We're a Brisbane website design and print design company. And this is our latest work, news and ramblings. Enjoy.

Mark from Purple Olive Caterers in Manchester just gave us a big pat on the back:

Thanks Hello Media, you created us a website that surpassed all our expectations and we wanted to let you know!

Its clear, funky and contemporary design made it a stand our in our market place and as a result of this, we regularly obtain a vast number of online bookings and enquiries.

Our online presence and visually inviting website frequently gains plaudits, mainly from the other envious businesses in our sector.

I cannot thank you enough for once again coming up with the goods, on time and on budget, and with such amazing results. You may be a Brisbane web design company, but you did the job for us in Manchester! Working with an overseas company was hassle free and we would recommend you, anytime to anyone, no matter where they are based.

Keep it up guys!

Labels: Purple Olive, Testimonials

Dear Mr. Architect:

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.

Keep in mind that the house I ultimately choose must cost less than the one I am currently living in. Make sure, however, that you correct all the deficiencies that exist in my current house (the floor of my kitchen vibrates when I walk across it, and the walls don't have nearly enough insulation in them).

As you design, also keep in mind that I want to keep yearly maintenance costs as low as possible. This should mean the incorporation of extra-cost features like aluminum, vinyl, or composite siding. (If you choose not to specify aluminum, be prepared to explain your decision in detail.)

Please take care that modern design practices and the latest materials are used in construction of the house, as I want it to be a showplace for the most up-to-date ideas and methods. Be alerted, however, that kitchen should be designed to accommodate, among other things, my 1952 Gibson refrigerator.

To insure that you are building the correct house for our entire family, make certain that you contact each of our children, and also our in-laws. My mother-in-law will have very strong feelings about how the house should be designed, since she visits us at least once a year. Make sure that you weigh all of these options carefully and come to the right decision. I, however, retain the right to overrule any choices that you make.

Please don't bother me with small details right now. Your job is to develop the overall plans for the house: get the big picture. At this time, for example, it is not appropriate to be choosing the color of the carpet.

However, keep in mind that my wife likes blue.

Also, do not worry at this time about acquiring the resources to build the house itself. Your first priority is to develop detailed plans and specifications. Once I approve these plans, however, I would expect the house to be under roof within 48 hours.

While you are designing this house specifically for me, keep in mind that sooner or later I will have to sell it to someone else. It therefore should have appeal to a wide variety of potential buyers. Please make sure before you finalize the plans that there is a consensus of the population in my area that they like the features this house has. I advise you to run up and look at my neighbor's house he constructed last year. We like it a great deal. It has many features that we would also like in our new home, particularly the 75-foot swimming pool. With careful engineering, I believe that you can design this into our new house without impacting the final cost.

Please prepare a complete set of blueprints. It is not necessary at this time to do the real design, since they will be used only for construction bids. Be advised, however, that you will be held accountable for any increase of construction costs as a result of later design changes.

You must be thrilled to be working on as an interesting project as this! To be able to use the latest techniques and materials and to be given such freedom in your designs is something that can't happen very often. Contact me as soon as possible with your complete ideas and plans.

PS: My wife has just told me that she disagrees with many of the instructions I've given you in this letter. As architect, it is your responsibility to resolve these differences. I have tried in the past and have been unable to accomplish this. If you can't handle this responsibility, I will have to find another architect.

PPS: Perhaps what I need is not a house at all, but a travel trailer. Please advise me as soon as possible if this is the case.

(Author unknown)

Labels: Articles, Humour

So, yes, you may notice that things look a little different around here now. We've gone and given ourselves a fresh new look and done a major update on our somewhat out-of-date website.

Why have we changed? Well that's easy to answer.

Firstly our old website really suffered from lack of love, out of date work, no updates - you know the drill... All the things that we tell you a good website shouldn't be! So slightly embarrased that we were telling our clients one thing and doing another thing ourselves, we couldn't help smile at the irony and decided it was time to practice what we preach.

So we set about the change. We've really given the whole site a fresh lick of paint, updated all our work, highlighted our services more and put a lot of effort into creating a more accessible "us". We're putting a lot more focus into regular updates in our blog to showcase what we are working on and more importantly to open up an easy channel for you to communicate with us. We love to hear what people think about what we do, so please post like mad!

Secondly, we have undertaken the redesign as a demonstration project. To demonstrate what? Well, search engine optimisation hopefully!

In 2003 when we launched Hello Media, we were in a bit of a rush to get our old website up and running, in fact if I remember correctly it was 48 hours from concept to online. At the time we decided to just get the site up and running first and then to come back when we had time to optimise it for the search engines. Unfortunately we were just so busy on client work we never got back to do that.

So the result, well Google will tell you that... For a search phrase that we would want to be appearing under like "Brisbane Web Design" we just didn't even come anywhere. In fact we got so bored of clicking "next" to try and find us that we gave up, deciding that Google hated our site so much it wasn't even on there!

And that's where our experiment starts. We've rebuilt the entire site from the ground up, based on a solid platform of search engine optimisation techniques. We can't wait to see what happens.

Why did we do this? Well there's 2 reasons really, one is obviously to try and get us appearing higher in search engines and secondly we want to use it as a showcase to our clients, and future clients, on what improvements in search engine rankings optimisation actually has.

So let's take 2 phrases that we've looked at improving our Google ranking for: "Brisbane Website Design" and "Brisbane Web Design". Ok, so yes, there are hundreds and hundreds of websites we are competing with so we are not expecting miracles. However, with a starting position of "I'm so bored of clicking through pages to find us I want to go to sleep", we are looking for a remarkable improvement.

Every month we will look at our ranking and post the results here.

We hope you like our new look and our much improved website. Remember to keep coming back to see what we are up to... We will be adding new blog articles whenever we can. Over the next few weeks we will be transferring across all the articles from our old website too so there should be plenty to waste a few minutes of your day with.

Labels: Hello Media, Search Engine Optimisation

Just a quick posting to show the new Nomis business cards. As Nomis is quickly being recognised as a technology driven brand, the business cards feature their major technologies to encourage conversation when distributing the cards.

Printed on a lovely 380gsm stock with a matt cello finish, the business cards ooze the quality associated with their products. The reverse features a mettalic back with pressed logo. Mmm, nice. Mission accomplished.

Related Info
Nomis Overview
Nomis Branding
Branding & Corporate Identity

Related Websites
www.nomisfootball.com
www.shopnomis.com

Labels: Business Cards, Nomis, Print

We stumbled over this article recently A Rant (Mostly) About Web Content by Keith Robinson, which bought a wry smile.

In this article we give you an overview of the differences between writing for the web and writing for a print publication. Many people don't realise what a difference this makes to the success of your website, so this is one of the reasons why we have a qualified and dedicated copywriter, editor and journalist on board. We know how important it is!

The three main guidelines for writing for the web are:

Be compact and to the point

Write for scannability

Use hypertext to split up long information into multiple pages

So, how is writing for the web different to writing on paper?

Reading from computer screens is about 25 per cent slower than reading from paper. People don't want to read a lot of text from computer screens, so you should write 50 per cent less text than usual. Users don't like to scroll down endlessly long pages, which is another reason to keep pages short. (This page, obviously, is the exception to that rule. After all, we're trying to help you!)

On the web you will need to split long documents into a number of shorter pages that are linked together. This means your users will not be presented with long pages of information that they don't want to trawl through.

A website is not like a printed publication in that you cannot guarantee where a user will enter your website. You can also not assume that they will move through your site in a lineat order as they would if they were reading, say, a book. They can enter at any page and move between pages as they chose. As such, every page will need to be independent and explain its topic without assuming the user has seen any of the other pages in the website.

Keep in mind that users may not have the necessary knowledge to understand or use a page. Proving a link to background or explanatory information will help.

Always put the most important information at the top of the page, as users do not like to scroll through lots of text in search of your key "point".

Always remember that web users are generally impatient and critical. They have chosen to visit your website because they have something they need to do or find, and they want to find the information quickly. Write in a style to allow users to do this.

Credibility is important on the web. Trust is rapidly lost if you use subjective claims or boastful statements like "best design studio in Brisbane". Avoid "marketese" and use a more objective style.

To increase the credibility of your pages, link to other sites that contain supporting or relevant information.

Compared to many forms of print media, the web is informal and immediate in nature. Users appreciate an informal writing style.

Users will rely on scanning text to determine it's meaning and content. You should avoid using clever headings that have no real meaning, as users may miss important information if they skip past non-informative heading.

Simpler is always better. Long sentences and confusing words are harder to understand online than in print.

The web is a fluid medium. Print is not. Pages should be updated to reflect any relevant changes. Credibility will suffer if articles show incorrect or out of date information.

Don't feel you can crack the perfect web copy on your own? Contact us and let one of our trained writers do it for you. You'll be amazed at what a difference it will make!
Email: hello@hellomedia.com.au

Related Info
Copywriting and Editing

Labels: Articles, Content Writing

Our latest campaign for Nomis "It's time to change" has just gone up a gear in Melbourne and Brisbane with the imminent launch of "AKA is back" billboards, posters and instore point of sale.

We really blew away the client with our direction and final artwork to create a totally stunning and eye catching campaign. Billboards will start showing AKA on April 1, so keep an eye out for them. This will be backed by instore promotion and point of sale to ensure the campaign is consistent from street to store.

We'll go for a drive when they are up to take some photos and we are also putting together a "How we made AKA" blog article showing the stages from intial photoshoot to final artwork. It gives an interesting insight into how we go about our work. Stay tuned.

Related Info
Print Design
Nomis Campaigns

Labels: Nomis, Print

The Xtend-Life rebrand included repackaging the 18 supplement products in their range. With a brief to create a simple, stylish and clinical product we used colour branding across ranges (within the entire range) and used metallic inks and gold foiling to hit the mark.

The change has completely revitalised the shelf appeal of the products, increasing visual appeal to match the quality of the products.

Related Info
Packaging Design
Xtend-LIfe Packaging

Labels: Packaging, Xtend-Life

Xtend-Life's website is now live! After working on the rebrand of Xtend-Life, phase 1 of their website redevelopment is complete.

The redesign of the website included a full usability study into the navigation and content of the site, with one main aim of improving how quickly and easily people could find information and available products.

Phase 2 of the website will involve the addition of improved customer features such as back orders, order tracking, an account section and further functionality to improve the user's experience.

After launch the site statistics showed more pages were being viewed and users were spending longer on the website.

Xtend-Life really are experts in the field of natural supplements, and in being so, have an incredible amount of information regarding each supplement and health condition.

We looked at ways of taking this content and breaking it into managable sections but keeping overviews that are comprehensive enough for the average user. This allowed us to make bite size content and let's the user go as "deep" into the site as they like to easily find further information.

Because of this indepth content it was important that the navigation and usability of the site worked effortlessly. By adding quick links from all the pages to different health conditions and products we allowed the user quick and easy access to relevant information and products. This also allowed returning customers to find their product in one mouse click, rather than 4 on the old site.

Working in line with the new branding we developed for Xtend-Life the website was kept clean, modern and specifically designed to target a growing American market. The website was also designed to lift the company's market position from "local New Zealand product" to "International brand" to sit alongside the global elite supplement brands.

Check out their new website at www.xtend-life.com



Related Info
Ecommerce Websites
Xtend-LIfe Ecommerce Website

Labels: Content Writing, Websites, Xtend-Life

We were recently approached by international lingerie retailer Ricky Lee to create the branding for their company.

The outcome was a distinctly unique logo that played a modern, twist on a classical type execution. Using heavy set text we brought character and sexiness into the logo by replacing the "i" in the logo with a woman in underwear!

The result is a striking logo which quickly portrays the company's products and values. A great logo and thumbs up from Ricky Lee.



Related Info
Branding & Corporate Identity

Labels: Blest bras, Branding

We recently produced a fold out leaflet for our favourite Australian sports company, Nomis, with the aim of creating awareness of, and raising interest in, a forthcoming product release. The leaflet highlighted the key performance aspects of Nomis' new Excel 3000 running shoe.

This leaflet was printed, folded and shrink wrapped and placed into 40,000 Nomis shoe boxes carrying Nomis' existing boot range.

The running shoe is a new market area for Nomis and, as such, it was particularly important to target current Nomis customers as they would be most likely to purchase the running shoes. By adding the leaflet to the football boot boxes, we ensured guaranteed target audience saturation.

Further promotion work for the Excel 3000 is currently in production.

Other work for Nomis:

- Branding
- Creative campaigns
- Ecommerce websites
- Sport websites
- Catalogue/Brochures
- Print adverts
- Email marketing
- Search engine marketing
- Photography
- Copywriting and editing
- Packaging
- Point of sale
- Posters/flyers

If you want to find out what we could do for you, just drop a line to hello@hellomedia.com.au

Related Info
Print Design
Nomis Print

Labels: Nomis, Print

With 72 pages jam packed full of swimwear and lingerie for the "Blest" girls amongst you, this really is the best Blest bras catalogue yet! This one even features Jennifer Hawkins... Down boys!


It's easy to get yourself one of these free catalogues, just head over to Blest bras and follow the links! Otherwise, just give us a call and we will be more than happy to send one out to you.






The catalogue continues our ongoing relationship with Blest bras. We like them, and because we are now in our third year working together, we think they must like us too!

What we've done for Blest bras:

- eCommerce website
- Catalogue/brochure
- Print ads
- Photography
- eMarketing campaigns
- Photography
- Copywriting and editing

Related Info
Print Design
Blest bras Catalogue

If you want to find out what we could do for you, just drop us a line at hello@hellomedia.com.au

Labels: Blest bras, Print

I had a very surreal experience when I was younger - I think it was 1991. I was working away doing some art "home work" (yes it was that long ago) when a couple of guys started looking over my shoulder and commenting on my work.

Anyway, a quick conversation followed, I do this, I do that, blah blah etc. They mentioned they worked in a similar industry and asked to borrow a piece of paper. At this time I didn't know what was really happening, so was happy to be amused. They both spent a couple of minutes doodling away and then gave me this:

You can imagine the look on my face when I realised that they were the artist, Jon Bogdanove, and inker, Dennis Janke, of the the Superman Man of Steel comics!

It's one moment of my life I will never forget and I have signed artwork of the Doomsday edition. Lucky me!

Labels: General