We LOVE our Local shops

Shop locally, shop in Ledbury!

Enter your favorite local shops for The Telegraph Magazine Shop Awards 2010!

With Supermarkets and chain stores taking the independent shop owners regular customers, it is more necessary than ever to support our local retailers. Our local town is Ledbury in Herefordshire, a historic, picturesque market town filled with unique and traditional stores. Within Ledbury you will find shop owners with great personality and character, selling exceptional quality goods, who know there products inside out. They may not be able to beat the prices, but the wonderful service and choice of goods that our local shops provide is something you will want to go back for again and again. The majority of our clients are local independent traders and we would like to support them as much as we can. The voting for 'The Telegraph Magazine Shop Awards 2010' ends December 10th, so dont hang about, get your votes in now!

Click here to submit your votes!

Branding

As a start up company forming just over a year and a half ago, we have now realised how crucial it is to get the first stages of your business set up correctly from the word go. Particularly researching your target market and representing your business to signify 'who you are', 'what you do' and very importantly 'who for' and to consider if this target market is located near you.

These are hard questions to ask a start up business when you are trying to specify your prospective clients. As a design company we understood the importance of a good branding strategy, however, if you are targeting the wrong market or route the whole branding concept changes.

It is understandable for new business to be indecisive about the target market they are trying to approach as the first few months is a lot of trial and error and testing the water.

When we first speak to our clients we ensure we arrange a meeting at their business premises, get to know them, get to know what they do, to identify the character of the business. We will then go through a process of questions that leads to the design concepts and ideas enabling our client to be 100% involved and put their ideas across. That way they will not end up with a generic branding that could apply to anyone. It applies to them and them alone.

If you would like to see the kind of branding work we have done please view our portfolio at www.designsketch.co.uk

Make your website iPhone friendly.

In this day and age technological trends seem to come and go. The mini disc lasted but a second before being replace by the CD which is now being slowly replaced by the digital downloads. One trend that does not seem to be disappearing is the iPod and iPhone. More and more people are buying into the Apple web.

Not only can the iPhone make calls, store your music, store applications it can also browse the web. People are logging on to the internet with their iPhones and iPods. In fact it is predicted that within five years internet usage on smartphones will rival that of desktop PCs.

With the iPhone an easy and convenient way to find the nearest restaurant, nearest bakery, nearest cinema etc whilst on the go you need to make sure your business is creating an accessible and easy to use iPhone version of your website.

If you come to us for a website we can offer you a full iPhone version of your site to reach those customers that would otherwise go down the road to your competition.

Getting behind big ideas...

A London based company caught my eye the other day, a creative marketing consultancy firm that get behind and help those people with Big Ideas that can transform companies and create opportunities.

Launching the 'Ideas Awards' has meant anyone with an idea can post them to the blog and get them heard. My girlfriend's family are constantly coming up with new and innovative ideas such as 'City Sheds' - cupboard sized sheds to store anything from tools to recycling for those who haven't got space in the garden to put up a full sized shed. Perhaps then this could be the outlet for these ideas, get them heard and get recognized for the potential genius within.

I salute this company for getting people talking about their ideas. Who knows perhaps that idea you had but never shared could lead to big things so get posting on their blog and see what comes of it. You could be the next John Harrington (Inventor of the Toilet)!

http://www.allabouttheidea.co.uk/

Tom

John Nash Interiors and Antiques

One of our most recent client's new website is now online today. John Nash Interiors and Antiques in Ledbury provides customers with bespoke interior and furniture design alongside their renowned & firmly established antiques showroom.

Business partners John Nash and Louis Calleja wanted all the works that The Sketch Collective have to offer from stunning photography to show of the vast collection of antiques and products to a full re-design of their website.

The design brief was to create a very user friendly, eye catching and professional website. It had to show every part of the business and case histories of their most recent projects in a stylish and modern way. Working closely with John and Louis, the Sketch Team have created a website to the exact requirements set out.

To view the website Please Click Here.

Flash

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9180776/Web_multimedia_6_reasons_why_Flash_isn_t_going_away

The fight to save Flash lives on!

Thom Williams - Wedding Photographer

Check out the new wedding photographer in Ledbury, Herefordshire

thomwilliams.co.uk