Posts Tagged → Business
Logos and Branding: your corporate identity
The image of your company is incredibly vital to the overall success of your business.
I often see clients that put nowhere near enough emphasis on the importance of creating a strong brand when they are starting their business… arguably the most critical and important time on which to focus on it!
It can literally make or break a business, new or established. A strong, clever logo can instantly portray what you are about. It can emphasise your ethos and it can speak to the customer without saying a word. On the flip-side of this, if you get it wrong it can say the WRONG things just as powerfully.
To some degree or another this effect is subconscious and subliminal… people don’t notice that they are being communicated to when they see a logo. Some people are more susceptible to the message than others but generally speaking a universal conclusion can be drawn about the companies image, even if this is not a true reflection of what that company is ACTUALLY like, reinforcing the vital need for creating an appropriate logo design to fit your business.
In essence, the image boils down to a logo and the way you use it; colour schemes, typefaces, presentation, layout – and the consistency of all these elements between all of your marketing material/collateral such as stationery, brochures, website, adverts, reports and emails.
I will soon be adding further posts with more detail and some in-depth hints and tips on how to maximise the impact of how you use the above.
In summary, if you get a solution that is attractive and reinforces your brand, it can really make that final buying decision for the customer and make them choose you over your competitors.
Try all you can to not underestimate the ways in which a well thought out corporate identity can help your business succeed!
iPad for business
I’ve been setting up and experimenting with the iPad over the bank holiday weekend and wanted to write about my thoughts on how I see it can be used for business. I’ve found a number of apps already that look most useful, and have set up some systems which work really well… so here we go!
Email
Same setup as the iPhone but with a much more usable interface. Typing is extremely fast and easy, and navigating through lots of email much simpler with the larger screen. The iPhone is great but given the choice, things are going to be so much more usable with the iPad!
Calendar
This has worked out much better than I expected it to. Using Google Calendar to synch between my main Outlook calendar, the iPad and the iPhone works seamlessly. I now have full and instant 3 way synching between all three locations/devices and it works like a charm. For the desktop synch you need to install Google Active Synch, which is a free download for PC and a breeze to install and setup. You can then add a new ‘Exchange’ account on the iPad and iPhone which allows the link to Google’s online calendar. A side bonus of this setup is that my calendar is also now accessible online (privately) so I can even access my data if for whatever reason I’m without any of my devices… never going to happen but good to know it’s there!
Web browsing
I’ve been trying out a couple of the 3rd party web browsers available on the app store, and settled on iCab Browser, which has now taken the place of Safari on my main toolbar. It works just like a desktop browser with tabs and a really slick bookmark system. It really does blow Apple’s own browser out of the water in terms of functionality and I highly recommend it to any iPad (or iPhone for that matter) users. Makes the whole experience of browsing much more enjoyable and faster to work with. Seeing as that is what you will be doing most of the time on the iPad it’s pretty much an essential purchase!
Some advanced features in iCab are that it allows you to download files and then transfer them to the PC using iTunes. It has auto form completion, and it can emulate a desktop browser, so if some sites are not behaving when they detect you are on a mobile browser you can fool them into thinking you are on Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer. This is just scratching the surface of what it can do (there isn’t enough room to go through it all here) and is undoubtedly going to be the most used app I have purchased.
Photos
The photo gallery system is very polished. I have bought the iPad Camera Connection Kit so that I can transfer images directly from USB connections on cameras with the leads, or from an SDHC card, as well as importing from the PC via iTunes, giving lots of flexibility to show images, ideas, graphics and web mockups to clients. The zoom and pan is a lot smoother than on iPhone, and the gallery (read folders) can be navigated in a really intuitive, fun way with your fingers.
Typing
Typing on the iPad was the most pleasant surprise. I was expecting to have to get the Bluetooth keyboard from Apple to do any serious typing but it’s really not necessary. This is the largest article I have written on iPad so far and it’s just as fast, if not faster than writing on my PC! Really enjoying it!! The auto-completion of words works really well mostly and the size of the keys is perfect. There’s just something really nice and relaxing about tapping glass and not having to actually ‘press’ keys down.
Word processing
Apple’s ‘Pages’ app is very slick. You can tell that they have really fine tuned it for touch controls. It’s got some useful templates that can be used as starting points, and seems very flexible in terms of layout… better than Word anyway. I’ve not used it for anything serious yet so will post a separate article with more detail on Pages once I get more experience with it. The only downside is that files can only be exported in Pages for Mac format, or PDF files, so it’s not natively compatible with Word doc format. As nice as it is to use, this fact alone could unfortunately stop me from using it long-term. However we never know, they could update it in the future to handle .doc and .docx if they don’t want to lose out in the business market!
Spreadsheets
Another great app is Apple’s ‘Numbers’ spreadsheet. Beautiful interface and awesome functionality on the touch screen, I have already put this into use as my work log / client timesheet. The same problem exists when it comes to Microsoft compatibility. You can only export as Numbers or PDF format so it’s no good for collaborating on the same files between this and Office which is a massive shame.
GoodReader
A very nice file manager app that allows you to have a unified local and/or remote file system. It can pull in any file type for storage locally and viewing directly in the iPad, and then ‘send’ files to other apps you have installed for editing those files if they are editable. It also links directly to other cloud services, basically increasing the storage space of the iPad infinitely.
Dropbox.com
Super useful, and FREE cloud file storage service. Works seamlessly between iPad, iPhone and multiple PC’s (or Macs) to share files and folders between any locations you might need them in. You can get 2.3Gb space free, and upgrade for more space if you need it for reasonable monthly costs. For me 2.3Gb is more than enough at this stage and I’m really impressed with the user friendliness of Dropbox so this gets big thumbs up from me!
Whitenote
A virtual notepad, allowing freeform text entry, simple drawing, and insertion of audio clips, images and links over multiple pages. I think this is going to be ideal for note taking at meetings – especially in conjunction with a stylus (which I haven’t got YET).
Penultimate
I need to do some field testing between this and Whitenote to see which works best for my needs. Penultimate is purely a handwriting type of notepad, designed to work with a stylus, so I’m not getting the best out of it yet… but the presentation of the software seems nicer with a ‘project book’ entry page showing a thumbnail image of each created notepad and a much cleaner/simpler interface. Both work really well for different needs so I will probably end up using both.
Twitterific
There are a lot of Twitter clients out there but the best for my needs has been Twitterific. The main reason I like this one (as opposed to other apps like the official Twitter app which is free, or tweetdeck, or even using the actual website) is that it allows me to manage my 3 Twitter accounts easily through one interface. I found using any other system that I was constantly selecting to follow people in the wrong account which was really annoying!
1 Password
A secure repository for any sensitive information. I have all my website login details and FTP server settings stored safely and easily searchable within this app now. It also synchs up a copy to my iPhone and desktop if I want. Slick interface and an active developer should see more streamlining of this app occur in the near future.
Gusto
This app is very useful for me, allowing me to download my clients websites locally to show them at meetings offline if there is no WiFi or 3G access available. Also connects directly through FTP so I can make changes to the HTML and CSS and re-upload to make emergency fixes and updates ‘on the road’ if the need arises. It has a really nice user interface and seems to work very efficiently so far in the tests I have done.
Teamviewer & remote desktop access
Unfortunately Teamviewer haven’t yet released their iPad version but the iPhone version still works acceptably… Just has some overly large toolbars and mouse pointer! It’s still mighty useful to access your workstation via the iPad and works well for most tasks. You cannot click and drag, so can’t move emails to folders in that way, or transfer files from one panel to the other in FTP programs, but there are usually other ways of achieving this without dragging. I also have iTeleport, which is a universal app (buy once, works on all iDevices) but have not tried it yet as it’s a bit more of a fiddle to set up on the workstations.
Autodesk Sketchboook Pro
This is a fantastic app! Has a very powerful set of tools to create natural looking art and drawings… Some of the stuff people have created with this are truly incredible! I’m nowhere near that skill level but it’s great for painting on… really good fun… and I cannot wait to try it with a stylus.
Multitasking
As much as I thought it would be, I don’t actually see this as a big draw back because the apps all load so quickly anyway. Even so, it’s coming with OS 4, so we’ll see what difference it makes to usability then I guess!
In summary…
I’m exceptionally pleased with the potential of the iPad for DesignerMark! It has already changed my workflow for the better but as with all hardware, it’s only as good as the software written for it so I really can’t wait to see what all the clever developers around the world have up their sleeves!
One App I am keenly awaiting is QuickOffice for iPad. I have been happy using their iPhone version and think it is the best Microsoft Office option so far (best interface and connectivity), so I’m looking forward to what they can do with the iPad. There are currently a couple of apps on the store that can handle Office format documents (Office 2HD and Docs 2 Go) but I don’t want to commit to those until I see QuickOffice’s offering.
I will be adding further posts on this subject as I get some real hands-on experience and as other killer apps become available, but I must say for a launch device, the iPad has far exceeded my expectations so far.
