Everyone know Disney

Everyday different companies are competing for your attention. No matter big or small company, they are trying to use their corporate image to grasp the attention, gain the reputation and money from the customer. Actually a good corporate image definitely is a weapon for marketers to fight against the competitors. In order to success in the marketing battle, the corporate image would be the vital and critical factor in all business.

Key elements of the corporate identity:

• logo or symbol
• corporate signatures
• nomenclature structure
• typography corporate color palette

Disney is one of the most famous companies throughout the world. Its corporate image has been built up for a very long period of time, and hardly sticks into people’s mind. Its logo is one of the key factors of the corporate image.

Little bit different from other company’s logo, based on different product or campaign, the color of the Disney logo will be changed and won’t be the same for every time. However, the sizes, scale of logo and font type are the same for each project. The consistency of the logo placement strengthens the corporate image of Disney.

Logo - Disney Radio AM1310




Logo - Hong Kong Disneyland



Logo - Noodles package

Logo - Bathroom scale

Logo - Xbox game

Logo - Pictures

References:

• © 2003 Walt Disney Internet Group < http://corporate.disney.go.com/corporate/complete_history_1.html > viewed on Aug 21
• Copyright © 2000-2008 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., < http://he-cda.wiley.com/WileyCDA/HigherEdTitle/productCd-0471289477.html > viewed on Aug 21
• ©2008 Google < http://www.google.com.hk/ > viewed on Aug 21

OK! OK?

For most of the people, especially me, magazine is one of the things that are very important in our life. I can't imagine that if I live without magazine. Actually, I purchase different magazine from the book store regularly, Cosmopolitan (fashion), ELLE (fashion), People (celebrity), OK! (celebrity), etc. These are the magazines that I keep on reading, and I will also purchase the others based on the attractive cover page and headline. In many cases, the buying decision would easily affected by the magazine cover page, and most likely an attractive cover page should include some attractive or exciting photos from the celebrities. That's why some publications are willing to spend a large amount of money to buy some exclusive photos as their cover photo.

From the IPD course, we may find that there are some principles on document and we may use it to judge whether a magazine got a good cover design or not, and the updated issue of OK! would be a good example about this.

For the good cover design, the page has to achieve:

• Balance
• Contrast
• Consistency

Background information of OK!

OK! is a British weekly magazine, specializing in celebrity news. It is one of the most popular celebrity gossip magazines in the UK with more than 30 million readers worldwide, and now appears in 19 countries (Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, China, Germany, Greece, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Middle East, Philippines, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, UK and the US).

Latest issue of OK!
BRITNEY SPEARS is the cover girl of this issue

Magazine Title: OK!

• This is the logo of the publication and readers used it to recognize the magazine
• It was suggested to take up one-third to one-fourth of the page length to achieve the immediate recognition, and the logo of OK! takes up nearly one-third of the page length
• Font-types play an important role in achieving different design feels, and OK! is using the Arial Black (san-serif types) to increase the legibility of the messages.

Feature Headline: HOW I GOT MY BODY BACK!

• The size of the OK!'s feature headline is nearly as big as the title size-wise and in all-capital
• In order to achieve bigger respective font-size, the feature headline contains only 6 words
• This feature headline is related to the key visual – Britney Spears, it helps to achieve higher recognition

Feature's Tagline: HOW TO LOSE 12LBS IN 30DAYS!

• The feature's tagline helps to describe the headline of OK!

Key Visual: Britney Spears wearing the white bikini at the beach

• The photo of Britney Spears wearing the white bikini is the biggest attraction of the OK! cover
• The purpose of this photo is to achieve the visual impact
• This photo works best since the photo and the headline are parallel with each other

Besides the cover photo and striking headline, there are also 3 elements which affecting the attractiveness of the magazine: balance, contrast and consistency. These 3 design principles should always apply on all the elements on the cover page and they are the vital factors to determine whether the readers' attention could be grasped by your magazine or not.


Reference:

• “Design Styles” in COMM1043 Issues in Publication and Design, Tutorial 5 Notes 2008, The university of South Australia Adelaide
• © 2008 Mark Simonson
  < http://www.ms-studio.com/articles.html > viewed on Aug 14
• Copyright ©2007 OK! Magazine,
  < http://www.okmagazine.com/magazine/ > viewed on Aug 14

Style guide, guide THE TIMES

What should I use for the company brochure? Café or Cafe? Use the black color for the title, or use the other color? Writers, editors or designers may raise different questions when preparing the writings or document presentations for its organization.

In order to determine the standards and guidelines for an organization’s publication, a style guide is needed. Actually, a style guide is a set of standards for design and writing of documents, it includes rules and suggestions for design and writing style.

Benefits of using the style guide for design and writing documents:

• Conform to corporate image and policy
• To inform new staff of existing style
• To define the negotiable style issue
• To improve consistency
• To remind and clarify the style decision for the staff

Here is a good example of style guide of The Times, “The Times Style and Usage Guide” prepared by the Chief revise editor Richard Dixon in 2003. It is a very comprehensive style guide for its writers and sub-editors.

The alphabetical list has been augmented by:

• What's New section

Special Sections:

• Armed Forces
• Arts
• Churches
• Courts
• Politics
• Sport
• Titles

Writers and sub-editors may find reference easily through the style guide, and confusion could be avoided in order to increase the efficiency of the work.

References:

• “Design Styles” in COMM1043 Issues in Publication and Design, Tutorial 5 Notes 2008, The university of South Australia Adelaide
• Copyright 2008 Times Newspapers Ltd.
  < http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/tools_and_services/specials/style_guide/ > viewed on Jul 25

Blog may send you to prison

Have you ever thought that writing blog can be found guilty? In Egypt, a blogger called Soliman (22-years old) had been prosecuted and sent to jail. He has used his blog to criticise the country's top Islamic institution, al-Azhar university and President Hosni Mubarak. The judges thought that the feeling expression of Soliman on the webog was insulting the government and the president, also inciting the sedition. Soliman was finally sent to jail for 4 years.

In this case, we may discover that for some of the countries, the blogosphere could be surveyed by the government invisibly. Blogger are not allowed to express everything, especially the topics which hit the polities and religious field. It is easily to find guilty if your blog cover the sensitive topics.

Within these few years, blog becomes part of our life. The main reason of the rapid growth of the blogosphere is the existence of the user-friendly blogging software and provider, e.g. Xanga, Blogger, Sina, etc. Through this software, blogger may express their ideas on the weblog more easily and frequently. Usually, blogger may use the blog to express the feeling on personal issue, daily life, business, sports, politics, etc.

In Hong Kong, most of the people own its personal blog, e.g. students, famous autistics, politician, journalist, even though the chief executive of Hong Kong also update his personal blog regularly.

Although blogging become more popular and people treat it as the alternative channel to the traditional journalism, however, the credibility of blog is one of the concerns for the audience. It cannot be denied that most of the blog are used to express things in a more personal way. The content of blog is lack of professional journalistic judgment and quality. So, blog may be considered as personal voice rather than reflection of fact.

References:

• BBC© MMVIII
  < http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6385849.stm > viewed on Jul 20
• “Blog” in COMM1043 Issues in Publication and Design, Tutorial 3 Notes 2008, The university of South Australia Adelaide
• Copyright 2000-2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.< http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/feb2006/id20060224_155318.htm> viewed on Jul 20
• 2007 © Important notices
  < http://www.ceo.gov.hk/blog/eng/index.html > viewed on Jul 20

Get Smart Vs. The Mummy

Nowadays, website is commonly used as the promotional tool in various marketing activities. Marketers enjoy using the website to promote its products and communicate with its target audience. In fact, people would browse different webpage daily and one of the popular types should be the official websites of different new film. However, people rarely read the webpages word by word, they scan the pages and pick out the key point. So, a good web design is very important and it directly affects the page view and page visit of the website.

Recently, the design of 2 official webpages are quite outstanding, they are “Get Smart” and “The Mummy – Tomb of the Dragon Emperor”. The navigation and content of these webpages are quite similar, and after go through these webpages, we may find that they have put lot of effort on the interaction and animation effects.

Here are the successful elements of these 2 webpages:

Good web design & features

• A simple layout with simpler pages that are presented in a straightforward
• Entry page fit within standard browser window
• No need to scroll sideways
  

The Mummy Homepage & Get Smart Homepage

• With a stylish and appropriate background that make the webpages look smart and clear (both background pictures are related to the film)
• No junky advertising appeared on the webpages, and no meaningless pictures and advertising on the first page
• Less text on the webpages

Menu Bar of The Mummy & Get Smart

• With clear menu bar for both webpages
• With Appropriate multimedia content formats (text, graphics, photographs, video and audio)

The Mummy game & Get Smart Game

• With 3D / animation effects to grasp attention
• All pages are working smoothly and loading time is reasonable

In order to add interest to the webpages and make it more interaction, related game was designed for the audience of each film, it takes time to load the game, and however, the loading time for the "Get Smart game" is too long. As we all know that most of the users are impatient, they are not willing to spend time on waiting, so, besides the layout and features design, the control of the loading time is very important too.

References:

• © Copyright 2005 - 2008 Bitochon Technologies
  < http://www.bitochon.com/webdesign/gooddesign.cfm > viewed on Jun 10
• Copyright © 2008 Universal Studios
  < http://www.themummy.com/ > viewed on Jun 10
• TM & © 2008 Warner Bros. Entertainment INC.
  < http://getsmartmovie.warnerbros.com/ > viewed on Jun 10