We chose WordPress as the content management system for Cory Riverside Energy’s website. Here’s why.

As companies evolve, they often seek to revise their corporate identity. It’s an immediate way of showing their customers that they are staying relevant in changing markets.

As part of their rebrand Cory Riverside Energy commissioned new photography, the brief was quite simple – capture genuine expressions that are confident and candid. The photos needed to tell a positive story documenting authentic interactions between people, machinery and surroundings telling the story of energy from waste. In December 2016 photographer Matt Swift and I headed to the capital for a week’s long photoshoot.

We are proud to announce that we have been nominated in the Best Brand Agency category at the Talk of Manchester Business Awards 2016 and have now reached the voting stages.

It was while I was researching my last blogs, Print is dead. Or is it? and Print – finish it off! that I discovered one of the contributors to the new print scene is the rise of Instagram magazines. I found it fascinating that a medium such as the digital media that has majorly affected print over the last decade is now responsible for leading the way in new, niche, quality printed magazines.

One of the many deciding factors when appointing an agency to a project is budget. Agency and client can play a game of cat and mouse when it comes to costings – who will show theirs first, but this way of doing business does nobody any favours.

The Olympics branding is a tough gig these days – practically designed by committee and always shrouded in controversy, your creation is also on view to millions all around the globe. So how do you go about creating a logo and brand for the greatest show on Earth?

Print and print finishes are seeing a resurgence in 2016. Far from being dead, print is alive and well, thank you very much – thanks to the rise of niche instagram magazines, futuristic print inks and a yearning for a ‘hand made’ product that has made even letterpress, a 500 year-old printing method, become trendy again.

We’re champions of print at Make Complex Simple – we love the smell of new print, the excitement of choosing print finishes, holding that beautifully finished velvet touch, foil blocked brochure in our hands – it’s the ultimate UX! With the rise and rise of digital it’s inevitable that print has been pushed to the back of marketers minds as too costly and time consuming. However with so much content being produced digitally, to really stand out from the crowd and create a user-centred experience, a decision to return to a quality designed, printed and finished piece is once more turning heads.

Great news! Your marketing budget for the year has been approved. Better get cracking with a marketing campaign plan then because once you’ve got your messaging right deciding how it reaches your audience isn’t easy. There’s so many kinds of media to market your business across, that knowing where to spend your budget can be a tricky task. But at least digital allows you to place some highly targeted messaging in the right streams and act on the information you receive in return.

To maintain brand consistency across all your communications it is essential you have a set of water-tight, consistent Word documents and templates for your users. But once you have distributed them, how do you ensure your carefully crafted templates are used consistently and your users don’t start making things up as they go along! Well, by thinking of every eventuality – make it easy for them to use your brand font by having the right one set as default – change the theme colours to your brand colour palette – these are just a few examples!  

Yesterday while trawling through the internet I stumbled across the news story of a restoration project that has caused absolute outrage in Spain.