You may think it’s greedy, but the Brand Surgery are up for a third award at The 2008 Worthing Business Awards! The Business Marketing and Promotion award could be ours on the 11th of October, together with the Website of the Year Award and Microbiz of the Year Award.It seems our little branding agency has been making big impressions with our snazzy web design skills and eye-catching marketing campaigns.

We’d like to thank everyone who has nominated us for any of these categories and hope to see you on the 11th of October for a night of glitter, glamour, and hopefully some celebratory champagne! If you’re thinking of attending the 2008 Worthing Business Awards, get your tickets here.

Ooh, the suspense is killing us!

The Brand Surgery has been turning heads this year and we are up for no less than two awards in the 2008 Worthing Business Awards which takes place on Saturday 11th October. We’ve been short-listed for the Website of the Year Award, and the MicroBiz of the Year Award, which is open to smaller businesses that stand out from the rest through dynamism and innovation.

It is the second year running for these annual awards, and over 1000 nominations were received for 17 categories. The top winner will bag a 2008 Business of the Year Award as well, with £1000 of free advertising in the Worthing Herald as the cherry on top.

Our sister company, TriggerSnappy.co.uk (a photo library of stunning photos of UK towns and villages) is sponsoring the Tourism and Leisure Award category. We have a tough decision as the nominations for this category are: Birdman, the wood on the beach, and the bowls.

For now, please keep your fingers crossed for the Brand Surgery …

Business awards

Error 404

Error 404

We all do it, the hastily typed URL with clumsy ‘I’ve had one coffee to many’ fingers and before you know it you’re staring at a boring white screen informing you in large blue and black letters that you have made a 404 error: File not found. Dur!

If you’ve got too much time on your hands and are having a particularly tedious Tuesday, this mind-numbingly standard HTTP response code is fully explained on Wikipedia.

Alternatively, if you’re not a geek, check out our error page. Of course you know by now that we don’t do things in a standard manner at The Brand Surgery, it’s too boring! So why not ‘force’ a mistake out of your impossibly clever self and type www.thebrandsurgery.co.uk/bog. You’ll see our ‘404’ page seems to have been hijacked by a couple of loony doctors! Yes, we like to stand out quite a bit and with this page hope to do just that, whilst cheering up the odd clumsy visitor to our snazzy pages. (Not you of course, you just wouldn’t get it wrong)

And standing out pays off, because we’ve popped up on two blogs again, this time listing the funniest and most unusual 404 error pages.

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING WEBSITES CONTAIN HIGHLY ENTERTAINING MATERIAL, WHICH MAY RESULT IN PARTIAL OR TOTAL LOSS OF PRODUCTIVITY.

Francesco Mugnai Blog - The 100 most funny and unusual 404 error pages
Skidzopedia Blog - 30 Most creative 404 error pages

Remember, when it comes to your branding, graphic design, websites or marketing campaigns, you don’t want to get it wrong! So if you’re looking to inject some fun and creativity into your tired designs, get in the pros and give the Brand Surgery a shout …

Cool business card design by the Brand Surgery

… All the way to Budapest and the US in fact! Did you know The Brand Surgery used to go by the name of Vaughan-O-Graphic? Last week one of our old Vaughan-O-Graphic business card designs popped up in a Hungarian blog listing cool business card designs. The blogger is Ivan Raszl, a successful advertising creative director, who has posted a similar thread before on his website Creative Bits attracting over 1 million page views.

Our juicy liquid-filled plastic number has been out of action for some years now, but is still managing to turn heads on an international level. This means The Brand Surgery are ahead of their game! Although we designed this card 5 years ago, we predicted the fashions correctly, and hey presto, five years later on it’s making its mark. We have even received an enquiry from the US through its dazzling presence on this internet-thread.

So what are you waiting for? Would you like us to whip up a snazzy business card design to rival the ones on this list? Give us a shout, and we’ll make it happen. And don’t forget, we can extend our creative flair to any of your graphic design, web design, advertising or marketing projects. Think about it.

For now, click here and get inspired by some dinky designs. We’d also love to see any other cool designs you’ve come across!

Annelies