Last weeks Apprentice, week 8, was all about graphic design, promotion and advertising. Needless to say being a graphic designer and director of Titman Firth I was particulary interested to see how the chosen design agency handled the apprentice’s briefs.

However, what transpired was in some ways more interesting, each team was asked to design a logo, billboard advert and TV commercial without any creative design assistance of the agency. The problem though was that the design ability of the candidates was limited (understandably) as no one had specific design training. The logo’s seemed weak and the less said about the adverts and TV commercials the better. That said most liked the designs they came up with but as I have said before, it’s not so much that you like it, it’s what your target audience likes.

The chosen audiences were smaller then the wide potential audience of ‘Nike’. I could not help but feel that they had lessened their potential market by doing this and maybe should have been bolder and better or at least aim to match the branding appeal of ‘Nike’.

Most surprising of all was that no one seemed to have seen the film ‘What Women Want’. This film would have given them a vision to think beyond the ’street’ audience they chose to target and strive for the difference their brands needed. Not to mention the importance of knowing your audience.

For those who don’t know, a blog (short for ‘web log’) is a website (or part of a website) where posts are written in a reverse chronological order. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. Most blogs are primarily textual although some focus on photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media.

Blogs can commercially work better that traditional newsletters and news sections of websites. Incorporating a blog into a company website can be far more beneficial for several reasons:

1) For providing potential clients with up-to-date relevant information on a regular basis.

2) Blogs tend to use content management technology and can easily be updated in-house.

3) They are great for optimisation benefit, if implemented correctly the content can count towards a websites total content.

4) A user can opt for an RSS feed and automatically receive new posts direct to their email in-box.

5) Because posts tend to be short they can more easily be created and made more specific.

6) They tend to be more effective as they are written in a less formal manner and more like a conservation.

7) Best of all they are interactive, comments can be made by readers and made to appear by the relevant post enabling credibility.

If you would like to talk about adding a blog to your current site, improving the SEO of a current blog or branding an existing blog with consistent graphic design to match your current website please get in touch.