Archive for November, 2010  ⁄ ⁄

Posted on:November 30, 2010 Categories: eMail Marketing

Medical Council : Christmas 2010

Challenge
What is the challenge the client set in their brief

Solution
What solution did we come up with

Outcome
Once finished what did we achieve

Posted on:November 26, 2010 Categories: Social Media

Social Roundup 15.11 / 26.11

Well it’s been a few weeks since our last social roundup, so here’s the best bits from our facebook and twitter feeds.

Facebook

Skateistan
Skateistan is Afghanistan’s—and the world’s—first co-educational skateboarding school. Operating as an independent, neutral, Afghan NGO, the school engages growing numbers of urban and internally-displaced youth in Afghanistan through skateboarding, and provides them with new opportunities in cross-cultural interaction, education, and personal empowerment.

The First 47
The creative footprint of Dublin-based designer, photographer and filmmaker Alex Synge.

World Gesture Guide
World Gesture Guide, clean and fun design- check out the gesture for Ireland- yikes!

H-57 Creative Station
The Force of Typography

20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web
A collaboration between Google and Fi, the piece is built in HTML5 to bring out the best features of the open modern web, while representing well-loved aspects of reading a book, such as feeling the heft of a book’s cover, flipping a page, or reading the book even after disconnecting from the Internet.

Star Wars Augmented Reality: TIE Fighters Attack NYC!
Test footage from an early version of Star Wars Arcade: Falcon Gunner, the first augmented reality Star Wars game. Available on iPhone.

Oliver Jeffers ‘Heart and the Bottle’ iPad Picture Book App
Bold Creative have produced a new interactive iPad picture book app of Oliver Jeffers ‘Heart and the Bottle’. Read by Helena Bonham Carter.

Beginnings of Space Travel – today and tomorrow
This is a few years old from Werner Reiterer, but it always makes us laugh.

London 80 Gigapixels
7,886 individual photos were stitched together to form an 80-gigapixel panorama of London, making it the largest photo in the world.

The State of the Nation
This video sums up the nations mood at the moment . . . However it’s guaranteed to bring a tear to your eye!!

Unevolved Brands
Interesting study of well known Brands & Logos in simplified form. See how many you recognise.

Twitter

iTunes Revamp
What We Wish Apple Would Do With iTunes.

The Sheep Market
A collection of 10,000 sheep made by workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.

Flash ain’t dead yet
10 Interactive Music Videos powered by Flash.

evolve and Movember
Fine moustachery and immaculate grooming doesn’t grow on trees. Donate to our team!

Polychord
Music app for iPad.

Tim Burton & Twitter
Tim Burton uses Tweets to fuel his new storytelling project.

Posted on:November 26, 2010 Categories: evolve News

bank of ireland : business enterprise week

A whole new world was opened up to both Noel and myself yesterday afternoon as we were guests in the Bank of Ireland, Marino for the Business Enterprise Week. Basically it’s as simple as this: If you are an SME and have a product you need to sell to the market place, well then the bank is opening up its doors to you to let you meet and greet the footfall that come into the premises within a given timeframe. Oh boy! did we meet some colourful characters, from the salivating child (which was basically every child who entered the bank and saw our little pot of lolly’s) to the intrepid traveller who thrilled us with his exploits to the four corners of the world. Before you ask the question – yes, somewhere in the middle was the mix of local businessmen and woman going about their weekly banking duties.

So, what was our pitch, Free Lolly’s . . . not quite, but everybody admitted they were a nice touch. Plain and simple we just asked a question “Does your website work for you?”. Too many companies have (or in some cases as we found out, have not) a presence on the web, but is a presence good enough in todays market coupled with the fence that everybody seems to be sitting on when it comes to the topic of social media and how it might work for them?

Basically, in our opinion, it’s not good enough to have a website or a facebook account if you cannot manage or find out if you are gleaming any benefit from it. If you are going to put time and effort into managing an online presence, and lets be honest that comes with a cost, then you need to know that you are getting more value back. That’s where we come in! Before we start any web project we drill down to find out exactly what you need and from this we can guarantee profitable results.

In conjunction with the bank we are now offering start up packs to new SME’s and working with existing, established companies to turn the online presence they have into real quantifiable cash.

Finally a thanks to the guys in the bank at Marino for letting us have the space for the afternoon to sell our wares! Pictured below along side our stand is Damien Osbourne, our business advisor in the bank.

 

Posted on:November 22, 2010 Categories: Advert Colour Profiling

Joy is BMW

Simple but true ‘Joy is’ The latest campaign for BMW simply looks at the experience of driving this marvelous car.

Challenge
On behalf of our client we needed to prepare the adverts for press so they could be distributed successfully via: QuickCut, Printsure, ADS, FTP or email.

Solution
Our automated solution allows us to profile, optimise and validate the adverts to match the publication(s) we are sending them to. All images are resampled to the correct resolution and the correct profiles and fonts are outlined to omit the risk of a type reflow. Each newspaper generally has its own profile but in addition to this, we have generated our own .icc profiles to match the CMYK FOGRA27 (ISO12647-2:2004) & RGB (1998) press settings. This gives us the extra flexibility to maintain consistency with everything we do.

Outcome
Having also calibrated all of our printers, scanners, large format plotter(s), cameras, monitors and in-house stock used for proofing we can give a 100% guarantee that every advert will be delivered in the correct fashion.

Posted on:November 18, 2010 Categories: eMail Marketing

Evening Herald Invite eMail Marketing

View Evening Herald Invite Campaign

Herald.ie serves all who live and work in Dublin, as well as those who are interested in the lively blend of news, entertainment, and comment offered. They provide a number of resources for visitors to the Irish capital, making Herald.ie the online source for everything Dublin.

But we’re a newspaper
Don’t ask us how it happened because we are still not quite sure but the guys in the Evening Herald came to us to design a card they could send to the masses inviting them to their Christmas Party.

evolve push the boat out!
It was like East meets West in a clash of traditional print -v- digital media when it came to what we had to offer as a solution. Put simply, we wanted to take it one step further and instead of sending out a card via email we wanted to send an interactive piece to the extensive database the guys had. The aim was to distribute the piece through our mail server distribution system so we could track the response and let the guys know who was coming and who showed an interest.

Analysis is a funny thing
In awe at the response of the campaign and the reaction it received the only negative feedback we had was that some of the people targeted didn’t respond. After further analysis we realised that the people who didn’t reply were all at a certain business level and hence the feeling was that they were at a different tier in the respective businesses. Our solution was to target these people through a DM piece for which we had an 85% take up and all down to making them feel a little bit more special.

When the party was over, heads partly cleared and the dust had settled the Herald admitted it had been the best turn out to an event they had in years.

Posted on:November 16, 2010 Categories: eMail Marketing

Go green this Christmas eMail Marketing

View Evolve Go Green This Christmas Email Marketing Campaign

As you know we are a design house, we love tactile cards that are nice to touch, feel and smell! We usually have a number of design briefs that result in quite crafted print solutions.

This year we have jumped a little deeper into interactive solutions that can be just as creative and enjoyable to work on. Here is a little promotional sample we worked up for ourselves, these eCards are sent out through a mailserver system as html files that then link to a url that contains a flash based movie.  The amount of views that have come back through our analytics has taken us by surprise and maybe flash is not so dead after all, much that Mr. Jobs would argue the opposite. All points considered I think there is still a place for flash and maybe eCards is one of those places.

So if you are in the market for an interactive card this year, get in touch, we are willing and able. If you decide to stick with the postal route, then give us a call we’re good at that too!

Posted on:November 12, 2010 Categories: evolve News

Soup Week : Day Five & Results!

So the final day of Soup Week beckoned, with the baton for the last lap handed to our Gráinne. And she did not disappoint [apart from the mess in the kitchen]! Serving up a Thai Prawn Laksa, served with vine leaves, filled with risotto rice mint and citrus juice and lemongrass crackers.

Thai Prawn Laksa
150g of Udon noodles OR fine rice noodles
2 tbsp Groundnut oil
3 tbsp Thai Red Curry Paste
2.5 Tins of Coconut milk
6ooml Vegetable stock
2 tbsp Fish sauce
100g Mangetout, thinly sliced
50g bean sprouts
600g King Prawns
Mint, coriander & chili for flavour
Decorate with thinly sliced cucumber

Served with vine leaves (filled with risotto rice mint and citrus juice) and lemongrass crackers.

5 empty bowls. Well and truly hit the spot, warmed bellies all round.

Final results at the end of the week:
Gráinne – 37/40
Mick – 34.5/40
Noel – 34/40
Declan – 33.5/40
Alan – 29/40

A well deserved top spot for Gráinne. Congrats!

With the week of weather we’ve had, the daily soup dose has helped make the cold and wind a little more tolerable. Thoughts have again turned to another lunch week [maybe a pie/hotpot week], any ideas out there feel free to share.

Posted on:November 11, 2010 Categories: evolve News

Soup Week : Day Four

Creamy Seafood Chowder infused with garden herbs and a Lobster Bisque DONE!!

nom . . . nom . . . nom . . .

We couldn’t have picked a better week to have a soup week! With 140kmh winds expected during the day it was nice to cuddle into the snug for a tasty bowl of seafood chowder or two!!

If you want to get the full recipe for todays mighty feast then click here. Alternatively you can scan the QR Code below and it will bring you directly there.

 

Posted on:November 10, 2010 Categories: evolve News

Soup Week: Day Three

Its day 3 of our “Come Dine with me: Soup week” and it’s Mick’s turn on the saucepans. Mick has been in training for this contest since August 2010 when he took Gold at the evolve “Come Dine with me: Sandwich week”. Mick’s preparatory schedule has been a rigorous routine of whisking, chopping and blending 5 hours a day with an intensive herbs and spices workout twice a week.

It seems the hard work has paid off as Mick presented us with a delicious Chicken Ramen Udon Soup and Nutty bread (served with humus, caramelised onion and tomato dips) at bang on 1pm today. The broth was light and salty with a chili kick, the chicken and noodles were perfectly cooked and the veggies were delicious. The bread was the perfect accompaniment, the dips were a nice touch and there was plenty of requests for seconds too. Nice work Mick, you could retain your title yet!

If you would like to recreate Mick’s soup masterpiece, here are the ingredients;

2.5 litres chicken stock
5 chicken breasts
fresh root ginger
3 garlic cloves
8 spring onions
4 tbsp soy sauce
4 tbsp sake [or any other concoction in your drinks press]
1.5 tsp of sesame seed oil
450g udon noodles
4 small heads of pak choi
1 fresh chilli, seeded and sliced
60g beansprouts and ground black pepper
2 large carrots
6 large mushrooms

Posted on:November 9, 2010 Categories: evolve News

Soup Week: Day Two

Day two and Dr. Greene is up. After a lot of banging and clattering in the evolve kitchen, the gang are called out to the snug for the second day of soup delights.

Being particularly hungry on a miserable, wet and cold Tuesday, we are greeted by Noel’s ‘Spicy Beef and Noodle Soup’, accompanied by some ‘home-made’ Prawn Crackers and two generous slices of brown bread to soak it all up. With a nice spicy kick off the soup and just the right amount of noodles to fill some hungry bellies, Noel’s Asian speciality went down a treat and all that was left was a few prawn cracker crumbs and 5 empty bowls.

For those of you who want to try out Noel’s Asian delight:

Ingredients:
Roast Fillet of Beef
Beef Stock
Shallots
Peppers
Garlic
Root Ginger
Chili
Green Curry Paste
Soy Sauce
Fish Sauce
Peanut Oil
Vermicelli Noodles

Served with Prawn Crackers & Wholemeal Loaf. YUM!

Well done Noel, now get your darts out for a quick game !

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