The Brand Surgery - Branding, Graphic Design and Web Design in Worthing, West Sussex

Lisa Cooper, our work experience extravaganza, showing off her research for her pop-up book, Indiana Penguin!

This week, we pass the hot spot over to Lisa Cooper, our work experience pop-up book legend!

Hello …

My name is Lisa Cooper, I am 15 years old and I go to Davison CE High School for girls, in Worthing. Every year, amongst other schools, Davison give the opportunity for every girl in year 10 to have a go at work experience so like most others, I used this opportunity to do exactly that. I got myself a placement at The Brand Surgery – a graphic design based company. Impressed by my graphics portfolio, The Brand Surgery have asked me to write a blog about the graphics course at Davison, so here goes nothing!

At Davison, I take graphics as an option and what a brilliant option it is. Most people think that when it comes to graphics it’s all design work, but I assure you it’s far more involved than that! When I first began the course my teacher got us to practice designing, researching and manufacturing. Now, usually I would enjoy doing design work but it is slightly less enjoyable when your teacher is timing you, and every once in a while going ‘Tick … Tock’. However, what I did learn from him doing that is the time constraints sometimes issued on you when you have work to complete. This was a good method to use to prepare us for what was coming up!

The project began …

When I began the actual project, my teacher briefed us on what we needed to do and what the structure of the lessons was going to be like. He explained that we would need to do a lot of research before starting the design work. Doing this helped me gain an understanding of the requirements of the target audience I would need to aim my product at and what sort of things would appeal to them. We had a choice of either designing and creating a perfume box or a pop-up book. Now, I don’t know about you, but when given the choice between a perfume box or a pop-up book, one kinda stands out more than the other? So I chose the pop-up book. From this I started the research.

To meet the criteria of the brief the exam board gave to my teacher, I would need to do a lot of research, in a lot of detail. The three main pieces of research we had to complete were: product comparison, product disassembly and a survey. The product comparison helped me see what competition there was on the market and where gaps were – Gaps for me to fill with my product. Now, what is an interesting, unique, original and child friendly theme for a pop-up book? Indiana penguin of course! This idea ensured that it would be suitable for both males and females as it is adventurous and also. Who doesn’t love penguins?

The survey

However, a lot more research and development was needed for this idea to work. This is where the survey came in. For my survey I came up with several questions, all relevant to my theme, to be asked to three different age groups, for a range of feedback on what I could do to improve and develop my idea. From the data I received back I then converted it into pie charts and analysed it. I then wrote a detailed description of what the data suggested to me and how I was going to use it in my later designs. Seems like a lot of work for just one popup book right? Wrong! This helped me develop my work a lot as I got user group feedback and my idea was becoming more developed and evermore like a realistic goal to achieve!

After doing all the research I started on initial designs, where again I got user group feedback on all designs by doing a review, and I also reviewed my work myself to see if my designs met specification points I had written which stated what requirements my designs had to meet. From this I labeled my designs: Red, Amber and Green – A common way of self reviewing your work at Davison. Red, meaning that the design needs a lot of work, amber, meaning the design would need some work done on it, and green, meaning it meets all specification points and would need very little work done on it. After taking into account of the feedback I had got, I developed all designs that were red and amber and started to work out how my designs would work when put into a popup book, so I designed some nets and made a prototype!

Once I had made my prototype I got feedback for each product and developed them, if indeed they needed development. This helped me produce my final design accompanied by a series of nets all drawn to scale. By completing this, I had completed two ‘bits’ to the project – the research and the designing. In year 11 I will start the manufacturing part of my pop-up book and that is when I will see if all that research and development has paid off!

So to sum up… Davison offers a brilliant graphics course that will inform you and help you gain experience in, not only the basics of graphic design, but also the stages needed to accomplish researching, designing and manufacturing a product. Not bad eh?

Thank you Davisons!

Thank you to Davisons for sending us Sarah! We are well impressed with your graphic design course, and think that some university students could learn a thing or two here!

Call The Brand Surgery on 01903 824229 if you would like to find out more about our graphic design and branding services.

Indiana Penguin by Lisa Cooper

Vicky is studying an NVQ Level 3 in Management courtesy of Train as you Gain at Northbrook College. This has been excellent for The Brand Surgery as we have been revising our business plans which includes our mission statement.

We all know that in marketing we should use the KISS method – Keep It Simple Stupid! or Keep it Simple & Straightforward is the more polite version. We have applied this theory to our new Mission Statement which is:

The Brand Surgery brings branding excellence at affordable prices to all businesses in Great Britain.

You can’t get much clearer than that! We bring the same jargon free business ethics to all of our services. If this is the first time you have discovered our blog, here is a little more about The Brand Surgery.

The Brand Surgery is a branding agency and offers services such as: Branding consultancy, logo design, design for print, website design & development, PR services, e-marketing services, blog writing services, copywriting services, photography, Illustration and SMS marketing
The Brand Surgery believes in the principle of Givers Gain. We give branding advice and give help to businesses by offering high-end branding services at realistic prices. Our tried-and-tested formula to marketing is HONESTY and HELPING OTHERS. We help businesses and we put ourselves in their shoes. We believe that using honesty when helping our clients with their marketing and promotions is the way forward.

Clients we have helped are so pleased with our expertise that they have passed our name to other businesses that also want to grow. We have advised all of our clients that good branding, marketing and promotions is the key to standing out, especially when the economy is tough. Customers are going to buy from businesses that look professional and established. The customers that have taken our branding advice have thrived throughout the recession.

Everything we advise our clients to do, we test on our business first – from customer care to the envelopes we post our marketing packs in. Give as you would like to receive is our motto for helping businesses to grow.

If you like our business philosophy, then we would love to work with you. Visit our website on www.thebrandsurgery.co.uk or call 01903 824229. We hope you enjoy looking at the rest of our website.

Viking passengers experience 39 hours delay

I don’t know … I’ve been gone for two weeks and the blogging has just stopped. Luckily I came back when I did …

It is actually a major miracle that I made it back after my Egyptian adventures. Drift snorkelling isn’t for Vicky Vaughan. Especially when one’s face mask doesn’t fit. And double-especially when one is extremely short-sighted. Treble-especially when there are twenty identical looking boats which are 200 metres apart, with a strong current and you can’t remember the name of your boat. I have to say that my drift-snorkelling experience was pretty scary, and I am not sure if I still want to swim the channel to raise funds for my charity, Talent within You next year.

Bad Branding Experience

The swimming was just one adventure! The second was my delay coming home. We were delayed by 39 hours and 40 minutes no thanks to Viking Airlines. The worst part about our delay was that Viking couldn’t be bothered to communicate with its 200 passengers in person. They faxed a letter to Sharm airport to tell us the plane had been cancelled. I was travelling alone and if I hadn’t been so well travelled, would have been very frightened. To Viking’s credit, they did provide accommodation for two evenings. If they had of been honest and said we would be staying another two nights, we could of relaxed. Instead, they had us check-in and check-out of the hotel three times. We had four departure times conveyed to us via an Egyptian rep with pigeon English.

The above experience has left me with a bad memory and is what I call BAD branding! Viking should be sitting on the naughty step for a long time. They have broken their brand promise which is (according to their website): Our experienced team has a philosophy of excellent customer service to ensure your flight experience is exemplary.We look forward to being of service to you! LOL!

The last bad experience was with Breo watches. I purchased a Breo Roam watch on the outbound Viking flight, and it was supposed to be water resistant to 10m. Well trust me, Breo watches  are not water resistant. And what’s more, they will not give me my money back because I have no receipt, thanks to Viking Airlines! Answer from Breo to my request for a replacement or refund: Apologies for the experience with the watch. Unfortunately, In accordance with our Returns Policy (http://www.breo.com/customerservices.php) “Returns and exchanges will only be processed if accompanied with proof of purchase. This includes all airline purchases and items bought through resellers”. What an utterly useless response when Viking couldn’t even send a plane to take me home so I could get a receipt!

Good branding experience

Good branding though is the service I received from HSBC holiday insurance, which comes free with HSBC banking. They refunded £25 per 12 hours (OK a bit stingy I know), but they did it by BACs on the phone. It was so easy. Thank you.

So after all of this, I did have a great holiday. We stayed at Three Corners St. George in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. The weather was gorgeous. I had great company with my friends who I met at the hotel. I would go to Sharm El Sheikh again – it’s great to be able to trust the weather in March.

While I’ve been away sunning myself, my brand doctors and nurses have been busy working on three websites, brochures, rebrands and adverts. We are also writing a number of press releases for businesses on a national level. Plus the long awaited book, is back from the proof reader, and we are just about to send it to the publisher.  Go to www.doamadonna.com for a sneak preview! Watch this space!

Call Vicky at The Brand Surgery (best branding company in West Sussex) on 01903 824229 or email vicky@thebrandsurgery.co.uk if you would like to give your business some urgent branding medical attention.

There's no candles, but we're all wishing Wish the best! Paul Sloan, Director of Wish cuts the launch cake.

Congratulations to Wish who are now officially launched. The launch party took place at the Wish offices in Billingshurst. We adored the purple and white flowers, balloons and ribbons that complimented the Wish marketing collateral (that The Brand Surgery designed) so well.

If you missed our last blog on Wish, you can click here to find out more about Wish Financial. In brief: Wish Financial approached us in Autumn 2009 and briefed us to design a sleek, contemporary, fresh corporate website, keeping to Wish’s existing corporate identity. Wish’s brand colour is a rich purple – purple is a great business colour because of the colour psychology connected with it. Purple represents royalty and wealth. It is also a spiritual colour, so needs to be used wisely to ensure it compliments the industry it is presenting, in this case finance.

Wish specialise in the following areas:

• Mortgages
• General Insurance
• Commercial Solutions
• Personal Protection
• Savings & Investments
• Retirement Planning

Wish have over 30 years of collective experience in financial planning and it was this experience we feel we successful incorporated within the website design. The Brand Surgery, branding and website design agency, Worthing, West Sussex have also designed Wish’s corporate brochure, estate agent leaflet and posters. The marketing collateral we have designed reflects Wish’s website branding, creating a strong and memorable corporate identity.

Congratulations Wish, we wish you all the best!

There's no candles, but we're all wishing ...

TalentWithinYou is now officially LIVE!

Visit our brand new website to find out more about Talent Within You, and how we helped Jack Ford. If you’ve got a talent why not register on our new website and chat to other talented kids, add applications and widgets to your profile page, upload pictures, videos and much more!

To contact us about your talent you can use our online form.

To register for Talent Within You click here.

Talent Within You finds, helps and cares for children who have a special talent. We believe that every child has a talent no matter what. It is our job to unleash that talent and help to develop it.

Talent Within You has achieved Gift Aid status

The Brand Surgery have been working hard to get Talent Within You off the ground so we can start receiving donations. The website will be live very soon and businesses will be able to choose the child they sponsor, and then also check a Gift Aid box which means we can claim tax and more money will go towards Jack Ford and talented children like Jack Ford, Worthing’s potential British ice-skating champion.

The Talent Within You website also comprises:

• A community-style website so talented kids can talk to one another
• Animated banner graphics
• Search-engine optimised copywriting
• Stunning photography taken by our very own in-house photographer
• Excellent graphic design and Talent Within You logo and branding
• Paypal gateway for donations and sponsorship
• Blog writing for SEO

The Talent Within You website is a community-style website with the functionality of Facebook, such as user feeds and group and page creation. You will also be able to create your personal easy-customisable profiles (drag and drop design facility) as well as take advantage of the photo album facility and also add a video onto your profile page.

So, you will soon see what The Brand Surgery (website design company in Worthing, West Sussex) have done for the launch of Talent Within You. Let us help launch your business too.

Call Vicky at The Brand Surgery on 01903 824229 or email vicky@thebrandsurgery.co.uk.

Illustrations for magazine design

If you don’t know this, The Brand Surgery and our sister company, design and publish Coastliners magazine for Stagecoach South. For the last edition, we wanted to create an extra special cover for Christmas. The magazine has a six month life span, so the magazine has to contain relevant and interesting content that is valid until the end of March. Therefore, we don’t cram the cover with festive images – or it would look out of date as soon as Chrismas was over.

Hidden illustration talent

The boss – and original Brand Doctor, Vicky Vaughan, decided it was time to unveil her hidden illustration talents and created the above masterpiece! Wow! The added benefit of this front cover design, was that the colours followed the Stagecoach South branding. The cover was presented to our client, approved, then printed and is actually still in circulation now.

A month of so after the distribution of this magazine, we received a phone call asking us if we could illustrate all the landmarks across the south coast in the same style as the Brighton Dome and the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, shown above. Imagine our delight!

Illustrations for exhibitions, brochures, newsletters, websites and magazines

There are now a total of eight illustrations, which are about to be part of a big launch. Unfortunately, we have been sworn to secrecy and can’t reveal where you will see them. Let’s just say that they are being printed in EXTRA LARGE format so you won’t miss them if you live between Brighton and Portsmouth.

The launch of these massive graphics is on Friday 26th February, so you haven’t got long to wait until you can see them in place!

If you would like some illustrations for your project – whether it be a website, brochure, magazine or newsletter, please give us a call on 01903 824229 or email vicky@thebrandsurgery.co.uk.

We have an extra special Valentine gift for all our new and existing customers – because we love you! How does 20% off all our design fees for any project designed in February sound?

We may be mad, but the 20% discount is available on our our graphic design work. This includes:

• Logo design
• Website design
• Brochure design
• Leaflet design
• Exhibition graphics design

So now, you’ve got no excuse not to love your business! Don’t delay any longer, let our  branding and website agency, based in Worthing, West Sussex give your marketing collateral the kiss of life, while you enjoy a spot of loving.

If you want something designed which is not mentioned in the list above, give us a call on 01903 824229 or email: vicky@thebrandsurgery.co.uk. and we will be happy to discuss your requirements.

Well we’ve done it! Talent Within You has been officially launched and Todd Carty is also our very first patron.

Talent Within You is a charitable organisation set up to find talent within children, then we nurture and develop that talent and take it to the next level via sponsorship from businesses.

Talent Within You is a national organisation, but we have launched it in Worthing as Vicky and her friend and co-founder, Mike Pisko, both live in Worthing. Our first child with talent is Jack Ford, and we gave him lots of PR coverage, via press and radio. Plus we organised Todd Carty to come and dance-on-ice once again with Jack.

We are now looking for businesses to come on board and sponsor Jack and other children like him. We are very grateful to these businesses who have kindly sponsored Jack’s development: Worthing Borough Council, Worthing Town Centre Initiative, The Chatworth Hotel, Face Media Group, CAM Central, and of course of the staff at The Brand Surgery who have helped to launch this worthwhile charity.

If you can’t wait to see our new website, and are desperate to help fund Jack and his parents with his training, or to help another child with talent, please make a cheque payable to Talent Within You, and post to us at Talent Within You Donations, 23 Harrow Road, Worthing, West Sussex BN11 4RB.

Or you can click the donate button below.

To take this organisation to market, we,  The Brand Surgery – branding and website agency based in West Sussex – have used our extensive range of in-house marketing services to:

• Write effective press releases which successfully gave Jack prominent local press coverage;
• We are raising funds via sponsorship arrangements to help take Jack to the next level;
• We designed the Talent Within You logo, leaflet, stationery, banners and other marketing collateral;
• We have liaised with celebrity agencies to help get Todd Carty and other celebrities on board;
• We have designed and developed a simple website holding page while the main website is being worked on;
• We are in the process of designing a CMS website for Talent Within You which will include: website optimisation for good SEO (get good Google and other search engine presence); data capture form; payment gateway to raise funds for our charity; effective copywriting to help promote our children with talent; funky design to engage with our target market; blog and latest news section to promote our children with talent;
• We are liaising with organisations across the UK to find more children with talent;
• We will be using our emarketing expertise and will be sending out regular eshots to promote Talent Within You.

If you would like our branding and website agency in West Sussex to help take your business or organisation to market, give Vicky a call on 01903 824229 or email vicky@thebrandsurgery.co.uk.

Brand New Wish Financial website

As a new year begins, a brand new website is launched for our client, Wish Financial. Wish Financial approached us in Autumn 2009 and briefed us to design a sleek, contemporary, fresh corporate website, keeping to Wish’s existing corporate identity. Wish’s brand colour is a rich purple – purple is a great business colour because of the colour psychology connected with it. Purple represents royalty and wealth. It is also a spiritual colour, so needs to be used wisely to ensure it compliments the industry it is presenting, in this case finance.

Wish specialise in the following areas:

• Mortgages
• General Insurance
• Commercial Solutions
• Personal Protection
• Savings & Investments
• Retirement Planning

Wish have over 30 years of collective experience in financial planning and it was this experience we feel we successful incorporated within the website design. We have also designed Wish’s corporate brochure, estate agent leaflet and posters, which have all been signed off and are being printed as we speak. The marketing collateral we have designed reflects Wish’s website branding, creating a strong and memorable corporate identity.

Why not use the new year as an excuse to refresh your website and brochure. Give us a call on 01903  824229 to see what we can do for you. HAPPY NEW YEAR!