First up though are our Whitespace business cards, litho printed on 400gsm Magno Matt with spot gloss varnish on the red paper planes.

There are a couple of secrets and surprises hidden in the doodles

Spot the iPhone wallpaper?

When we started this whole process, we went through the whole “we want the most unique, kick-ass, out of this world, you want to lick them” business cards. We went through a number of blog posts showcasing amazing business cards and used those for inspiration. Here is just a couple we went through.

• 100 Amazing Business Card Designs
• Best Business Cards
• 70 NEW amazing business cards
• Business Card Design: Better Than A Plain Ol’ Business Card
• Cool business card designs, Part 2 and Part 3

There really are some awesome business cards that people have designed and created. There are cards designed from plastics, business cards in cut out envelopes, fold out cards, metal cards, embroidered material cards, cut out puzzles, tear off strips, the list goes on.

We wanted to go with a card that slid into a small envelope that had cut out sections. The effect we wanted to create was as you slid the card in and out of the envelope, it looked as if our plane was taking off. We then wanted to print the card on a really unique stock and chose the 250gsm Antalis Rives Design Bright White. See the image below to get a feel for what it looked like.

Amazing stock, but a bit flimsy at business card sizes

As Adrian was cracking on the actual designs of the cards, I started getting quotes for our “little” idea. I had an idea of around R3 per card (its only 90mm x 50mm) and the envelope maybe another R3? So ±R6 per card. Forget it. Think more around the R15 mark per card for our “little” idea. You see, when you move away from the standard stock and try and add something unique like a cut out envelope, you easily can end up paying R20 000 for 1000 business cards.

We scraped the envelope idea, but stuck with the unique stock for the cards. After doing a couple of digital print mockups at our printers, we started to get really worried about the stock. Firstly the stock felt flimsy when you held it and secondly, but more importantly, we couldn’t guarantee that our cloud doodles on the back of our cards would come out perfectly crisp. If that happened, the entire effect of those doodles would be ruined.

We sat at the printers thinking how we had come full circle. From an elaborate cut out envelope hiding a flying paper plane, to something very plain and simple. The thing is, we were so happy with the plain and simple because it showed off the amazing design Adrian had created on the card. Our cards worked out to around R6 a card as we went with a thicker stock, but you realise quickly that you pay for quality in the business card game.

So, here is my advice on getting business cards printed. Pour all your energy into designing an amazing business card and get that printed on stock that you know will show off the design the best. Possibly add a spot gloss varnish or emboss the card to add some effects, but stick to what works and your printers are 100% comfortable with. Lastly, make sure you business cards are litho printed. Don’t even waste your time going digital. You can just as well print your business cards at home!

So if you aiming for the most unique, kick-ass, out of this world, you want to lick them business cards and you haven’t got a problem handing out a R20 note to everyone you meet, go for it!

We had our cards printed at Deep Design in Woodstock, Cape Town. They come recommended.

China

Egypt

England

France

India

Morocco

Russia

United Kingdom

[Via Funzug.com]

So Twitter bought the best iPhone Twitter app, Tweetie 2, and has relaunched it Twitter for iPhone. We all got that? Good. What a couple of people are upset about with the update, is Twitter’s choice of icon. This bird with its ugly blue gradient background and drop shadow FTW (not). The blue doesn’t even match the light blue hue of Twitter’s logo.

Behold the ugly icon. Now polluting everyone's iPhone homescreen.

You see, Tweetie 2 had this gorgeous speech bubble icon, deep set within a grey background. It looked sexy, was recognisable and fitted in with the entire look and feel of the app. It sat proudly on my iPhone’s homescreen and I would of paid even more than $2.99 for the app – it’s that awesome.

The gorgeous Tweetie 2 icon. RIP.

I’m not upset with the fact its gone. I knew it would change, but what I wasn’t expecting was that ugly thing they call an icon, replacing it. Worse still are the reasons from the designers about why. Read the comments on this Dribbble post from some designers on the new icon. (Included is a shot of what was supposedly the Tweetie 3 icon. Nice.).

for reasons I won’t get into (or can’t, depending how you read that), we opted for the one that’s there now. – Mark Otto

Tweetie was acquired because we noted how many people were searching the App Store for “Twitter” and wound up in total confusion over which app to download. We wanted something that was not only named Twitter, but looked like Twitter to *new* users. In that regard, there was a conscious decision that the app did not need to look like an evolution of Tweetie, but rather, something that looked like an official Twitter app. – Doug Bowman

If the reason for the new icon was so that people wouldn’t be confused when trying to find Twitter on their iPhone, why did they not go for an icon with the “t” in Twitter? The official app on a Blackberry uses the “t” as a icon. So why not on iPhone?

The Twitter 't'. Famous the world round.

Also, Twitter don’t place much significance on that bird. Go and look at Twitter.com’s homepage. That tiny bird is in a shade of grey and all the way on the right, compared to the massive light blue Twitter logo. That little bird isn’t even on a person’s profile page. The other thing is, there are so many variations of a blue bird floating about representing Twitter, that no matter what the “official” twitter bird logo is, it won’t ever stand out.

What I’m trying to get at is that whatever Twitter’s decision regarding their version of the icon, it still doesn’t look like the real deal. It fits in perfectly alongside all the other custom, 3rd party Twitter apps. How does that differentiate the app then? The only thing *new* users will differentiate the app by is its name – Twitter for iPhone. So whatever “business/design decision” it was, it wasn’t the right one in my book.

LogoMoose

URL: http://www.logomoose.com

Logo Of The Day

URL: http://www.logooftheday.com

logotwo

URL: http://www.logotwo.com

Logo Faves

URL: http://www.logofaves.com

faveup

URL: http://www.faveup.com

LogoPond

URL: http://www.logopond.com

Last but not least, read this brilliant article on How NOT To Design A Logo. It will definitely help when browsing through these amazing sites. Enjoy!

[via Design You Trust]

Here are a few CSS links that might be of interest:

• Formatting a definition list
• 8 fonts you probably don’t use in css, but should
• The Incredible Em & Elastic Layouts with CSS – proper font sizing!
• Pixels to Ems Conversion Table for CSS
• 70 Expert Ideas For Better CSS Coding
• Improving Code Readability With CSS Styleguides
• Listmatic – formatting lists (<ul>, <ol>, <li>)

After one twitter message, some time back, I accidentally also created a personal brand for myself – The Bagley – which is something I am going to try and build over the next few months. We have Adii, Zoopedup, Foxinni and Fariq to name a few, so add to that list my friends – The Bagley.

WordPress 2.5

This blog is officially running WordPress 2.5 and all I can say is swheeeeeet! I found out that happy cog are the okes behind the redesigned admin panel and they did one stellar job. There are improvements to the layout and UI all over the place, and its going to take a few weeks to actually find all of them. The only problem WP 2.5 created for me is that it broke the popularity plugin by Alex King. So for the time being I have disabled it. Below is a screenshot of my new 2.5 dashboard:

Redesign

I’m not entirely sure how long it actually took for me to whip out this re-design, but it felt like a long time. The main aim of the redesign was to allow me some flexibility in the blog and sidebar, which I have now achieved. The previous design was very rigid and fixed – whereas now I can drag and drop widgets onto my sidebar at will. One thing I still have to add are all those blog buttons – amatomu, afrigator, Nike+ runs etc.

Buying and Giving

I have also included a personal buying and giving sidebar widget. What I’m trying to do with it is, 1. Buy myself some gadgets and neat gear and 2. give some money to a few good causes. So, all the money I make on this blog – whether it is paid advertising, or even *gasp!* an (honest) paid review – will go towards Buying and Giving. What do you think of the idea?

And… with buying cool gear, comes cool pics and reviews! These will be posted on my soon-to-be-rebranded I.T. Week.

Link Love

Calling all you link whores A-listers. It’s time to stop pretending to be my friend on twitter and actually add me onto your blog roll. For those that have, you’ll be the envy of all your friends when I add you to my Link Love list WITH a favicon. Pop me a comment or tweet and I’ll get it up. ;-) This blog ain’t PR4 for nothing yo.

So that’s about it for now. So what do you think? If you were looking for a someone to redesign your blog, would you consider me as a WP designer? (honestly?)

From: Philip Copeman [mailto:*******pinksoft.co.za]
Sent: 12 November 2007 04:56 PM
To: Patience
Cc: Selwyn from TurboCASH; *****topbilling.com; ******@jasonbagley.com
Subject: Re: Fw: Bad crit about TB website

Yes I liked this one :

“Would you believe me if I told you that it used to be EVEN WORSE? I used to be a subscriber to their newsletter, and that was hideous too. It took about 6 months for me to actually succeed in unsubscribing (I tried, oh how I tried), and I had occasion to visit their site a couple of times in my seemingly never-ending quest to unsubscribe. I can’t even remember the specifics (I may have blocked it out due to it being so utterly horrible), but it was very ugly indeed. If I recall correctly, none of the links worked in Firefox (but we’re used to that, aren’t we?) and there was even less information than there is now.”

Imagine getting a comment like considering what you were previosuly paying!

——————————————–
These comments are people crying out to contribute to the site. It is always terrible watching someone elses design, I also always think I could do better myself. Let us let them contribute. The typos and the spelling mistakes are part and parcel of Web 2.0 We shdou ldefinitely put back the user generatesd content. Thsi si the only ay to get really big on a community.

I could certainly help Jason with his Alexa rating of 1555000, he is so enthusiatic and looks really committed to it, but noone goes there. Its a simple fix to get the traffic Jason. Start with this – lets give Jason a chance to Blog on www.topbilling.com and link back to his site to show us how it should be done. Inbound links is the first step to getting traffic rankings. Good content is the second.

Patience wrote:
Remember how I felt about the website when I saw it before Liza’s improvements – here is an unbiased comment.
Liza – please can you make sure that production supply you with contact details for everything features on the programme – and please can you load these details – and please can you ask someone in production to email this guy the details of how to buy the waterpump.

I responded to the email by thanking them for actually getting back to me, and then I directed a few comments to Phillip. I rounded off my reply by offering Top Billing the opportunity to get in touch with some of SA’s top new media companies / consultants – us SA bloggers know who they are – and hopefully get Top Billing’s brand on the web to the same heights as their magazine and TV show.

Oh, the moral of the entire story is that I eventually got the contact details for the company that manufactures the waterpump that my Dad is looking for. So he is happy, and I’m on the floor laughing.

My dad watched last weeks show and wanted to know more information regarding some water pump that they installed at Robbie Fleck’s home as part of their Handy Man series on the show. My dad told me to go and check out topbilling.com for more information, as the show instructed. When I spotted the Joomla favicon in the address bar, I knew we were in trouble.

Big problems on the topbilling.com

Firstly there is no Top Billing brand identity. The logo is handmade, and the site design is using a basic Joomla template (RocketTheme?).
Content on the site is down to a bare minimum. There is very little information on the TV show or magazine, and other than the information being completely out of context and irrelevant, the Magazine page has a lovely paragraph of Lorem ipsum dolor text. (I also just noticed that the TV Show page is dated the 28 August. Lovely.).
How about contact details? Nope, nothing but a nicely placed back link.
Want some info on the lovely Jeannie D? Forget it.

But wait, there’s more rubbish! They running a forum on the site, with one of the Admin’s posting this gem:

Welcome to the New Website

There is lots of potential for your interaction here !

All you need to do is register an account – thats your password to interactions like:

-Making comments against presenter search candidates
-Participating in this forum
-Submitting your OWN article – how about that? You could use this space to promote your business or whatever you like. Use your discretion and good taste though.
-We may even let you communicate with other users – we will see how that goes.We want to do that in contained manner so that this site is always a pleasure for you and not another space where you are constantly interrupted.

Try this forum – you can discuss anything here!

Thanks
Selwyn Wacks

Complete and utter rubbish

Top Billing’s web presence is a joke. For all the glitz, glamour and jet-setting presenters on the show, their marketing team has completely left out one of the most crucial aspects that could enhance their brand. The www is not some kids toy. Show some respect.

Oh, and I still have absolutely no way of finding some sort of info regarding that water pump for my dad. Anyone know someone at SABC that might help?

The thing that impressed me the most was the actual “diary” itself. The website is using flash heavily to make it feel like a real diary and Castle Lager have done a damn good job of it. Just a pity they haven’t any social aspects to it, like being able to comment or view the picture gallery etc. The pics are just “sticky taped” to each page in the diary.

Anyhow, its a slick site that will distract you for a couple of minutes to get your mind off our choking cricketers.