D4 has joined forces with DKPM, one of Yorkshire’s most respected brand communications agencies, to offer a broader, more comprehensive and reinvigorated service for our clients.

The new venture combines our extensive web development and new media expertise with the vast experience DKPM has in advertising and branding. Having long respected each other’s work we are delighted now to be formally merging our businesses, enabling us to improve and extend our service offering to all our valued clients.

It’s business as usual, but better…

As of Monday 25 January 2010 the whole D4 team has become part of DKPM, which is great news for our clients. Our philosophy and approach to work will remain unchanged, and we will continue to be based here at The Stock Building so you will enjoy complete continuity of service. What will change is the range of services and expertise we can offer; this will expand dramatically.

Our new colleagues are a fantastic and experienced group of people with a huge range of new and fresh ideas to bring to the table. And greater internal resources will bring exciting new possibilities. DKPM’s impressive portfolio of regional, national and multi-national clients includes Sega, BAFTA, Disney Interactive, moneysupermarket.com, Sony Computer Entertainment, Westfield Health and Servisair.

As Head of Digital I am now part of the DKPM senior management team, and I look forward to introducing you to our new colleagues, including our Managing Director Paul Martin. We will be glad to answer any questions you may have about the changes.

Thanks for your continued support, and I look forward to working with you again in the near future.

Yours sincerely

Paul Herron

Well, it’s the first week back after Christmas and New Year and it’s time for the first blog of 2010. And what better way to start it than with the illustration we were commissioned to do for our good buddy Mr Dan Kavanagh at Ignition Search. Dan’s company were to be featured in the Sheffield Chamber’s ‘First for Business Magazine’ article about Search Engine Optimisation (or SEO as we like to call it). So he approached us, as he wanted an image that was ‘different’ and ’stood out’ from the usual stock images that you usually see to illustrate such articles.

The concept (Paul & Matt) developed was ‘get to the top of google mountain’ - which works well we thought. So, get on board Dan’s SEO cable car (which takes you straight to the top of Google!) or take the treacherous and altogether more complicated route through the lowlands of Google, all the while trying to avoid those ‘non-search engine friendly’ critters.

Lovely illustration by Matt and a more than happy client - good start to the year so far!

We’re all for reducing our carbon footprint so we were glad to start work with a new solar panel company in the region, to help them get their brand message out there…

We’ll say more about them soon, but for now we thought we’d share some of the gorgeous illustrations made by our Matt for the company’s literature.

The idea was to tell a simple story about how solar energy can be harnessed by ordinary householders to run their homes. We wanted to show that, as well as helping reduce CO2 emissions, solar panels can save people cash and even earn them a bit extra in return for producing clean energy.

We’re creating a whole new brand strategy for the company, and producing a brochure and web design, which we’ll shout about when they’re launched. In the meantime, enjoy the pretty pictures…

We’re all delighted to have won the highly prized Jewel Blade account. As the world leader in blade manufacturing the company is carrying forward a proud Sheffield tradition and we’re really pleased to be a part of that.

We were up against stiff competition but our experience, creative approach and the results we’ve achieved for other high-quality manufacturers from the region struck a chord.

So we’ve wasted no time in cracking on with the creative. Ace photographer Tom Jackson (wearing Michael Jackson gloves) is in the studio as we (err) speak, creating truly beautiful images of Jewel Blade’s precision products (art directed by Paul).

And surprisingly there is real beauty to be found in a well crafted blade (and, no, that’s not a comment on football allegiance).

We’re looking forward to building an on-going relationship with Jewel Blade. 2010 is set to be a busy year for them – and us – kicking off with a major international handtools exhibition in Köln. Our carefully crafted product literature and exhibition design will take pride of place!

When we made a short video recently as part of a website for Sheffield-based solicitors ASD, it proved to be a great SEO tool as well as a fantastic way of engaging their audience.

We wanted to help ASD define themselves as a local, trustworthy legal firm, different from the rest of the large, faceless corporations. So we wasted no time in persuading partner Chris Chapel to star in his very own video message. And, check him out, he did a great job.

We wrote the script, directed and edited the piece, and used motion graphics to reinforce key messages, but it was Chris who was crucial to its success. He’s local and, because he’s the real deal not an actor, he speaks with genuine authority about his subject. Allowing online visitors to ‘meet’ one of the partners means a personal connection is immediately made.

So in the midst of all this technology it’s worth remembering that the persuasive powers of a human face shouldn’t be underestimated. And including even a simple video like this on a web design can have a big impact on conversion rates.

The whole ASD project has been a great success read all about it… http://www.d4online.com/portfolio/asd-solicitors

We’ve really enjoyed working with Niki and the team at Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust over the past few months since they came on board with D4 in the summer. Since then we’ve rebranded them, produced a new CMS website, as well as various seasonal campaigns for each venue. And here’s the latest one for them - a Christmas campaign! We love a bit of Christmas here at D4 (no one more than Dawn though - she’s a yuletide fanatic), so we were delighted to get the brief to design the campaign to promote the 18th Victorian Christmas Market at Kelham Island Museum here in Sheffield.

Before we started the creative process, original artwork of a hardcopy illustration from the 80’s was dug out that they wanted to use - so we scanned it and designed it in to our handy work as we went along. The look and feel of the design has a traditional yet contemporary feel that was complemented nicely by the original artwork provided. We’ve now produced a Visitors Guide for the 2 days the event is on, web graphics, promotional leaflets and dressed a shop window in prime position in Sheffield city centre to attract Christmas Shoppers.

The event runs from Saturday 5th - Sunday 6th December. So this weekend get yourself down to Kelham Island for the Victorian Christmas Market, and enjoy a Victorian Fairground, Ice Skating, Traditional Crafts, Singers & Musicians, Gifts & Jewellery Stalls, Festive Food and a Traditional Hog Roast. Then there’s the Kelham Island Museum which is superb in its own right to have a look round!

What are you waiting for - get yourself and the family down there! The D4 team are going so hopefully we’ll see a few familiar faces down there! No doubt I’ll be spending most of my time loitering with intent around the Hog Roast.

See you there… oh yes, graphic design stuff is below!

When we subjected the D4 website to a brand new facelift recently, we thought it would be useful to add some information that allows you to view exactly what happens during our creative process, and beyond the standard, technical jargon put out there by other creative agencies.

We understand that every penny of a marketing budget is important and that all businesses would like to know what each pound is being spent on, from the word ‘go’ all the way through to the implementation stage and beyond. Behold therefore, the introduction of D4’s ‘Method‘.
Broken down into seven sub-heading’s we take the time to briefly and simply explain what happens throughout the creative process, allowing clients to see ideas blossom from a collaboration of suggestions, into fully functioning designs.

Commission >   Inspiration >   Create >   Communicate >   Implement >   Advantage >   Evolve

With each sub-heading being broken down into an easy to follow description, accompanied by illustrations representative of the individual stages, the whole ‘method’ gives us a chance to show off our way of doing what we do.

Without attempting to sound like a host from Family Fortunes, “If you were to ask 100 people from South Yorkshire what made them proud of their region?” I’d happily guess that a majority of them would have an answer based around a strong, industrial heritage (either that or The Full Monty!).

Being a Sheffield based company therefore, we at D4 are no different in sharing this viewpoint and consider it a great opportunity to work on a re-branding project with Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust, who specialise in preserving and promoting this traditional culture.

When considering how to move forward with the brand strategy, we wanted the Trust and museum gems to be more accurately presented online and to make the website a more enjoyable experience to help convey the importance of giving museum’s an overhaul. The starting point for this project though was to give the Trust a whole new ‘brand architecture’ that could be rolled out across all future marketing and promotional material. As the Trust currently manages three industrial museums (Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet; Shepherd Wheel Workshop; Kelham Island Museum), it was important to have a design that was recognisable not only across each sub-sector, but also represented the group as a whole.

With the brand imagery decided upon, the next step was to update and modernise the Trusts website. The main principle of the new website would be to act as a more effective marketing tool attracting new visitors to the museums which we did through colourful image led graphics all powered by impressive backend functionality of a database driven website. Allowing the site to be database driven means the sites content can be managed in-house, allowing for any instant updates on events and collections as and when they happen. With the foundations of the website in place, we also brought it bang up-to-date with social media feeds, a blog and a newsletter link, all great ways to keep young viewers updated.

We didn’t just stop with logo designs and a new web design, we also helped roll out the new brand across a range of promotional literature for various events and an educational campaign to schools in the region.

Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust are very good at modernising history without removing the sense of education and traditional values attached to it….. now they have a website and brand to match…

WEBSITE BEFORE:

WEBSITE AFTER:

BRANDING:

EDUCATION LITERATURE:

We’ve been enjoying ourselves with one project inparticular recently after we were handed the challenge of designing a new brand strategy for online social invitations company, Überfly. We were also let loose on designing 10 invites that would be sold on their soon to be launched web-to-print website.

Our first step was to analyse Überfly’s offering, its rivals and discuss how we could make Überfly’s invitations more imaginative and individual. We soon realised that most of their competitors websites were quite dated and as a result, sometimes cheap and tacky looking. We wanted to design a brand, associated images and a website that would establish Überfly as a well priced company with exceptional, contemporary design at its heart.

Having created a series of images that would cover all genres of invitations, ranging from children’s parties through to corporate events, the team decided to get particularly creative on the brands logo. Fonts were tweaked, pictures were stretched and pulled, and plenty of coffee was drunk to ensure the final designs were of the highest standard. Creative thinking produced a logo that resembled the the back of an ‘open’ envelope, and the eagle-eyed amongst you may also notice that the typography in the logo has also been adjusted to match the same two types of curved contours at the top and bottom of the envelope shape. It’s what we pride ourselves on - attention to detail and it is how we believe graphic design should be. We could have just plonked a sans serif font in there and saved a bit of time, but we believe these small tweaks make a big difference. Our client also appreciated the effort we put in and feel ‘chuffed’ that they have a unique brand and their very own font.

While we’re at it, here’s a sneak preview of the website and some of the invites we designed. As I’m sure you’ll agree from the graphics below the designs of the invites look………..Über!!

The graphic below will be sold under the ‘Party’ category. Our brief from the client was simply ‘Glamour!’ - now that’s what we call an open brief. So we did some thinking, stared out of the window and then used Angela (graphic design student & D4 tea lady for a fortnight) as our muse. We took a few shots of Angela in the studio and then produced this lovely vector illustration. Client was happy and so were we.

Here’s a few more invites for your viewing pleasure…

Success!! It was slaps on the back all round in the D4 studio recently as we proudly fought off the competition, battling it out in a three way pitch to deservedly win the brand re-development rights for North Lincolnshire based Pink Pig Farm. The excitement surrounding this project was further increased as it was the first pitch we had won (at our first attempt) under the new government initiative ‘Designing Demand’. The success of winning this Design Council based project will hopefully be the first of many for the D4 team.

To assess how we would be able to help Pink Pig, we sent along decisive duo, Clare and Marianne who put on there wellies and flat caps for a day on the farm. Leaving no question unanswered and no stone unturned, they analysed everything from the farmyard itself, right through to the shop and restaurant. After careful consideration, it was soon decided that the best way to help move things forward effectively, would be to embrace the Pink Pig brand as a whole.

The first step on this road to re-developing PInk Pig, was to consolidate their service / product offering, defining ‘who they are and what they stand for’. We decided their point of difference was an honest, family run, working farm - “it’s all about the pigs” as Paul put it. Once we’d developed an identity they loved, it was just a case of getting it rolled out across the business. With work firmly underway on the website (and the new designs looking great by the way!), we also set about improving the communications aimed at customers across the shop, cafe and farm trail. This has included re-designing the shop layout, introducing special offers and creating intriguing ‘did you know?’ facts about the Pink Pig.

Exciting times lie ahead for Pink Pig and D4 with the new development hoping to be launched by the end of September. It certainly seems like the futures bright……the futures pink!