Working with design bloggers Arianna Trapani and Carole King, we created a new digital interiors magazine, Heart Home. As art-editor, I created the logotype, image, website, newsletter… you get the idea.

Aimed at a similar audience to the print publications Livingetc or Elle Decoration, Heart Home will satisfy the hunger for home interior inspiration without the cover price of a print publication.

Using issuu.com to keep the feel of a magazine, Heart Home also has a blog to maintain traffic levels between issues to allow advertising rates to remain at a sustainable level.

Running competitions and other marketing activities to build the database, we reached 1000 Twitter followers in just under five months and 700 email subscribers after three months.

See the site at hearthomemag.co.uk.

Could social media ever offer up a rich seam of customer data, or is it just a mine of useless information? A rush of data companies are trying to turn the medium into a data goldmine. Lucy Fisher investigated and spoke to Daniel Nelson on the subject…

Read the article ‘Fools’ gold? Marketing Week interview‘ or download the article as PDF.

the key benefit of a Facebook presence for mydeco.com is enhanced brand engagement

‘First you needed a website. Then you needed a social media strategy. But how many of us have actually started integrating data from social media into our overall customer database management processes? And how many of these are actually integrating ‘hard’ data – such as data that tracks customers as they undergo situational changes – say by moving house, getting married, or changing job?

Daniel Nelson, social media marketing manager at mydeco.com, says the key benefit of a Facebook presence for the online retailer is enhanced brand engagement.

The broad information – such as gender, age, country of residence – that can be gleaned from activities on the brand’s page, he says, enables his team to tailor content in line with what is generating the most ‘likes’ or comments. “On Facebook, we can see that 25- to 34-year-old females make up most of our fans, which means we can produce content with that in mind,” he says. “You can get an idea from the interactions on your page what your fanbase is responding to, but we’re not at the point where we’re doing data mining on social channels.”

In technology terms, there are tools out there to aid data collection and management, he says, but they tend to be quite expensive and constantly involved in a game of catch-up with the social media platforms – and among themselves. “It’s something of a goldrush. There’s always a new one coming out that’s apparently the definitive one. We get a lot of cold calls, but when we ask, ‘Can it do this?’ they tend to say, ‘Not yet,’” he adds.’

The UCL Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology have an enormous amount of content from their research and the exhibitions that they open up to the public to show their discoveries.

Using QR codes to relate exhibition pieces to blog posts with further explanation, the blog serves as a way to learn more about the exhibition you have just seen, about to see or even whilst you are there on your smartphone.

They had previously opened a new Blogger account for each exhibition and promoted that individually, but bringing all of this content in to one WordPress blog was essential to improve their repeat visits and drive valuable organic search visits.

Viva La Papa potato chips are a new company growing and making potatoes in Peru, creating a chip in three flavours initially and using potatoes with particularly unusual, but interesting shapes and patterns.

To launch their product in the US, Peru and the UK they asked for a website that could handle multi-languages and the potential for an online shop at a later date.

To make the site feel like there was constant activity, we integrated the Facebook Like box in order to drive the fan base. Many of the US competitors have large fan bases on the social networking site, so it seemed prudent to keep all activity on Facebook rather than on the website.

We also used javascript on the site to allow us to collapse and expand areas of the site, in part for a more engaging experience and part to organise content simply.

Whilst employed at modern-furniture company Vitsœ, I was in charge of communications and specifically focused on the online business which accounts for 90% of the sales worldwide.

Managing all online activities including the redesign of the website, with digital agencies Airside and With Associates, I managed the project from the client-side. The relaunch was to raise further awareness of the ethos and values of the business and to drive more inquiries to the sales team.

Having won the award for Best Consumer website in the 2009 Interactive Media Awards, the website continues to gather interest from the niche audience that it aims to reach. Using the 10 principles of design by Dieter Rams a link bait, the site was able to attract a large amount of backlinks to the site which support the other online marketing work to increase its visibility online.

Related links:
Interactive Media Awards winner 2009
With Associates project page
Airside project page
Design Council case study

John Strand mini kitchens have been trading for over 30 years, setting a benchmark for small space living. The website needed a redesign along with the new identity to reach a broader audience and to handle the frequently asked questions and also provide a lot more information for specifiers and architects to collect as they plan their project.

None of their competitors had taken this level of service further than providing CAD drawings, so we took it as far as we could, introducing e-Commerce in to the pages for two uses: firstly, consumers who want to purchase for their own homes and secondly for specifiers to calculate costs involved including delivery to place into their specifications.

After launch, John Strand immediately noticed that telephone inquiries lowered and sales increased – the perfect testament to a useful website!

Taking the next step, the MODx CMS-driven website allows for them to alter text and images themselves, saving money on previously costly charges.

Publicasity PR is a top London-based agency offering the perfect mix of on and offline PR, social media, experiential, design and brand protection (crisis) to ensure our clients’ communications have the right chemistry.

They approached me to help them ease the sending of a regularly email out to their clients on a weekly basis. They wanted to send industry updates and needed a template and solution that could work for them. With a small list of names, Campaign Monitor was a simple solution for this.

Working to a design guideline, the newsletter needed to reflect the brand, and feel like a notepad without mimicking that concept too much.

Slow Down London is a project to inspire Londoners to improve their lives by slowing down to do things well, rather than as fast as possible.

I like to think of it as ‘taking the time to do something properly’ which is tough to do in a city like London.

I worked with the fantastic directors at Slow Down London on the launch of the Slow Club and to bring some further online marketing in to the organisation, including an email newsletter to stay in touch with members of the Slow Club.

Using Campaign Monitor, they are now able to create and send their own email newsletters using this template and generate further interest in the campaign.

BIOselect make and retail organic beauty products from Crete. Working with the UK distributor, we created a simple website using WordPress and WP-ecommerce plugin to allow for sales to be taken through the website.

The website was produced within a tight budget and timeframe so that the retailer could get up and running as quickly as possible with a view to make changes at a later date if needed.

By using WordPress, they are able to make changes to the stock inventory and text changes to the site without the need of help from outside. This allows a lot of flexibility whilst in the early stages of growing the business.

Having studied Graphic Design at University and then working for design company Vitsœ, I felt like I needed a channel for my own ideas about design. Starting ATELIER TALLY in November 2008 was the start of a great blogging adventure.

Years after the start of the blog, I have met others design bloggers and seen the audience grow much larger than I had anticipated.

The design of the blog always needed to be simple… it is a blog about the slow movement, although not obviously so, each post is about timeless, good design that is considered and thoughtful about whether these are products that will stand the test of time.