The North Face Speaker Series Event: GII – promotional support

It was so much fun and really inspiring to work with The North Face and Moving Adventures teams, with Matt Heason of Heason Events (thanks for bringing me in on this one Matt!), and of course to Simone Moro, Cory Richards & Denis Urubko, in helping create this incredible sell out Speaker Series event ‘Gasherbrum II: the first winter ascent’ at The Royal Institution of Great Britain, London in November of last year (yes, it has taken me this long to get round to posting about this!). Thanks also to Patrick at Sound Publicity for helping us out with the promo team for the night.

I worked on the regional promotion across: online, social, direct mail, VIP invite lists and postering/flyering of local climbing walls. A special thanks to Juliane Kurzke for all your help.

The event was just fantastic – such inspirational speakers and I was so impressed by the quality and smoothness of the live link up to Denis Urubko – a really beautifully organised event, in a top quality venue – a perfect end to the 5 date tour.

Really hope I have the chance to work with all involved in this again soon!

(I like a picture, so I’ve made a little collage of the event below, but I have absolutely no good shots of the speakers – so I apologise for their absence – lots of great shots on the TNF site though!)

PRS for Music Foundation website overhaul

1) Feedback and the Brief
When I was working for PRS for Music Foundation I was charged with completely overhauling their website and I’m happy to say that they’ve now done all the populating and it’s now live! It looks great (phew!) and they’ve already had some great feedback from funders, partner organisations and users on how simple it now is to find everything, how everything is laid out much better and that it is a lot easier on the eye. Essentially my brief was to keep it super simple so really happy with what we have achieved.

2) The Old vs The New:
To illustrate the change that took place, I’ve included some screenshots at the top of this post – the old site on the left and the new site to the right in each. In terms of navigation, PRSF didn’t want a massive departure from the site they already had – they liked the simple, 3-panels-to-a-line format, (and that’s what their community were used to) so you’ll see the new site uses this same idea. I concentrated on Creatively Directing / Project Managing both the back end structure of the site and the look and feel of the front end. The intricacies of technical navigation I left to the developers, We Are Hold. I aimed to keep everything as simple as possible – and this is reflected in the clean, clear and crisp visual for the new site.

3): The Knowledge
The details of the brief were formulated from a mix of feedback from the PRSF community, PRSF internal needs and desires and some information gathering with the PRSF main sponsor PRS for Music – and my own knowledge of the requirements of the site, having used the old one for the best part of a year.

4) Workshopping
I worked with the PRSF team to workshop how the structure of the new site would work in terms of fitting all elements of the site (most importantly: how to apply for funding; information on the various funding opportunities; and information about those they had awarded funding to) within 2 clicks of the homepage. We wanted to keep it really simple and straight forward. Once the homepage was done, everything followed on from this in terms of structure and look and feel.

5) New Database – functionality from both ends
The major database of the site – info about the projects that PRSF had supported – needed a total overhaul. Having this info readily available and easily navigable was a key aim for the new site. For a long time no one had used the old database and it was difficult to update. I developed a system that made it searchable in a way that was far more intuitive to the front-end user (musician, funding body, journalist or potential applicant etc.) and brought the structure of the database far more into the body of the whole site – so that it became an integral element, rather than just a nice add-on. Along with creating an easy to update interface, this gave the database a complete new start.

6) Admin Ease
As the Foundation is a very small organisation I knew it was quite possible that whoever was tasked with the maintenance of the site, may have only a little prior knowledge of website use and maintenance. With this in mind every element of the site is locked down in terms of coordinate settings, character limitations and placement  – which are consistent throughout the entire site – to ensure that updating is as easy as possible. Headings, sub-headings, page content and image/panel placements are all pre-set so the administrator has less thinking to do in terms of how things will look when the page is live. The 3-to-a-row panels (which each have the functionality of a versatile widget) are flexible enough to be used as anything from images, YouTube/Vimeo embeds, text only, MySpace/Soundcloud embeds, buttons etc. that we needed create only 3 template pages for the whole site, which totalled around 500 pages. This site cannot be updated to look bad – nothing can become out of alignment or mis-ordered. The whole look and feel of the site is cast in iron (albeit digital iron).

7) Social Media
The other, major (and perhaps easiest) change, was to allow users to interact with the site through social media – a feature particularly important for an organisation working in the music space. The first stage in allowing online social interaction was simply adding ‘share’ buttons to each page/article.

8) Sponsors / Partners / Funders
As anyone who has worked in a charity knows, the importance of keeping sponsors, partners and funders happy and visibly recognised is hugely important and so, on the bottom of every page, is an area specifically available for the inclusion of the logos necessary and relevant for the information on that page. This structural mechanic avoids logos popping up ad hoc around the site and keeps what can become messy ‘logo soups’ as regimented and consistent as possible.

9) Dead Ends
Lastly, I wanted to get rid of the many dead-ends that appeared on the old site. I wanted the user to always have another page on the site to navigate to – something relevant, engaging and informative. I incorporated ‘suggested links’ at the bottom of each page to ensure this was always done.

 

If you create, perform, promote or commission new music in the UK give PRSF a shout – they support all kinds of amazing projects… and next, it could be you!

PRS for Music Foundation promo film

This has been a long time in the making. I first began the process of commissioning and producing this short back in the winter of 2010 – and only this week (my last week at the Foundation) has it finally been finished! I have a lot of respect for everyone involved in making films – the amount of time, energy, enthusiasm and money that has to go into just 1 minute of the final product is enormous. It is a lot of fun though and very rewarding! I’ve really enjoyed the adventure and met some amazing characters on the way.

I’ve had to pull in a lot of favours to make this happen. Special thanks to my brother, Jack, for pulling the sound together, and for Matt at KIN Design for getting the ident done. I’m proud of what’s been achieved. Hopefully it will allow a lot more people to understand what PRS for Music Foundation does – and the importance of their work.

The Foundation asked me to get this film made in order to illustrate the impact and success of their funding, while communicating the full diversity of the music they support – in an informative and entertaining way. I hope you feel it does this.

Photos to impress / capture sponsors and Festival Event Management

Camden Crawl approached PRS for Music Foundation’s British Music Abroad programme to curate The Monarch during this year’s festival. We were so flattered to be asked and jumped at the chance to be involved in a festival full of our target audience for this programme – young, emerging talent, with a forward-thinking edge.

Laura (British Music Abroad, Manager) got busy programming the night – with her outstanding pair of ears we all knew the line-up was never going to be anything other than spot on. I was put to charge with Event Managing the weekend of events.

We weren’t wrong! Both nights were absolutely rammed and audience and bands were going wild the whole time – this was the perfect opportunity for me to get a photographer to capture some images for our sponsorship pitches. I wanted to show the engagement, creativity, depth and reach of the British Music Abroad brand. With Gregory Nolan on the case I knew I was going to get a moment of genius, and I really think this shot (below) is just that. Perfect Gregory, perfect. Thank you. Hopefully this shot will capture a few sponsors eyes in our next pitch.

It’s of Sarah McIntosh aka The Good Natured – doing her trademark saunter and posture right into the crowd and round the audience. I’m a big fan of the band and a big fan of Sarah’s front-woman antics and performance. It’s so refreshing to see such creativity – both musically and in terms of interaction with the crowd.

Thank you to all of you who came along and supported us at Camden Crawl and to all the bands who played – you were all incredible. And thank you to The Monarch for hosting us and, perhaps most importantly of all, the Camden Crawl for inviting us – without you, none of this would have been possible.

Inspirational! Doug Foster’s film installation ‘The Heretics’ Gate’ with music by UNKLE

(This has absolutely nothing to do with me – although I wish it did!) This is one of the most amazing and beautiful things I’ve ever seen. It’s on from 12midday – 6pm daily till May 5th at St Michael’s Church, Camden – and it’s free. If you get a chance, go and see it.

For more info visit: http://daydreamingwith.com/wp/

What the website says… ‘Doug Foster’s digital film installation, The Heretics’ Gate, 2010, takes it inspiration from Dante’s Inferno, the first part of his epic poem the Divine Comedy. A twenty foot high, arched screen and a thirty foot long reflecting pool, are cleverly combined to deliver a mesmerizing and strangely ethereal vision of hell at the central focus point of the church’s imposing gothic architecture.’

The power of pictures… the original images

Hello, I realise that I didn’t ever actually post up the original images from the New Music 20×12 shoot I creatively directed last year. I’ve been posting about the great coverage these photos helped the New Music 20×12 receive in Evening Standard, BBC, London2012.com etc. – so here they are in all their glory! I think you’ll all agree photographer Mary Cork did a great job conveying the message of music and the Olympics – and thanks once again to the The View Tube for hosting us so kindly.

To find out more about the journey behind these powerful images – and to see just how many doors a good photo can open – please search this blog for ‘power of pictures’ – and you’ll find all the relevant posts.

14 Useful Tips and Tricks for website creation and maintenance

What follows is a brief overview of some useful guidelines to keep in mind when looking at building, updating and maintaining your website – or re-assessing the impact of your brand communication.

Most of what follows is largely the paraphrasing of tuition sessions from web experts Michelle McMahon (mimcmaho), Claire Bussey (Sticky Content) and Clemens Hackl (Clemens Hackl Design).

1) The building blocks
Your website can be divided up into 3 elements:

• Structure: the usability of your site, how it is pieced together
• Content: the images / words / videos that make up your site
• Style: how your site looks, it’s visual / design / aesthetic

2) Questions you need to ask of yourself before you even begin putting your website together

• What do you do?
• What’s your USP?
• Who’s your target audience? Who are you talking to? How do you talk to them? How should you be talking to them? How can you talk to them better?
• What do you want to achieve through your website? What are you selling? What information, engagement, awareness, and profile do you need to generate to better sell your product(s)?
• Why are people visiting your site – what do they want to achieve by being on your site?
• What would be a successful visit? From the point of view of both your users and you.
• How will they access your content?
• How IT literate are they?

3) How do website users think?
In order to create a good website it’s important to understand how web users think. Learn how they think and you’ll learn how to better communicate with them. This is what goes through a web users mind:

• Where is it?
• I can’t see it!
• I can’t find it!
• What do I do now?
• I don’t understand.

The user wants to put the minimum amount of effort into using your site – when navigating your site do not make them think. All information should be very easy to find and understand. Keep the need for ‘click’s to an absolute minimum. The main information on your site should be no more than 2 or 3 clicks away.

4) How do web users behave?
The people navigating your website are predominantly:

• Task focused: they’re on your site because they’re looking to do something or gain something. They haven’t got all day. They want to get the job done and move on.
• Impatient: 79% of users scan websites – they will not read every word! They’re looking for keywords leading them to the information they need.
• Suspicious: they’re judging you – trying to decide whether they should trust you and what you’re telling/selling them.
• Conservative: at first users are suspicious, then once they’ve found the sites they trust, then tend to remain conservative, stick to those sites and not look elsewhere – unless you give them reason to!
• Moving forward and constantly moving: don’t give your users any dead-ends. Keep showing them the path ahead.
• Wanting to control their own path: they’re not necessarily interested in using the site as you’re directing them – they will use it for their own needs.
• Not going to finish anything. They’ll glean what they need to and move on.

5) Write for your priority target audience
Only ever write your website with one target audience in mind. If you try to write for more than one you’ll end up writing for no one. Write with one, clear target audience in mind and all other audiences will understand where you’re coming from. Be clear and consistent with this tone of voice.

Your tone of voice must be consistent across all your communication platforms – your newsletters, blogs, social media and your website. And don’t forget that tone of voice is also important on your website error message pages and your newsletter sign-up, unsubscribe, and error pages.

Important: remember that the average reading age of a UK citizen is just 9. So make your site simple, clear and use plain English as much as you possibly can. Lose all the acronyms and clever terms you can. It’s also generally a good idea to keep your website conversational in tone.

6) A word about trust
It’s very, very important to gain users trust. No matter what you’re doing you need people’s trust. Use testimonials and quotes about you from well-known and well-respected individuals. Be consistent in your style, structure and content. Take care with the details. If a user seems mistakes, errors or out of context information they will think you do not care. No one wants to be involved with someone who does not care.

7) Call to action
Near the top of your homepage you need to have a clear call to action. You need to tell people who you are, what you do and then what you want them to do. Whether it’s sign up to your newsletter or apply for funding or start shopping – tell them what to do and where to go, and tell them clearly. This will focus the mind of the user and clearly let them know they are in the right place for what they want.

Throughout your site it is good to include calls to action – they focus the users mind and direct them through your site. Place calls to action at the end of sentences / paragraphs, as there they are more noticeable.

Remember: Your users can land anywhere along the user journey you’ve set out for them. They will not always start from your homepage and work through your site in the order you’ve set out for them. Users could land on any one of the pages along any user path you’ve created.

Always put links at the end of sentences/paragraphs. Use links to try to pre-empt what your user will want to do next: eg. if you’re talking about something not on your site, give users a link to it.

8) Scanning, lists & images
When deciding where to place your content it’s important you understand where users look for information. They scan for information, looking for keywords. They scan across the top of the site and down the left hand side, then from the top left of the screen to bottom right. Users scan the first few words in headlines, sentences and paragraphs.

With this in mind it’s good to keep text in short paragraphs and use lists wherever possible. Use of bold to mark important phrases is also useful. Together these elements make the information on your site far easier for users to search, digest and take action on.

In terms of usability text is far more important than images. Images are hugely important, and often far more efficient, in regards to the communication of your brand – especially in terms of achieving emotional-connectedness – but in terms of usability, text is what people are guided by.

9) Guidelines for structuring your copy:

• Every page needs a headline – drawing the users attention into what’s on the page. It’s a good, to where possible, including your organisation’s name in the headline.
• Sub-heading / stand-first: – this sits below the heading and gives a summary of what’s on the page
• Use bullets, bolds, lists and links wherever possible – the user scans for these.
• Put all the important information above the page fold – ie. In the part of the website visible on the screen before any scrolling needs to be done

A note on headings/sub-headings: these should be very noticeable, descriptive, front-loaded with the most relevant info/keywords and easy to understand. In your headline or sub-heading, where possible, use a question, incentive, threat or opportunity. This will engage the user.

‘Top tip’ lists are good. We like those!

Avoid italics and try to stick to lowercase – lots of uppercase can look aggressive.

10) Tips on how users read your copy:
Always write numbers as numerals, not words.
Users generally scan using the ‘rule of 2s’. They scan only the first:

• 2 words of a sentence – so front-load your sentences with the most important keywords/information the user is looking for
• 2 sentences of a paragraph
• 2 paragraphs of a page

11) SEO
To optimise your search engine rankings you need to be strategic and clear with the copy on your site. Ask yourself what are your keywords – ie. what are the words people would use to search for you and your website? (Google Insight is a good tool to help with this). Use these keywords across your website and ensure you are consistent in the words you use. Use them in and across the following:

• Domain Name (you can have two domain names and auto-forward one)
• Page Description (appears in browser window)
• Page Titles
• Headlines (try to use your organisation name as much as possible)
• Content
• Image meta tags (always label your images – to let search engines know what they are and thus what’s on your website)

The magic formula for SEO is to get other sites to link to yours! The more sites mention and link to yours, the easier it is for search engines to pick up on your site.

12) Be consistent
Not only across your website but across your entire brand – especially between your website and your business card. People look at your business card first, then your website – they must look similar in terms of feel, look, colours, design, font, style etc.

Consistency shows you are aware of what you’re doing and that you have thought it through, planned and know the reasons for your actions. These are all important traits to communicate.

13) Communication: Emails & Social Media
Your website is a platform to keep your community engaged on you – to keep you present – but don’t over do it. Keep ‘pleasantly present’ rather than consistently in people’s faces. Decide what other communication tools you will use – Twitter, WordPress, Tumblr, Facebook etc. Once you decide, invest time in creating, maintaining and developing relationships on those platforms. Remember, social media is a dialogue – it’s not a one-way broadcast of information from you to the world. Engage with your community. This takes a lot of care, attention and time.

Please note: the way users interact with each social media platform is often very different. For instance, the language, words and rate of use for Facebook and Twitter are vastly different. Bear this in mind when communicating via your social media platforms or you could end up alienating people you are trying to appeal to.

14) Basic Rules of Selling
Whatever you’re doing on your website you’re selling. You may not necessarily be requiring money from people but you are selling. You’re selling and communicating you and your brand. You want people to buy into you and what you/your organisation/business/company does.

Turn features into benefits. This means turning descriptions about elements of what you do into emotions, stories, and the practical impact this will have for your users.

How does what you do and what you’re saying benefit or mean to your user? A biscuit isn’t a brittle and round, it’s a lightweight, portable, cost-effective source of essential nutrients!

The power of pictures… just got better!

Hello,

Not sure if you’ve been following the success and journey of the Michelle McMahon New Music 20×12 View Tube shot, which I wrote about a couple of times last year, but the story has just got better.

Not only has this shot achieved homepage coverage on BBC Arts & Entertainment, London2012.com and a picture story in the Evening Standard, but now it seems to have been adopted as the image for the whole Cultural Olympiad music campaign – it’s currently sitting pretty on their homepage – and has been for some time!

Looks like we got the communication of music and Olympics nailed! Great stuff!

This is such proof of the power of a good picture. It really can open doors for your brand and your message.

How to use basic Flickr functions

Does anyone else find the Flickr navigation strangely complicated? I’ve recently been making slideshows to embed into the PRS for Music Foundation’s website and I found it necessary to create the following instructions for myself and other members of the web team – ie. my intern Leah. Thought I’d post them here – in case they are of use to anyone else.

Images size
2200 x 1332 px worked well for what I was trying to do. I tried to keep all images below 500kb. Also, it may just be my eyes, but uploading images at 300dpi seemed to lead to a sharper picture at full size (I know that’s not really logical, but I swear it made a difference).

To Edit order of photos in slideshow – or the title of the set:
Go to the Home screen
Then select the ‘You’ drop down menu (top left hand of screen) and select ‘Your Sets’.
Then click ‘Edit’ on the set you want to edit
Drag images you want to include into the set from the timeline below
And drag images in the set to the desired order
Click Save

To edit the individual photos in the set
Home / You / Your Sets
Then click on the thumbnail of the set you want to edit
Then click on the Edit menu heading – don’t select a drop-down option – click on the word ‘Edit’ in the menu.
Edit at will and click ‘save all’ at bottom of page.

To Create & Edit Slideshow settings/appearance:
Home – You – Your Sets
Click on thumbnail of set you want to edit
Click on Slideshow – near top right hand corner of page
Click on Share – top right hand corner of slideshow
Click on ‘Customize this HTML’ – bottom right hand corner of new window that appears.
Change dimensions as required:
Uncheck ‘maintain aspect-ratio’
Enter custom size: 550 x 333
Ensure embed code has updated.
Copy and paste embed code to where you need it.

To Edit the date of images in your set
Home – You – Your Sets
Click on ‘Edit’ link right beneath the set thumbnail
Your set will appear – There is a row of thumbnails at the bottom of the screen – Just above this is a drop-down menu – Select the set you are working with.
Click ‘select all’ button – just below the drop-down menu button – to the far right of the title of your set
Click tab ‘Batch Organize’ – top left hand corner of screen
Drag one image into the batch organize area and the whole selected set will follow
Click Edit dates drop-down menu and select ‘Change all to same day’
Select ‘click here to set an exact date and time’
Change date and save.

 

British Music Abroad SXSW flyer and poster

Big up to Jordan Chatwin for designing these sweet little beauties. Taking inspiration and elements from the passport page design has worked really well here – it creates a subtle nod to travel and journeys, while offering huge room for creativity – which perfectly represents the essence behind the British Music Abroad brand. The visual identity for British Music Abroad is definitely coming together. It’s important to keep the right balance of creative freedom and ‘rock & roll’ yet retaining the all important trust and professionalism so important to charitable programmes.

These went down a storm in Texas (I’m very disappointed that I wasn’t there – mainly cos I’ll never get to see these in the ‘flesh’ – so to speak!) and I’d like to think they had something to do with providing an audience that was literally spilling out onto the street!

To see some photos of the British Music Abroad party at SXSW please visit www.britishmusicabroad.co.uk
Check out Jordan’s beautiful work at www.jordanchatwin.com