turndesign.co.uk - blog

Matt's Tedious Link

01/04/2009 01:53:42 PM +0000

This week I am paying homage to my hero Comedy Dave of 'The Chris Moyles Show', by making a copy of his feature 'The tedious link'

So here it is, Matt's Tedious Link.

Pete Seeger - Turn! Turn! Turn! appears on the soundtrack Forrest Gump starring Tom Hanks. If you change the first letter of Hanks to a 'Y' you get 'Yanks' which is a slang word for a person from America. America is the biggest global power in the world, and like many other countries will be taking part in this week's G20 summit. A summit is the top of a mountain and if you're at the top of a mountain then you will probably be able to see for miles. Miles is the plural of mile and if you run over 26.3 miles then you will have completed a marathon. A marathon is what a Snickers used to be called until it changed its name in 1990. If you were born in 1990 then you are likely to be either 18 or 19 years old. 19 years old is famously the subject of the Paul Hardcastle song about soldiers in the Vietnam war. Vietnam is in South East Asia and shares a border with Laos. Laos rhymes with house and if your house was on fire you might say that a fireman is 'The man who' you would call. 'The man who is the title of the 4th album by Travis and which contains the epic song 'Turn'.

Matt

What's this all 'aboot!'

31/03/2009 11:44:04 AM +0000

Having worked our socks off for our existing clients Direct Mail Campaigns we thought it was about time we got our boots on, gave ourselves a bit of a kick and promoted Turn Brand Communications instead for a change…..And what better way can there be to get people's attention than by sticking our boot in their doors and giving it loads of welly! We didn't want to just send out a brochure, after all we are a creative company. So we got creative and came up with the unconventional idea of The Boot………As a shameless act of self promotion the message we wanted to get over to potential clients is, "Time to give your old agency the boot". And so the journey began.

First of all we started on the right foot by ordering 1000 boots from China, made to our specification. Then we designed a special 16 page mini brochure of our full service capability, sized to be attached to and fit inside the boot itself. There was no way we wanted to lessen the impact of receiving the boot so, again, it was designed so that a franking strip and address could actually be stuck onto the boot itself - No hiding in brown paper bags or boxes for our boots! They arrived as naked as the day they were, um, welded.

And so a journey that began in China (stopping only for a refuel at our offices) is now ending on companies desks all over the UK. We have had some brilliant feedback already - our Postman, (not Pat) said he'd never seen anything like it in 25 years (he didn't like carrying all of them too much though). Obviously our intention was to create maximum impact and hopefully create a perfect talking point whilst never forgetting our key objective of bringing in new business. The recipients of boots so far have been 100% enthusiastic, not to mention creative with the boots themselves - One is currently being used as a desk tidy and one has found a new lease of life as a vase! In fact a future blog on here may well be about 'what I did with my boot' or '100 uses for a boot' if things carry on this way!

Marketing departments have been fighting over whose desk got the boot and we are fighting for air under an embarrassment of positive feedback. Our telesales company are finding it very easy to make follow up calls because everyone is talking about it. Anyway, its not everyday you can call up someone and say 'Did you receive a boot in the post recently?' The purpose of the boot was to drive people towards our new website to view our full service capability's including Websites, Digital Media, Design for Print, Social Media, Advertising, Branding, Direct Mail, Exhibitions, Packaging, Viral.

After all, isn't it time you re-booted your offering?

Matt demos Augmented Reality

24/03/2009 09:31:17 AM +0000

I was recently shown this website (which Matt is demonstrating in the video above) by a friend showcasing Augmented reality technology.

We were all very impressed with this live version of the technology, I have seen it before, but never in a web application.

If you search 'augmented reality' in youtube, you will find many other ways people have used this technology. One such application was an advertising campaign for a New Zealand Zoo, which was printed in newspapers and when seen thoughh the AR software, appeared to have wild animal walking around on the paper.

RoB and Matt.

n.b. Anybody impressed with Matt's acting skills should look at the outtakes from the filming.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkMAY9gQtE8

Mobile applications development

18/03/2009 02:20:42 PM +0000

All of us in the studio were very impressed with the video above, which was part of a viral campaign by the London based agency 'Wax' and girl band 'The Mentalists'. It shows the full extent of what can be done on a mobile platform.

As I write this post Matt it playing with the Ocarina app, (which is featured in the video) it works by blowing in to the microphone on his iPhone to produce musical notes. The other apps used in the video are Retro Synth, Mini Synth and Digi Drummer Lite all of which are available form the Apple Apps Store.

I am the only one in the studio who does not have an iPhone and only recently have I upgraded to a phone with a colour screen. Now I have a phone capable of running such apps I have started to build some, the first thing I made was an animated version of the Turn logo (the same as you see at the top of our homepage) which randomly draws itself in our different theme colours.

I am also currently working on a 'train level crossing attendant game' for the mobile platform. Which I am using as a gateway to show such features as database access across different platforms.

Developing viral apps for mobile platforms is a great way for companies to promote themselves, as it is unlikely that there rivals are doing the same thing, and shows themselves as forward thinkers.

RoB

Kingpin Showdown

18/03/2009 01:57:56 PM +0000

A favourite film of everyone at Turn.... Bill Murray at his finest!!

Matt