that is returned when their is not a page to return with that url because of a mistyped url, broken link or moved or deleted content.

Below are some great examples of 404 pages with great designs to help enhance the rest of the users experience.  So rather than be disappointed they couldn’t access the page they were looking for they are impressed by the design and creativity.

Bluedaniel

jhuskisson.com

Heinz

Also with your design it is a good idea to utilise Google’s Enhanced Url, this enables the user to type in what they believe the page to be called to see if they can find the page.  You can also customise the 404 widget to work with your current design.

I think all in all 404 pages should be creative as someone has visited your site and not found the page they were looking for so to help keep them on your site having a great design and Googles enhanced url will help.

I have always been a huge fan of encouraging design and just generally being creative from a young age, afterall this is where the future of design lies.

With the finalists of Doodle 4 Google in Ireland picked for each age group from juniors to 6th year students now is the time to vote.   Contestants enter from different schools within Ireland and then the competition (I think moves to English entries)

You can vote for your favorite on Doodle 4 Google online with the voting ending on Monday 16th February 2009.

Here are some that caught my eye:-

Age 5th/6th year

Evan O’Sullivan Glynn, aged 16


Nathan Cafolla aged 16

1st, 2nd and 3rd year

Sarah Peters aged 14

Nora Casey aged 12

Juniors and Infants

Louise Gilmore aged 8

Visit the Doodle 4 Google site to place votes for each age group.

I have found some great brochure designs for you and if you have come across any that you have seen leave me a comment with a link.  I really appreciate interactive and interesting brochure design.

The brochure below is a great use of illustrative photography showcasing Boundless’ core services.  It is also nice to see the designers have integrated into their design a functionality of a pocket folder for any additional information.

The vibrancy of this design is a good representation of what the brochure is covering.  Creating a buzz through your brochure design not only enhances your design but promotes your company in the right light.

Brochure design doesn’t have to follow the usual format as these designers have done with this design, creating not only a fantastic design but also in a fun way interactive way to really communicate their message.

For this weeks posts I’ve found a few unique design portfolios from talented web designers. Both of which are not only beautifully designed in each individuals style, but also highly interactive showcasing not only their artistic and creative skills but also their design usability. With the ever increasing use of widgets, and rising client expectations, designers are going to have to become much more flexible in their approach, not only having to show how it will look but also, and more importantly, how their designs work to fulfill their clients brief.

Firstly we have Miki Mottes a self taught Israli artist who works creating custom animations and illustrations.

Subscribe to Miki Mottes Picture feed on Flickr

Secondly I discovered the hilarious, if not slightly mental, portfolio of Dutch artist Coen Grift. It’s fully interactive and packed with bits of animations, sound effects and puzzles. I spent at least half and hour at home when I found it playing around and fully enjoyed every minute of it.

I hope you enjoy playing around with these sites and take away some inspiration for any redesigns you were planning for your own portfolio. And don’t forget to check out the Resources page for any updates.

We have our Christmas party tomorrow night and we are all really looking forward to it, we looked back over party photos from last years, I cannot believe it has been a whole year since then.  Some of the photos are really funny and I nearly posted some on but didn’t think it was appropriate!!

I read a nice article on the BBC, which is a nice cheery Christmas article for the Friday before Christmas.

“A Sheffield man who lent a penniless Australian tourist £5 to pay for a ferry trip in 1969 has been repaid his debt nearly 40 years later.”

It is nice to see that Christmas spirit is still going strong and even after 40 years people still remember the kindness that was extended to them.

We have a bet on at work and I am betting on snow for Christmas so keep your fingers crossed for me.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas.

The first is a showcase of photographs FlashLife.se, but the designer has created an interactive experience.  Allowing you to alter the way you interact with the photographs and images by easily altering the way in which they are displayed.  As the creator suggests it is like a “digital playground”.   I really like the way the site is designed to not only impress you with the exceptional photographs but also the creative way they are showcased.  With so many portfolio websites out there it is always good to see someone that has broke free of the norm.

One of my favorite sites for this year would have to be BrandBud, the site is fresh, bright and easy to use.  It demonstrates their high level of talent and creativity which is often lost in todays designs.  Not only is the homepage impressive but delving deeper into the site you realise how much work has gone into creating this design masterpiece.  The philosophy garden is probably my favorite page, as although being slightly different in design to the rest of the site it still completes the sites design.  They offer mainly print and corporate design work such as letterhead, business cards.

I think next year we will see more interactive flash design work like this, creating a more interactive feel and a great user experience.

One last thing, Sophie, Chloe and I would like to wish you a merry Christmas and if you haven’t started your Christmas shopping yet and want ideas on what to buy read Sophie’s post later in the week – she loves her new toy!

Time for my latest update in the world of great graphic design.

This weeks entry looks at Alexandre Efimov, a Russian graphic designer who has a sample of work on Behance.

I really like his style, especially the unique use of colour in some of his pieces, a lot of graphic designers would not typically use this many vibrant colours together but we can see Alexandre pulls it off very nicely.

My favourite piece has to be his poster for Renova, its very sleek and attractive and instantly intrigues me about the project.

Here’s a few examples of his work;

isoCologne by Alexandre Efimov

Renova by Alexandre Efimov

What do you think? I looked for Alexandre’s own site but couldn’t find it, if you know where it is let me know, I would love to see it!

The guys from FI describe Kontain as;

“A free destination for users to media blog and share photos, videos and audio with friends, family, colleagues and even beautiful strangers. The core of each user’s experience is media-driven and Kontain takes the everyday concept of blogging to a wider audience by making it easy for users of all demographics to “kontain” and share their life online. Simple enough for Mom and Dad, yet flexible and sophisticated for a web veteran, Kontain aims to be the Internet’s premier destination for user-generated content.”

I was lucky enough to be one of the 10,000 accounts allowed in the alpha stage and have been playing around with it for about a week now. Kontain takes an old concept, blogging, and re-introduces it to a wider audience by focusing on ease of use and looks.

Now this isn’t a new idea. Six Apart is trying to accomplish it with Vox, Automattic with WordPress.com, and dozens of other startups have launched a wide range of other services. The focus of all of these platforms is to dumb things down to the point where users don’t need to think about anything from a technology point of view, but rather, can focus on putting content online in the quickest and easiest way possible.

To that end, Kontain does a brilliant job. From the signup process to its no-frills publishing tool, Kontain is incredibly easy to use. As the whole point of Kontain is to allow easy media sharing, the service also makes it simple to insert photos, videos, and audio. Rather than require the user to position multimedia elements within a post, they are added separately at the top of a post, through a simple built-in uploader.

I’m looking forward to the upcoming features that are due to be launched as well, with tools such as activity stats, HD video and High Def images, drag and drop media embedding (youtube) and inline editing – Kontain is raising the bar for the likes of Facebook and Myspace.

At the time of writing there are still some accounts waiting to be snapped up so sign up and take a look for yourself.

Photoshop is still the preferred choice for me, I like the functionality and the colour correction capabilities this version has to offer making it better than ever before.  The interface has been slightly updated but nothing that really confused me, one of the big changes that I can really appreciate is the new workspace switcher which has a range of preset workspaces which is really handy for selecting window layouts.  A few of the other benefits that I think are a vast improvement include Bridge CS4 which is for asset management which has been significantly improved and is great – I really recommend having a look.  It is useful for me because I enjoy the better functionality you can achieve with altering photos with the powerful colour correction tools from Camera Raw 5.  For me the added benefits from Photoshop alone make this a worthwhile package.

Dreamweaver again is the industry recognised html editor of choice.  With this version they have continued to make working with related files easier and instantly accessible through the related files toolbar.  The new live view command makes layout view a full on browser, even more useful is the feature that allows you to see the code the browser is rendering as you interact with page.  Dreamweaver never ceases to impress me and has continued to make itself accessible for all levels of designers with its simple interface and design.  Dreamweaver has delivered again being miles ahead of its competitor.

Although I use Flash I don’t use it to its full capabilities, having only a little knowledge of ActionScript I can only really comment on the basic interface which only gets better having moved the properties panel to appear vertically this opens up much needed space for the handy timeline panel at the bottom which I always felt was cluttered and lost, they have also tried to encourage simple animation which I think can only benefit new Flash users.

All in all I think CS4 is great and well worth the investment it is not only new and improved, it opens doors for better integrated design for all levels.