ICM - Leeds Design Agency

Good design stands out. Fantastic design (coupled with imagination) stands out, smacks you in the face and steals your wallet. The guys and girls (and other creatures) that work at the Weta Workshops in New Zealand create such things to make sure that you can’t afford food or pay your Mortgage.

But Honestly – food is overrated in comparison to the stuff conjured up by Weta . . .

For a sample I recommend heading over to Dr. Grordbort’s Infallible Aether Oscillators website and becoming financially poorer – yet immeasurably cooler and better armed than at any time before.

For those of you that do not know – WETA Group of companies comprise of two distinct arms – Weta Workshop and Weta Digital. In a nutshell – they create, that the only way I can describe them. The workshop make stuff (in the real sense) and the Digital side make . . . well . . . digital stuff. Both the websites are fantastic and you will be amazed at how many things or places you will recognize, from film, TV and Theatre – to Games and Public Art. The websites have tonnes of detail about the processes and projects that they have worked on, detailing cutting edge technology and techniques – combined with skilled craftsmen and women to make . . . erm . . . stuff . . . Just go to the website and you will see what I mean.

Anyhow – its just a front to cover up the fact that they are magical diamond encrusted Dragons from Pluto and are using the website shop to distribute their far superior technology to their agents across the globe.

Thats why I am getting thinner for a few months and buying A FREAKING RAY GUN!!!! . . . “This one i…

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I said to a friend of mine the other day ‘you’d really like Twitter’, he’s always on Facebook updating his status and interacting with others via status comments, effectively like a mini Twitter stream…

‘I’m no good at Twitter’ was his reply, ‘I’ve tried’.

No-one is good ‘at’ Twitter, but you can be good ‘on’ Twitter.

One of the big catchphrases of recent times when marketing anything is Return on Investment. When it comes to social media methods I much prefer the term Return on Engagement – what you get back from the time and effort you put in.

For me, Twitter really works when you interact, be it with a brand or an individual. Talking to a complete stranger is alien at first, but over time becomes quite natural within the medium of Twitter. Often its the time element that people, including my friend, struggle with. You wouldn’t walk into a room full of people and expect them to turn around and start having a meaningful conversation with you straight away.

Over the past year of Twitter use I have given feedback (positive and negative) to brands that I use, have found new friends within my industry, kept in touch with old friends and colleagues, won competitions, and have met new friends I wouldn’t have networked with in a more ‘normal’ situation.

All this shows (for me) a good Return on Engagement – taking time to interact; replying to questions, thanking people for retweets, asking questions, forwarding important news, and so on…

It’s not about how many followers you have, it’s not about what Stephen Fry says, its how you use it.

Have some fun, use it your way – there are no hard and fast rules. Oh, and as is usual at the end of these blog posts; you can follow (and interact with) me at twitter.com/richardpeacock...

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Pantone have announced (from their mountaintop monastery of paint-pots and mixing palettes – that the colour of 2010 is Turquoise! Pantone Announcement Link Pantone have long been in the leading pack of colour experts and spend countless hours researching and analyzing data, working out what will be the next trend for all sorts of areas. But will it make a difference to you or I? Do you know what was the colour of 2009? It was Mimosa Yellow Can you honestly say that you saw this shade of yellow (or indeed – a larger-than-average use of yellow) in 2009? How do Pantone find out if one colour has been used more than another over a period of time? I have no idea – but I will find out. Will I be using Turquoise more over the next year? Probably not.

If you search for Colour Symbolism Click here there are hundreds of different meanings for different colours, some descriptions you may agree with – others maybe not as much. For the most part I do not agree with these meanings, the wide scope of the words used tend to be along the same track of those used by Astrologers. Some words will ring true to some – and others not.

Taking the example in the Pantone press release: “In many cultures, Turquoise occupies a very special position in the world of color,” explains Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute®. “It is believed to be a protective talisman, a color of deep compassion and healing, and a color of faith and truth, inspired by water and sky. Through years of color word-association studies, we …

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