Category Archives: General

The smell of freshly roasted coffee!

May

23

We love the smell of freshly roasted coffee beans and leapt at the chance to work with local roaster, Devon Roast. Established over 50 years ago, the Costa Rica Plantation Company is enjoying a flourishing trade with local coffee shops and hotels and, with a desire to raise their profile even more, they asked us to brand their latest offering, ‘Devon Roast’ and the promise of the ‘finest coffee, freshly roasted in Devon’.

Our designs take their inspiration from the rolling Devon hills and use a rustic, textured approach that reflects the company’s hand-roasting methods. We’ve provided a supporting brand toolkit with views of the Devon coastline as its theme, to keep their printed material and merchandise on-brand.

A wide range of branded work includes packaging, mugs, clothing, stationery, menus, flags, pavement signs, window stickers, flyers and a new website (click to enlarge images).

Devon Roast also now offer new barista training courses and throw their doors open every Friday in May and June from 11am-noon for a tour of their facility.

Take a look at some of our branding work:

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A good blog can boost your business

Apr

30

There was a time when, if you wanted to be noticed as a writer, you had to pester a publisher to get your material into print. Except for those who were writing just for the fun of it, the purpose was to make money. Submit articles to magazines and hope to get paid for it; get your book published and hope it appears on the Best Sellers list.

Novellist with typewriter

Now that we’re firmly in the internet era, anyone can get their material published and get it noticed. I’m talking here about Blogging and how it can make money for your business.

Blogs (a shortened form of Web Log) started out as a purely personal kind of online diary. “I went to a party the other day…” and so on. But it wasn’t long before the commercial benefits of publishing your own material were harnessed by businesses and we’ve embraced this too at DNA.

If you are in business you may be asking “do I really need a blog?” and I will answer with a resounding “Youbetcha!”

Just like having a decent website, Social Media (under which umbrella blogging fits) is another vital tool for successful 21st century businesses. Whether you are a freelance carpet fitter or a global chemicals company, well-crafted blogging can bring web traffic – and potential customers – to your virtual shop counter.

Continue reading →

Why Teignmouth?

Apr

23

It’s a common question when we’re meeting with new or prospective clients… Why did dna move to Teignmouth? When forming new working relationships, it’s important not to come across as barking mad. So I thought I’d settle this once and for all.

Aside from the obvious logistical and business decisions that considered things like keeping our team happy, moving into a building that offered room for expansion with chillout and photography rooms, finding a location with easy access on main routes… THIS is why this Creative agency moved to Teignmouth… To have a coastline commute, to work from a lovely grade II listed building that accommodates an ever-growing team and have beautiful views out of 7ft sash windows. These are a few photos I snapped on phone during my commute this morning (click to enlarge if you’d like). Case and point. :)

DNA creative design Devon

DNA web design, graphic design Teignmouth, Devon

DNA Teignmouth, Devon, Design Agency

(Jon Price – Creative Director)

Google Street View Hyperlapse

Apr

22

Take Google’s Street View, add a splash of Java script and top it all up with a photographic time-lapse technique with sweeping camera moves and what do you get? This:

This is a trend known as Hyper-lapse photography – a technique combining time-lapse and sweeping camera movements typically focused on a point of interest and has been a growing trend on video sites. Creating them requires precision and many hours stitching together photos taken from carefully mapped locations… or does it?

Step up Teehan+Lax, a creative outfit based in Toronto. By using Google’s Street View as source material and some clever Java script programming to designate a point of interest within the animation, Teehan+Lax has made the process much simpler. In fact, it worked so well they decided to design a UI around the engine and release Google Street View Hyperlapse. Street View takes all the photo stitching hard work out so anyone can make their own Hyperlapse by using easy-to-use interface and engine. Chrome is recommended due to the WebGL platform.

Try it for yourself!

The Conscience Industry

Apr

17

TEDxExeter-dna

We at dna eagerly await the annual TEDxExeter day at the Northcott Theatre. It gives us a chance to get out of the office, listen to always inspiring talks and meet some interesting and extremely open-minded people.

This year, the day explored how to live the questions facing us in all areas of life, including money, business, prosperity, sustainability, the environment, childhood and old age, community, society, science. The talks were full to bursting with fascinating takes on new ways of looking at life, and making that new way happen by living the new way now, not later.

Tom Crompton’s (Change Strategist at WWF-UK) discussion on ‘the conscience industry’ struck a particular note as we’re working with several charities at the moment – Rowcroft Hospice, Families for Children and Lilongwe Wildlife Centre.

TEDxExeter-dna2

Tom looked at how to appeal to the most important values of people you’re asking for help from (if you work for a charity, for example) in these days of economic darkness where everything is seemingly related to or motivated by money. It’s all too easy for marketeers to say ‘make it really easy’ and ‘tell them how they will save money’ or ‘if you do this it will save £x’.
People are motivated by the values they hold, and there are two main types – intrinsic values such as care for others, relationships and the environment; and extrinsic values which are concerns about wealth, prosperity and public perception. It’s these extrinsic values that are reinforced constantly through advertising, the cult of celebrity and consumerism, to the detriment of the more important intrinsic values.

Tom put forward a convincing argument that marketeers should not forget – intrinsic values should be promoted via clever and relevant campaign messaging to hopefully enable the real value of what’s being asked of people to be understood and not forgotten for the greater good of all of us, in today’s financial and image obsessed society.

More information can be found at Common Cause.