A guide for those taking the first steps towards a new website

We have created a Website Guide to help with making decisions about the look and content of your website and what you may need to consider.

Here, at The Sketch Collective Design Studio many of our customers have made the decision that a web presence is what their business needs. They have checked their local competitors’ sites and are looking to achieve the same and, more often than not, more! They are geared up and enthused to want a website this very minute! And that is great! Or is it? We say... slow down, take your time to understand the process and make the right choices - the outcome will be far more effective and much more beneficial to you and your business. The Sketch Collective Website Guide will help you do this.

We recognise that the website industry has lots of jargon and 'techy talk', and that can feel scary to most people, including the business owner who uses websites every day. Not only does the IT and web industry confuse and change on a daily basis, there are also many costs that are unforeseen at the initial outset, and if you are unaware of the jargon used, it can quickly lead to some surprising bills. We want to change this scary perception of the website world. Here, at The Sketch Collective, we can dispel that 'scary world' that some imagine. We have purposely put ourselves out there in the public eye with our large "fish bowl" window right on the high street! We are seen by every passer-by and all those who sit and wait in their cars at the traffic lights outside our window, it is our way of saying, to the small market town of Ledbury, (where we are located), that we are here to support and provide services that can help move businesses straight into the modern age, and for you to feel safe in the knowledge that we are on hand to provide advice and technical support whenever you may need it.

We work with many large local clients and provide a level of technical support that cannot always be achieved with in-house IT/marketing departments. Many of our clients have felt frustrated with their previous web service providers, either feeling that their issues or queries have been ignored or have not been resolved swiftly enough. We find that with our public presence, and having a 'face to face' customer experience, it is easier for our clients to pop in or phone up and resolve issues and put plans in place to avoid future web problems. These customers no longer spend time waiting for their phone calls to be answered and then be passed on between different departments, they have a convenient, reliable and friendly local service - a one stop shop for web design and all that goes with it. From web hosting, domain names, graphic design & promotional marketing, social media design and advice, newsletter HTML design & coding, and a brilliant photography service, give your website the wow factor!

Our Website Guide is useful for new customers as it takes you through a step by step process of things you will need to know when considering a website. It explains the jargon in 'plain English', making you aware of decisions you will need to make, and understand the processes involved in creating a website that works for you and the way you work - not an off the shelf web template site that leaves you wishing you had never entered into the website world.

This guide will help you consider your options and plan your website journey with us. Download The SketchCollective Website Guide here.

For more information on The Sketch Collective and all our services, please visit www.thesketchcollective.co.uk

5 Tips for SEO - Seize Every Opportunity

We have 5 Tips for you to 'Seize Every Opportunity' with your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
and starting the new year with these tips in mind may be the perfect steps to unleashing your websites full potential.

1.  Keep it Fresh - Updating your website with fresh original content is an important element in any website in order to make your site visible on search engines like Google, so keep posting new and fresh articles frequently.

2. Work Together - By integrating and using social media with your website it can be the key to making sure users regularly stay up to date with your business. Encourage 'shares', 'likes' and 'retweets' on your Facebook or Twitter accounts to remain visible to existing customers and to invite newcomers.

3. Wise Up - When writing articles choose your titles wisely, something that sums up your content accurately, use the title wording again within your first paragraph to show that your content is relevant, this will help Google pick out your 'Key Words'.

4. Use It - Google Analytics or any other reports on your websites performance is crucial in order for you to understand how to improve your website. Use these reports and develop your website with these reports in mind.

5. Make It Easy - Most users dislike websites with information overload and unable to find the information they are looking for on your site. Make it easy to navigate your site and give the user the right content as and when they need it. You should then be able to have a more accurate reading of the users process whilst visiting your website on your Web reports.

Just remember your website needs you, so give it some TLC this year.

If you need any further advice on improving your website contact The Sketch Collective.

New Stuff!

We have just updated our website portfolio, with all our most recent work.
Take a look and let us know what you think!

Movember at The Sketch Design Studio

Show us your Tache!

The Sketch Collective are joining thousands of other businesses and participants in raising money for the charity Movember.
Thom and Tom have been keeping their upper lip warm this month in a bid to raise funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and testicular cancer.

 Each year Movember is responsible for men (Mo Bros) all over the world growing moustaches and spreading the word, ladies (Mo Sistas) can also help by supporting Mo Bros raise awareness as well as the vital funds.

 If you would like to make a donation to our Movember page then please do so by following this link http://mobro.co/thesketchcollective

Why not show us your tache by uploading a photo to our facebook page too?
 https://www.facebook.com/thesketchcollective

Sketch photographer Thom Williams recently took some photographs for The Crown Inn at Woolhope, here is a just a selection of images taken from the shoot...

All images copyright of The Sketch Collective

Finally, the Sketch Design Studio is up and running!

We have had a busy few months juggling work, decoration and opening a new studio and on top of that, charity work too! Hectic, but we are finally there.

We are currently settling in to our new premises which is on Ledbury High street, Herefordshire and it's looking very smart if we do say so ourselves! However, this could not have been achieved without the blood, sweat and tears from our family and friends… huge thank you to all of you!
Take a look at our photos to see what we have been getting up to…

As for the charity work, our web designer Tom Hancock and Photographer Thom Williams have achieved a great feat by completing the 'Three Peak Challenge' on the 18th/19th August. This involves climbing the highest mountain in Scotland (Ben Nevis), England (Scafell Pike) and Wales (Snowdon) within 24hours…. and it certainly was not a walk in the park! The chosen charity is a foundation called The Knock On Effect - a local group raising money for a range of cancer charities started by a young girl called Rosie Kilburn during her own fight against cancer. Rosie's sadly lost her battle last year but the foundation continues to be run by her family and friends. This year would have been Rosie's 20th Birthday and their aim is to raise £20,000. The sketch boys, joined by Nick Beresford-Poole, Steve Kyle, Sophie Wilesmith, Ben Streames, Sam Meek and most importantly driver James Batley managed to complete the challenge in an incredible 22hours 55 minutes raising over £2000 for TKOE, a massive congratulations to them all!

The Sketch boys have just about recovered from achy limbs and are in the new studio along with Graphic Designer Hayley Beresford-Poole, so if you're passing pop in and have a look.

This one needs no words....

the 10 best music videos of all time

here is a list of the music videos i think are amazing and have well and truly made their mark on the music video world for being creative, inspirational, clever, witty, funny, different, new, exciting or maybe they are just great.

10.In Your Arms - Kina Grannis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOu0DuxFAT0

9.Beastie Boys - Intergalactic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qORYO0atB6g

8.Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irp8CNj9qBI

7. Bright Eyes - First Day Of My Life
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwFS69nA-1w

6. Radiohead - Street Spirit (Fade Out)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrTB-iiecqk&ob=av3e

5. Michael Jackson - Thriller
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOnqjkJTMaA&ob=av3n

4. Massive Attack - Teardrop
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7K72X4eo_s&ob=av3e

3. Her Morning Elegance / Oren Lavie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_HXUhShhmY

2. Johnny Cash - Hurt
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmVAWKfJ4Go&feature=related

1.Untitled #1 (A.K.A Vaka)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhPuZsIkRj8&feature=plcp&context=C3f7400aUDOEgsToPDskJUcKB9ZZQ2WuuhHSXvDzC5

A cinemagraph.... the next photograph

photo means 'a picture made from light', ghraphy means 'to write' and cinema means 'a motion'

so what is a cinemagraph?

a moving picture, but not a movie, an almost static image that is somehow alive... very clever stuff! check it out here

maybe this is what we will expect to see more of in the future, maybe not, either way i think its an interesting technique even if it does somehow mirror the paintings in harry potter.

Embroidered X-Rays? WOW!

See more work here...

An artist from Philadelphia has mixed two worlds and created something very special, Matthew Cox mixes X-Rays with embroidery, actually stitching over X-Rays to join the two together.

His soul purpose of creating the pieces is to show contrast between The stereotypical Masculine 'Doctor/Surgeon' and Femininity with Embroidery, whilst bringing them together to blend well.

I Love It!

We Remember

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.


We give thanks to everybody who made the sacrifice, we wouldn't have what we do have today.

They believe they can fly!

Here's a little video for you to watch, be inspired, be scared, I was both.

http://www.sebmontaz.com/index.php/eng/I-Believe-I-can-Fly.-Trailer

This is just the trailer, the feature length arrives on the 11/11/11 at 11.00am and I will be watching!

Movember

Pinch, punch, first of the month!

It's November but November is no ordinary month, it is home to Movember, a portmanteau of "moustache" and "November". The idea of the Movember is to grow a Moustache throughout the month of November, no shaving, no joining up with beards, just a good ol' slug on the upper lip.

It started in 1999 by a group of men in Adelaide, Australia. The men grew moustaches to raise money for the RSPCA, using the slogan 'Whiskers for Whiskers', it has since then snowballed across the globe and progressed to raising money for a whole range of mens health issues including cancer & depression.

http://uk.movember.com/?home

Communities, work places, schools and just about anyone (except women?) can grow a moustache and raise some money for a great cause, and of course you get to grow that moustache you have always secretly dreamt about, so why not give it a go!

Keith McCarthy Website

New website design for Keith McCarthy - View Website

Hereford Photography Festival

Every October Hereford plays host to The Hereford Photography Festival www.photofest.org

For a whole month Hereford gets taken over by Photographers displaying their work, holding talks, Seminars and workshops, The talks are great and if you can find one takes your fancy I would recommend going, £2 on the door or free if you are a friend of the festival (just sign up to their newsletter).

Don't fancy the talks? put your Ipod on and walk down to The Courtyard Theater, they have a great setting in which to display the Photography and of course its completely free.

Thats the great thing about this Festival, you can get as heavily involved as you wish, or you can walk around just taking in the imagery at your own leisurely pace, I would recommend checking out :-


Semblance - A Change in Place: Jason Larkin

Parkour Photography: Andy Day

Architype: Photography & Architecture

Don’t Mess with Texas

Rush Hour

Out of England Images from Overseas



If you do go I hope you get inspired and maybe pick up that old camera that sits in your drawer.

Mr Mead

Mr Meads Captain James McWolfson. from tom mead on Vimeo.

My Favorite Photograph

This is a photograph of Samuel Beckett, taken in 1976 by the legendary Jane Bown, Bown, who was working for The Observer at the time, was on an assignment to photograph the notoriously lens shy Beckett at the Royal Court Theatre, Sloan Square.

Bown arrived early, as she usually did and waited for Beckett, after a while of waiting she was given a tip off that he had already left by the stage door, Bown ran around the building and eventually caught up with him in an alley way, extremely reluctant he agreed to let Mrs Bown take 3 exposures of him, within 10 seconds Bown had got 5 exposures with the middle one being the final print.

One of the most amazing things about this photograph is that she was using natural light, most if not all of Bown's photographs were made using the available light, she also wasn't too bothered about what equipment she was using, secondhand Olympus OM1's, with an 50mm or 85mm Prime. The reason I think this photograph works so well, you have a photographer who knows, understands and can control the light, who is also extremely tight on composition, you have the background, the setting, the scene, its a clean backdrop with a small portion of pattern, and then you have a face of a man who is in no way keen on being photographed, not only that but this man is Samuel Beckett, he has a wonderfully photogenic face, this all combines to be a photograph worthy of legend status.

Speech from Steve Jobs

The following is a speech from Steve Jobs to Stanford University Graduates. A beautiful view on life that I thought must be shared.

"I am honoured to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2bn company with over 4,000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologise for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumour on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumour. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much."

A sad day for the future

R.I.P Steve, Thank you for everything that came out of your great mind.

End of point and shoot cameras ( lets talk Iphone )

So... Apple have released the new Iphone, the Iphone 4S, not quite the Iphone 5 everyone was expecting but still it looks pretty good.

their are two major differences, one being almost everything is voice controlled, yep, you can ask it what the weather will be like on tuesday, and the clever little phone will tell you, and the other USP is that it has been dubbed has having the best camera on a phone yet, 8MP a rather tasty little illuminated sensor which according to apple is very sensitive, meaning good for low light and a lot faster but probably noisy and full of grain, it also has a better flash. The dual core A5 processor means you the camera is quicker also.

One thing that does tempt me though is it can record 1080 HD movie, thats pretty neat from a phone, but its a phone and not a camera, in my opinion it may be handy to have this feature but this will have no effect on the sale of point and shoots and wont even think of touching the DSLR market.

to read the full article from cnet click the link below
http://news.cnet.com/8301-33200_3-20115649-290/iphone-4s-beginning-of-the-end-of-point-and-shoots/