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19 January 2021

Is remote working more productive?

Insights into the impact of Covid for NSW

As Australia’s Covid cases decrease, the public health order mandating NSW employers to enable workers to work from home during the Covid-19 crisis has been lifted. However, many employers are updating their remote working policy, based on changes implemented in 2020, where a large proportion of the workforce (46% in NSW) was forced to adapt to a remote working model.

What have we learnt from lockdown?

In Australia, many of us already worked at home occasionally, but many more were discouraged from doing so. ‘Productivity loss’ being the main concern for businesses. Covid created a ‘forced experiment’ — a large sample of people working from home, where the benefits and disbenefits of remote working could be observed and easily compared. With a timely NBN rollout Australia-wide, conditions for a mass remote working workforce became possible.

The NSW Innovation and Productivity Council (IPC), conducted a survey of NSW remote workers during the pandemic. Combining this new data with other data sources, we presented their findings in the NSW Remote Working Insights report which revealed the potential remote working has for employees, as well as their employers.

We worked closely with the Council over a series of Zoom workshops, to develop data visualisations and infographics that visually conveyed some important learnings from 2020. Using an iterative approach, we transformed a data-rich document into a visual piece of storytelling.

This report has the broadest audience, of all the reports we have produced to date for the Innovation Economy Research Series. The insights are relevant to small and large employers, in a range of industries across the state, and beyond. Media took the results beyond policymakers to the general public, with The Australian, The Mandarin and news.com.au among the publishers reporting on the reports eye-opening findings.

What are the pros and cons of remote working?

The most obvious benefit of remote working is removing the need for the daily commute. Working from home just two days per week, equates to an additional 3.3 weeks of leave and $860 in travel savings.

IPC’s research found that more than half (53%) of workers felt more productive working from home. Remote workers tend to work slightly longer hours and have added job satisfaction, so the benefits are shared by employers. Sceptics of workers self-reporting productivity will find the report includes references that confirm the validity of these reports. The benefits to an organisation can’t be ignored.

On a more granular level, certain jobs, and certain tasks, are more suited to remote working. Whilst some occupations (such as IT support) may be 100% suited to remote working, other vocations, such as nursing or personal training, may find it difficult or impossible. “Knowledge intensive” industries are most suited whereas “producing” industries can only adapt so far.

“Many NSW remote workers reported that their individual productivity is higher when working remotely. But we also know that teams and businesses are more than the sum of their parts.”

NSW Remote Working Insights

Reflecting upon our own studio’s experience, certain tasks resulted in greater productivity, such as formatting, writing and project planning. But other tasks were more difficult, such as creative collaboration or problem solving. IT issues still persist for memory-hungry tasks, such as developing a presentation where many assets from various sources have to be collected — productivity was limited by internet bandwidth.

What will workplaces look like in the future?

The IPC report includes 10 ways remote working could change NSW, which we enriched with a continuous illustration. Significant changes in our workplace could have lasting effects on our cities. Whilst a decentralised workforce may affect service-related industries in the CBD, regional businesses may expect an increase in trade. Roads and commuters routes will become less trafficked, which has the added benefit of reducing carbon emissions.

Remote working is still a relatively new phenomenon, so some benefits and challenges may be yet to present themselves. Working in your pyjamas is novel for a while, but your mental health may suffer longer term as your human interactions decrease.

Remote working also adds complexity to employment law. Employers are obligated to ensure their employees can carry out their duties in a safe environment, but not all workers can afford a home office, ergonomic office furniture or fast internet speeds. This also poses questions around workplace equality as different employee’s domestic environments may affect their opportunities in the workplace, both positively and negatively.

“A mix of remote and in the office time would let me enjoy the physical social interaction alongside the work benefits of being remote”

Female, 64, Sydney, Professional Services

The report indicates that a “hybrid model” of remote and onsite working is preferred. This allows employers and employees to optimise working arrangements, with two to three days at home being optimal.

With two-thirds of us expecting to work more from home in the future, this is an interesting time for employees and employers to re-define traditional workplaces, which they may never have thought to question pre-Covid. Our workplace locations, our physical desks, our working hours and even what is considered acceptable workplace attire are all up for discussion.

Have you spoken to your employer about the productivity that could be unlocked from remote working? Check out IPC’s report for more insights.

If you would like to discuss how infographics, illustrations and data visualisation can increase your report’s visibility and engagement, please get in touch.

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Next storyHow do I make my PDF accessible?

14 January 2021

How do I make my PDF accessible?

A 5-step guide to enhance your digital documents with Adobe Acrobat

So you’ve been asked to make a document “accessible” but what does that mean? And why is it important?

Many businesses invest time and money into creating engaging visual communications. However, not all designs are optimised for people with disabilities and even mild vision impairments. Accessible PDFs take the well-known PDF format a step further, allowing them to be read with screen readers or assistive technologies providing universal access.

Why is it important?

While the PDF format is one of the most common file types for reports and forms, it is essentially unreadable for many people with disabilities or vision impairments. Simply put, an untagged PDF is unreadable on assistive devices — it’s like searching a dictionary that is not in alphabetical order.

As businesses update their corporate responsibility guidelines, governments are legislating universal access and even teenagers are embracing the addition of captions to their TikToks.

What’s involved when creating accessible PDFs?

Unfortunately, there is no magic button when it comes to accessibility. Optimising documents is currently a manual process. It takes a significant amount of time and care to implement and comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Adobe Acrobat is the industry-leading software to create PDFs and enable them to be accessible, but you will need the paid-version to make your PDFs. However, anyone can read them using Adobe Acrobat Reader.

You may have heard tagging the text in a PDF is enough to make it accessible. However, there are more considerations for full accessibility including:

  • — Colour contrast
  • — Logical reading order
  • — Alternate text for images and graphics
  • — Bookmarks for longer documents
  • — Document information

Can’t I just use the auto-tag feature?

We can see the temptation to hit auto-tag in Adobe Acrobat and call it a day. However, the messy result means you may spend just as much time (if not more) repairing the document as you would have manually tagging. The problem with auto-tag is that it doesn’t (yet) take into account the context of the document and will incorrectly tag heading levels and reading order. Also, key functions like alternate text for images cannot be automated. This means you will have to make manual additions anyway. Creating a good quality accessible PDF takes some time to correctly set it up.

So what steps do I need to take to create an accessible PDF?

Now that you have a run-down of what accessibility is and why it is important, here’s a step-by-step guide to help you navigate the process of creating an accessible PDF using Adobe Acrobat.

01

01

Design and artwork setup

Like all good design it’s important to consider what fonts and colours to use to make your document attractive and a joyful experience to read. To ensure optimal visibility, foreground and background colour combinations must pass the guidelines for contrast accessibility.

Tip: You can check colour contrast ratios online or install a program to your desktop like Colour Contrast Analyser.

With your design all done and ready to export to PDF, there are a few more actions that will make your life easier when tagging. Elements in a layered graphic will be read individually, so it’s best to flatten composite images onto a single layer and save vectors as high res PNG files. This avoids the creation of many unnecessary tags which create an awful reading experience. Also, ensure all text is live on the page allowing for selection in the following steps. With your PDF prepped and primed, the next step is tagging.

02

02

Tagging

Accessible PDFs are like invisible road maps that give clear instructions to navigate a document. Tags are the road signs to indicate where you are and what is next. Each page must be tagged according to the hierarchy of text, images and background artefacts. Adding alternate text to photos and graphics translates visual information into verbal cues. The captions should be short, simple yet accurate and descriptive.

In Acrobat, select View > Tools and open the Accessibility panel. From here select Reading Order to open up the pop-up box. In the Reading Order pop-up ensure Show Page Content Groups and Structure Types are ticked. Working on each page, click and drag to make a selection and tag the content accordingly ie Heading 1 to Heading 6, Text/Paragraph, Figure etc. When tagging figures, make sure it is selected and right-click to Edit Alternate Text.

Tip: The Reading Order Tool doesn’t support the undo/redo feature and can be a little temperamental, not tagging elements as you would expect. We highly anticipate Adobe’s fix for this! We suggest saving a new version after every few pages so you don’t lose all your hard work, should the program crash. And keep a copy of the original file, just in case.

03

03

Set reading order

Once all elements are tagged it’s time to set the reading order. The reading order is important as it guides the user to read the document in a logical way. Unfortunately, reading order is not automatically set during the tagging process and must be manually re-ordered and checked.

In the same Reading Order pop-up, tick Page Content Order to show the order number of each tagged element. To make edits, click the Show Order Panel button and in the left hand panel drag contents into the most logical order.

Tip: Keep an eye out for any content moving or disappearing from the page as you reorder. Again, saving new versions is recommended.

04

04

Using the Tags panel

The Tags panel (View > Show/Hide > Navigation Panes > Tags) comes into play for advanced tagging of tables and lists. This is useful for readers as the comprehensive tagging indicates table headers and cell information and items of bulleted or numbered lists.

For tables, the Tags panel allows you to assign each Table Row with either the Table Headers or Table Data Cells. Lists should be tagged to show the start of each List Item, its Label (bullet, number, etc) and List Body containing the text.

Tip: It’s best practice to check that the order of all tags in this panel follows the same sequence as the Reading Order.

05

05

Full accessibility check

You’ve made it to the end and now you can run a full Accessibility Check (Tools > Accessibility > Accessibility Check) to troubleshoot errors that can only be fixed or passed manually. Some manual inputs include:

  • — Document Information: adding the title and author in the Properties
  • — Logical Reading Order and Colour Contrast: manually checked and passed
  • — Tagged Annotations: tag unmarked links by doing a Find and Tag Elements search in the Contents panel
  • — Bookmarks: documents over 21 pages need to have bookmarks that parallel the document structure, or the Accessibility Check will fail

You can right click errors and select Explain to better understand how to resolve any problems.

Once your Accessibility Check passes, you can download the report to vouch for the quality of your PDF. Re-select Accessibility Check and at the top of the pop-up box tick Create Accessibility Report. Choose where you would like to save the report and select Start Checking.

Here are some examples of good quality accessible documents you can use for reference:

If you open the Accessibility panel and go through the tools in the Navigation Pane on the left, you will see the additional work the designer has taken to ensure the PDFs are highly accessible.

It’s never been more important to be inclusive and make your content available to as many users online as possible. We have invested in future-proofing our design practise with accessibility training for all staff. Please get in touch to discuss how we can boost your communications with accessible design.

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Next storyOnline courses for design thinkers

5 August 2020

Online courses for design thinkers

Courses that won’t bore you stupid

With more time at home during these quieter times, there is certainly peer pressure to self-improve and scrub up on some professional skills. However, it is easy to be hesitant revisiting technical training without a trainer.

Once upon a time, learning Flash (Adobe Animate’s predecessor) was done via a book that came with a CD. The course didn’t do much for tweening but it certainly helped with insomnia.

But self-initiated training has come a long way. Today’s well-designed courses embrace technology to teach, delivering highly interactive learning experiences. No more boring videos of people dressed in appropriate business attire and monotone voices. Now there is a host of engaging activities, explosions of colour, fun pop-quizzes, UX features and even some jokes, to keep you awake, interested, retaining knowledge and actually wanting to learn.

Here’s a few online course recommendations for you to check out…

1. Design Thinking by IBM

Learn how to bring design thinking to every part of your organisation. This course explains what design thinking is, using real-world examples and tips from design leaders.

We have found it useful to explain to clients the value design thinking can bring to their projects. You can even earn a Practitioner Badge. Temporarily, all the IBM courses in this learning portal are free, and that includes some great toolkit resources.

2. Fundamentals of Digital Marketing by Google Digital Garage

Created by Google, The Open University and the Interactive Advertising Bureau this course gives a great overview of various digital marketing channels, including websites, content marketing, online advertising and e-mail marketing.

Useful for those new to online marketing, the course covers the marketing basics, and provides a good foundation for designers. Small business owners looking to take their business online or looking for new marketing approaches will also benefit.

Complete the course at your own pace, and you can earn certification to boast about on your LinkedIn profile. Best of all, it’s free.

3. 3D for Designers by Devon Ko

This course is solidly aimed at designers looking to venture into 3D. Most of us don’t realise that there is a Lite version of 3D Studio Max hidden inside our Creative Cloud subscriptions (it’s inside Adobe AfterEffects btw).

Ko’s genuine exuberance for the subject matter and YouTube-influencer-style delivery makes the course fly by. Her informal approach is deceiving though, as her course has been carefully constructed and you’ll love to work through it.

Our studio completed the course as a team, and every Thursday night we would order take-out and race through a unit or two, before letting loose on the platform and applying our new skills. It was amazing how quickly you can pick this up when it is explained properly.

The course requires a sign up as the course is released one unit per week, so users can post their creations and questions in the forums. You get a library of resources at the end so you can go back and scrub up your skills as required. There is a charge, but it’s worth it.

Highly recommended for those comfortable in Adobe Illustrator wanting to bring a new level to their designs.

Know of any more?

Covid-19 has seen many corporations demonstrating their generosity by providing access to online learning experiences for free or at reduced prices. All levels of government are also working with learning providers, like TAFE and Swinburne, to provide fee-free courses and reduced-fee courses in response to the crisis and skills shortages.

Jump on board and learn at your own pace, maybe a unit or two between episodes of Ozark. It’s not how you remember and it’s actually fun!

We’d be keen to add to this list so please share any other quality courses you’ve taken.

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Next storyUniversal design by the curb-cut effect

2 April 2020

Is remote working more productive?

Insights into the impact of Covid for NSW

As Australia’s Covid cases decrease, the public health order mandating NSW employers to enable workers to work from home during the Covid-19 crisis has been lifted. However, many employers are updating their remote working policy, based on changes implemented in 2020, where a large proportion of the workforce (46% in NSW) was forced to adapt to a remote working model.

What have we learnt from lockdown?

In Australia, many of us already worked at home occasionally, but many more were discouraged from doing so. ‘Productivity loss’ being the main concern for businesses. Covid created a ‘forced experiment’ — a large sample of people working from home, where the benefits and disbenefits of remote working could be observed and easily compared. With a timely NBN rollout Australia-wide, conditions for a mass remote working workforce became possible.

The NSW Innovation and Productivity Council (IPC), conducted a survey of NSW remote workers during the pandemic. Combining this new data with other data sources, we presented their findings in the NSW Remote Working Insights report which revealed the potential remote working has for employees, as well as their employers.

Social media has made captioning videos the industry standard, as 85% of video on Facebook is watched without sound.

Our discrete video-watching is possible thanks to closed captions. Initially introduced to make video content accessible to the hearing impaired but now adopted by social media content creators. These captions not only transcribe speech, but enhance video with quirky remarks, pop-up facts and memeworthy jokes.

With quasi-silent videos becoming the norm, more creative emphasis is being placed on captions. No longer an afterthought to be slapped on in post-production, captions are now being considered at the beginning of a video’s production plan, with a keen focus on how to best integrate them with scripts and visuals.

Accessibility refers to building products and digital content that can be interacted with by a wide range of people, including individuals who have visual, motor, auditory or cognitive disabilities. And accessible design considers a wide range of needs and results in more usable and user-friendly experiences. There are also instances where everyone requires a more accessible design.

Reading the fine print

Have you ever mixed up the shampoo and conditioner? Whether it’s those tiny travel-sized bottles or the sleek high-end products you’ve spent too much on, it seems to happen all the time. When the bottles are identical except for a single tiny word you’re trying to decipher with eyes full of soapy water, it’s easy confuse products and find yourself washing and re-washing your hair.

Half of Australians wear glasses or contacts, and more than 80% of those aged over 45 have a vision disorder.

Reflecting upon our own studio’s experience, certain tasks resulted in greater productivity, such as formatting, writing and project planning. But other tasks were more difficult, such as creative collaboration or problem solving. IT issues still persist for memory-hungry tasks, such as developing a presentation where many assets from various sources have to be collected — productivity was limited by internet bandwidth.

“Many NSW remote workers reported that their individual productivity is higher when working remotely. But we also know that teams and businesses are more than the sum of their parts.”

NSW Remote Working Insights

IPC’s research found that more than half (53%) of workers felt more productive working from home. Remote workers tend to work slightly longer hours and have added job satisfaction, so the benefits are shared by employers. Sceptics of workers self-reporting productivity will find the report includes references that confirm the validity of these reports. The benefits to an organisation can’t be ignored.

On a more granular level, certain jobs, and certain tasks, are more suited to remote working. Whilst some occupations (such as IT support) may be 100% suited to remote working, other vocations, such as nursing or personal training, may find it difficult or impossible. “Knowledge intensive” industries are most suited whereas “producing” industries can only adapt so far.

Driving home and the sun is in your eyes?

Ask Siri to read your messages out loud.

Trying to use your phone with one hand (while using the other to stuff your face with a burger) but your fingers are too stumpy to reach the top of the screen?

The Reachability feature is a game changer.

Need to order a ride home after the Christmas party, but all the buttons appear twice and out of focus?

Just ask Siri to order you an Uber.

A thoughtful and more flexible web

Designers can get a bit tense when web accessibility is brought up, with visions of monochrome, text-only websites coming to mind. Today, the best digital experiences weave together creativity and accessibility, no longer requiring such drastic trade-offs. This is thanks to coding that can be stylised for visual web pages and structured for screen readers.

Screen readers convert text into synthesized speech and empower visually-impaired users to hear and navigate websites with ease and independence. Accustomed users will often speed up the reading rate to over 300 words per minute!

For the 36 million blind people worldwide who may use screen readers, the structure of HTML web pages is crucial as a screen reader dictates content in the order it is coded. Thankfully, the integration of screen readers with intelligent assistants such as Siri offer the future of multi-tasking, where we can all take advantage of well-coded pages.

Salespeople can ask Siri to read out the LinkedIn profiles of prospective clients as they drive to their next meeting. Students with headphones can scroll through Instagram on the bus, as Google reads out their study notes.

It should be the goal of all designers to not only make experiences possible for people with disabilities, but to make them enjoyable.

So we challenge designers — embrace making your website WCAG-AA compliant or the colour scheme of your brochure highly readable. Accessible design shouldn’t be considered as a secondary task. It should be considered a fundamental design principle to create universal and enjoyable products for all.

Visions of the future — time to get on board

As more and more organisations mandate accessibility, it also makes financial sense to embrace the updates early.

It’s estimated that accessibility being retrofitted to make a website conform to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines is up to 30 times more expensive than the cost of building it in progressively.

As our population ages, visual accessibility becomes more important than ever. The answer? Smart glasses. While it may feel very Blade Runner 2049 to mount a screen in front of your eyes or directly project a camera feed onto your retina, this eye-opening future is nearer than you may realise.

Apple is developing next-gen screen technology to be used in augmented-reality glasses, while Sony has a patent for contact lens computers. Early adoption makes clear a future where AI will be used to identify text and objects for the blind. But it’s easy to extrapolate and conceive how the military sector, gaming industry and eventually, everyone, would benefit from these new technologies.

In this future, will manually clicking around for a search result be viewed as a relic of the past, just as slow and tedious as we now see writing a letter on paper, licking a stamp for the envelope and finding your nearest postbox? Until then, let’s all ensure our physical and digital worlds are accessible and inclusive — for everyone.

If you would like to discuss how infographics, illustrations and data visualisation can increase your report’s visibility and engagement, please get in touch.

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Next storyThe power of online reviews for small business

14 January 2020

How do I make my PDF accessible?

A 5-step guide to enhance your digital documents with Adobe Acrobat

So you’ve been asked to make a document “accessible” but what does that mean? And why is it important?

Many businesses invest time and money into creating engaging visual communications. However, not all designs are optimised for people with disabilities and even mild vision impairments. Accessible PDFs take the well-known PDF format a step further, allowing them to be read with screen readers or assistive technologies providing universal access.

What’s involved when creating accessible PDFs?

Unfortunately, there is no magic button when it comes to accessibility. Optimising documents is currently a manual process. It takes a significant amount of time and care to implement and comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Adobe Acrobat is the industry-leading software to create PDFs and enable them to be accessible, but you will need the paid-version to make your PDFs. However, anyone can read them using Adobe Acrobat Reader.

You may have heard tagging the text in a PDF is enough to make it accessible. However, there are more considerations for full accessibility including:

  • — Colour contrast
  • — Logical reading order
  • — Alternate text for images and graphics
  • — Bookmarks for longer documents
  • — Document information

82% of Australians believe reviews are important for the survival of SMBs

Why is it important?

While the PDF format is one of the most common file types for reports and forms, it is essentially unreadable for many people with disabilities or vision impairments. Simply put, an untagged PDF is unreadable on assistive devices — it’s like searching a dictionary that is not in alphabetical order.

As businesses update their corporate responsibility guidelines, governments are legislating universal access and even teenagers are embracing the addition of captions to their TikToks.

Can’t I just use the auto-tag feature?

We can see the temptation to hit auto-tag in Adobe Acrobat and call it a day. However, the messy result means you may spend just as much time (if not more) repairing the document as you would have manually tagging. The problem with auto-tag is that it doesn’t (yet) take into account the context of the document and will incorrectly tag heading levels and reading order. Also, key functions like alternate text for images cannot be automated. This means you will have to make manual additions anyway. Creating a good quality accessible PDF takes some time to correctly set it up.

So what steps do I need to take to create an accessible PDF?

Now that you have a run-down of what accessibility is and why it is important, here’s a step-by-step guide to help you navigate the process of creating an accessible PDF using Adobe Acrobat.

Consumers value constructive criticism (58%) and are more likely to trust a business that has a mix of negative and positive reviews (48%).

Most businesses proactively respond to negative reviews but some choose to bury their heads in the sand by denying customer’s complaints or choosing to ignore them altogether. Deleting negative reviews is dangerous — criticism can be hard to receive but consumers will not tolerate deception.

Some companies have gone to great lengths to filter out negative reviews online. Meriton Service Apartments have recently been in the media due to management directing staff to filter out potential negative reviews from appearing on TripAdvisor. As a result, the Federal Court has ordered Meriton to pay $3 million for misleading consumers.

Negative reviews are opportunities to improve online reputations if businesses take the time to respond to them and try to provide resolutions. Even a simple acknowledgement and apology can go a long way.

As a consumer reading online reviews, there’s a lot to consider when relying upon online reviews. Consumers will read positive and negative reviews, as well as a business’s replies to influence their decision making. Authenticity is paramount and cynicism abounds, for good reason. Consumers are now, more than ever, on the lookout for fake reviews, or reviews that have been ‘bought’ by a business in exchange for a discount or other reward.

As the world’s largest retailer, Amazon has become a primary target. Fake reviews abound, as Amazon’s suppliers compete for coveted ranking positions on the platform. The podcast Planet Money has an episode The Fake Review Hunter, which tells an interesting story of how the bodybuilding community led the fight against fake reviews on Amazon.

Harnessing the power of online reviews

Here are some tips from True Local to help businesses manage their online reviews and in turn, uphold their online reputations:

01

01

Design and artwork setup

Like all good design it’s important to consider what fonts and colours to use to make your document attractive and a joyful experience to read. To ensure optimal visibility, foreground and background colour combinations must pass the guidelines for contrast accessibility.

Tip: You can check colour contrast ratios online or install a program to your desktop like Colour Contrast Analyser.

With your design all done and ready to export to PDF, there are a few more actions that will make your life easier when tagging. Elements in a layered graphic will be read individually, so it’s best to flatten composite images onto a single layer and save vectors as high res PNG files. This avoids the creation of many unnecessary tags which create an awful reading experience. Also, ensure all text is live on the page allowing for selection in the following steps. With your PDF prepped and primed, the next step is tagging.

02

02

Tagging

Accessible PDFs are like invisible road maps that give clear instructions to navigate a document. Tags are the road signs to indicate where you are and what is next. Each page must be tagged according to the hierarchy of text, images and background artefacts. Adding alternate text to photos and graphics translates visual information into verbal cues. The captions should be short, simple yet accurate and descriptive.

In Acrobat, select View > Tools and open the Accessibility panel. From here select Reading Order to open up the pop-up box. In the Reading Order pop-up ensure Show Page Content Groups and Structure Types are ticked. Working on each page, click and drag to make a selection and tag the content accordingly ie Heading 1 to Heading 6, Text/Paragraph, Figure etc. When tagging figures, make sure it is selected and right-click to Edit Alternate Text.

Tip: The Reading Order Tool doesn’t support the undo/redo feature and can be a little temperamental, not tagging elements as you would expect. We highly anticipate Adobe’s fix for this! We suggest saving a new version after every few pages so you don’t lose all your hard work, should the program crash. And keep a copy of the original file, just in case.

03

03

Set reading order

Once all elements are tagged it’s time to set the reading order. The reading order is important as it guides the user to read the document in a logical way. Unfortunately, reading order is not automatically set during the tagging process and must be manually re-ordered and checked.

In the same Reading Order pop-up, tick Page Content Order to show the order number of each tagged element. To make edits, click the Show Order Panel button and in the left hand panel drag contents into the most logical order.

Tip: Keep an eye out for any content moving or disappearing from the page as you reorder. Again, saving new versions is recommended.

04

04

Using the Tags panel

The Tags panel (View > Show/Hide > Navigation Panes > Tags) comes into play for advanced tagging of tables and lists. This is useful for readers as the comprehensive tagging indicates table headers and cell information and items of bulleted or numbered lists.

For tables, the Tags panel allows you to assign each Table Row with either the Table Headers or Table Data Cells. Lists should be tagged to show the start of each List Item, its Label (bullet, number, etc) and List Body containing the text.

Tip: It’s best practice to check that the order of all tags in this panel follows the same sequence as the Reading Order.

With more awareness about privacy laws than ever, it is vital that businesses implement formal processes to safeguard their online reputation, protect private information of customer reviewers and try to fight fake online reviews. It’s all about gaining consumer’s trust, which will boost the value of brand.

It’s never been more important to be inclusive and make your content available to as many users online as possible. We have invested in future-proofing our design practise with accessibility training for all staff. Please get in touch to discuss how we can boost your communications with accessible design.

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Next storyBranding your professional services

6 January 2020

Branding your professional services

Open Bracket launches with impact

Open Bracket is a learning and organisational development consultancy based in London, UK. Another Colour played a pivotal role in supporting us to establish our company identity — looking back, it was a crucial stage in our business formation that has enabled us to bid for bigger projects, charge what we’re worth and start building a strong brand that will serve us for years to come.

Daniel Scott, Consultant Facilitator and Founder, Open Bracket Consulting

We asked Daniel from Open Bracket some questions on his experience of building a company brand — the process, creating a tailored suite of collateral and the value as a business to business brand.

Tell us about the branding process in its early stages. How did you get started?

Early in the process, with a company name in mind, I approached Another Colour about developing a logo. What ensued was a much more thorough and thoughtful (but surprisingly easy and satisfying) process. In one of our early Zoom conversations, I was challenged with a series of unexpected questions… What do you actually do? Who are you hoping to work with? Where are they? How do your clients actually get value from you? What do you do that’s different to your competitors? What do you want to be known for? How do you want your clients to feel when they work with you?

From those questions, did you get a notion of the identity you wanted to build for the company?

Another Colour drew out of me a range of ideas I had around the identity of the company. They really listened and built on my ideas, while always steering me in a better direction based on their demonstrated experience and evidence of what works.

How did you build on these ideas and translate them into the brand?

It was so much more than a logo… As well as the visual elements, Another Colour ended up influencing the final company name and the language we use to describe ourselves and our services. They helped me articulate some key principles (which I’m now developing to become our company values) which are integral to everything we do, internally and externally.

As a business to business company, were there aspects to consider in the branding process? How did this influence the delivery of the visual identity?

Another Colour highlighted to me a wider range of potential needs for a consulting business which I hadn’t thought about. This felt like information I was thirsty for and not a hard sell. They learned about the day-to-day tools I used to win and deliver business, which led to the design of custom-built PowerPoint templates for both digital and print use, Word templates for proposals and correspondence, business cards, an email signature, and web-friendly images and logos that I could use for a variety on online uses. It was a complete suite of professional and fresh looking products that tightly echoed my own mental picture of the company. And along the way I became educated in managing the company’s visual brand. There were also lots of priceless and really practical nuggets of advice throughout the process — such as management software tools, marketing ideas and online training.

Since launching, how has the brand been received?

Using the brand identity products had a greater impact than I could have anticipated. The feedback from my closest clients was that Open Bracket now felt more established and professional. They liked the cleanness and simplicity of the company’s look and feel. Customers (and myself!) started using the company name more. Most importantly, I noticed that having a proper company identity significantly built my own confidence in quoting my customers for what I know our work is worth — I was no longer just another freelancer, but instead a serious and competitive consultancy who clearly projected what they had to offer.

What benefits have you experienced as a result of the company branding?

The value I get from this process is still unfolding, and I’m glad I have a continuing relationship with Another Colour (for the times I need a friendly practical reminder on using the assets supplied, or even to benefit from their branding experience through stories on their website/blog). I feel lucky to have engaged Another Colour when I did, from the beginning, because it has felt like a massive head-start. Fellow consultants (my competitors!) have commented that after one year, my company is where their’s was after 3 years. And I put a lot of that down to my relationship with Another Colour.

If you would like to discuss creating a brand for your professional services, please get in touch.

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Next storyHow to name a company

With more time at home during these quieter times, there is certainly peer pressure to self-improve and scrub up on some professional skills. However, it is easy to be hesitant revisiting technical training without a trainer.

Once upon a time, learning Flash (Adobe Animate’s predecessor) was done via a book that came with a CD. The course didn’t do much for tweening but it certainly helped with insomnia.

But self-initiated training has come a long way. Today’s well-designed courses embrace technology to teach, delivering highly interactive learning experiences. No more boring videos of people dressed in appropriate business attire and monotone voices. Now there is a host of engaging activities, explosions of colour, fun pop-quizzes, UX features and even some jokes, to keep you awake, interested, retaining knowledge and actually wanting to learn.

Here’s a few online course recommendations for you to check out…

Why we needed a new name?

The most obvious reason was that we had become just that — a ‘we’. Six years after its humble beginnings in a home office, Steve Scott Graphic Design had grown to become a collective of creative people.

Secondly, as the nature of the industry and the requirements of our clients changed, so had our range of services. More than half of our work was now digital in format, which is not always associated with the traditional term ‘graphic design’.

Thirdly, our ‘no frills’ name didn’t inspire us — we wanted a name that would inspire a unique-looking brand and would pleasantly roll off the tongue.

There were were also other practical reasons. Shorter names are easier to remember. Answering the phone was quite a mouthful and we could ditch the longest email addresses ever!

Phase two — the shortlist

To come up with a name, we brainstormed and created a shortlist. Anytime we heard a word we liked we added it. It didn’t have to be for any reason in particular — it could have been spotted on the side of an ice-cream truck. If we liked it, we just added it. Words from other team members often catalysed a string of new words that were completely unexpected. We used wordnik to uncover synonyms and hyponyms. Then we paired different words for poetic effect: rhymes, alliteration, consonance and assonance. We looked for words that had multiple meanings, words that were relevant to our business and words that were euphonic.

In reality, the shortlist became a long list. A very long list. We toyed with numerous ideas that ranged from the technical (Flux, Twindragon, Vertex), to cute (Lost Mittens, Ugly Duckling, Plastic Kitten), to random (Blushing Crow). Old names (Loom, Challice, Harbinger, Talisman) and names we made up (Vixo, Ography). Pretty names (Gossamer, Lucent, Inkling, Meld) and ugly names (Concoction, Fat Lattice). Word plays (Hue Diligence, About Space, Colourbind) to names that were poetic (Rubber Hydra, Shapeshift). We really liked Playpen (we “play” with pens) — but googling that kept bringing up porn :-/

Over a few weeks, we crossed off the names that didn’t quite fit, didn’t really make sense, or were just too tricky. The remaining few made it to the next phase.

Phase three — the naming checklist

We developed The Naming Checklist (in full below) to ensure the success of a new name. The first ten items come from Steve Harrington’s timeless article How to Nail a Name (Sydney Morning Herald, 2011). We then added the next ten, to make sure our names are robust and strategically chosen. It can sometimes be impossible to avoid all the pitfalls, but making sure you’re aware and have a plan to manage any shortcomings is important.

We took our favourite half dozen names on our shortlist through this phase — many of them didn’t get past the first five criteria.

In the end we chose Another Colour because it survived The Checklist. It was meaningful and relevant to our industry. The last check for us was checking the intellectual property for the name was not already owned. In Australia, the governing body is IP Australia —check for local regulations before your purchase any URLs or start your branding design.

If you intend to take your name global (who knows what might happen!) then you have your work cut out for you as you will need to check multiple IP regulators from around the world. Some good places to start for global checks are Markify, WIPO, Trademarkia and Applied Marks. For European entities check EUIPO, and for China check CTMO. Consult with an IP lawyer to ensure your name is free from any potential legal issues.

The Naming Checklist

1. Keep it simple.

2. Keep it short.

3. Will it stand the test of time?

4. Does it resonate with the target market?

5. Can it be easily pronounced?

6. Can it be twisted around by a mischievous journalist?

7. Any cultural sensitivities?

8. Does it have layers of meaning?

9. Never chose the first name you like — people are likely to pick the familiar over the new.

10. Be prepared for people to hate it at first — it can take time to sink in.

11. Is it unique and original?

12. Is a URL available? And how much does it cost?

13. Does it pass the ‘say it back to me’ test? Say the name to a friend and ask them to repeat it back to you. If they reply “what?” or “huh?”, it might not be the most effective name. If you’ve made up a word, phonetic spelling can help (Google, Accor).

14. Is it memorable? Poetic techniques can help, like alliteration (American Apparel), onomatopoeia (Bing, Snap), consonance (Kodak, Twitter), rhymes (7Eleven), half rhymes (Another Colour) and wordplays (Avant Card).

15. Think twice about ‘phunky’ spelling of everyday words. It might mean you can find a unique URL, but you’ll need to invest more in brand recognition.

16. Avoid highly generic names that are forgettable and don’t reflect your brand’s personality.

17. Does it anticipate growth or diversification? Burger King will always be associated with burgers but McDonald’s have more opportunity to diversify.

18. Does the name have existing meanings or connotations? Check the Dictionary, Wikipedia, Urban Dictionary, Google, Google Images and Google Translate. Does your name sound like any other existing words or names?

19. Avoid old tricks. Acronyms (BMW, IBM), spaceless names (FedEx, TeamWorks) and Web 2.0 (flickr, tumblr) have been done to death.

20. What’s your gut reaction? Do you like it? Even if you pass 1 to 19, this is probably the most important question.

Phase four — trying it on

We stuck our new name up on the pinboard in our studio in large letters and over the next few weeks it became a little shrine that we looked at every day as we tried to decide if it fit. Gradually, it grew on us more and more. It also inspired endless and creative branding opportunities. We did some user testing and ran the name past a larger group to see it there were any pitfalls.

We liked the many different and relevant meanings the name could convey. For us, Another Colour meant a new face for a brand; standing out from our competitors; and, seeing things in a different light. The cheeky half rhyme represents the importance of having fun with design. Lastly, it celebrated colour in all its diverse forms — not everything has to be blue.

The last step was to register our new trading name with ASIC. Check with your local regulator for countries outside Australia. We launched the new name at the same time we launched our website. Email addresses and all our online profiles were changed at the same time, ensuring the transition was as smooth as possible.

If you have a naming project and need some inspiration or analysis to ensure it stands the test of time, please get in touch.

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20 November 2019

How to write a creative brief

Essential information to provide creatives for your next print design project

When it comes to writing the perfect brief for a creative agency or design studio, where do you start? To ensure the design process runs as smoothly as possible and budget doesn’t blow out with countless amends, it really is all about asking the right questions to cover all bases. Here are some of our tips on how to write a good brief from the perspective of the studio that receives them. We have created easy-to-fill-in electronic briefs for our clients to use, which are available to download at the bottom of this post.

You get out what you put in

The value of a good brief means purpose is at the forefront of the designers’ minds. According to David Airy, an admired industry leader, “It spells out exactly what clients want to achieve. And it acts as a point of reference for everyone involved.”

Cementing the client’s goals for the project is vital in ensuring we can meet expectations. This essentially forms part of the working contract between us and the client. From our experience, we find that breaking down a brief into these relevant sections is a great way to ensure you cover all the essentials.

01. Job details, background and deadlines

We like to begin with housekeeping as this information gets entered into our studio management software.

What is the project name?

What type of job is it? A brochure, a suite of flyers or something else?

Information on dimensions are also important – do you have specific dimensions required or would you like us to recommend some?

And how about print quotes? We can source those too and manage the entire print process if required.

How about the delivery of the project? Designers are always working to constraints so being clear about deadlines is vital.

We also find that breaking down the deadlines into initial concepts, authors amends and finished art is a good way to construct a realistic timeline for your project. We will then confirm when you will receive the first round concepts and final art so that we can commit to your deadlines.

02. Audience and message

By now it should be clear about what the project is and what its purpose is. It’s now time to provide information on what the key messages are.

Where is the content coming from?

Have you already written the copy or do you need us to help you develop that?

What exactly is your product or service? How long have you been in business and what are your short and long term goals? The more we can find out about your business the better the design will be.

03. Perception

This section is often overlooked but really helps us get into the minds of your audience.

How do you want the project to be perceived? Positively? Shock factor? Amusing?

How would you describe the brand in a short sentence?

What is challenging about getting your company image across? Providing references of past projects is also helpful.

04. Additional information

Anything else you’d like to add? We find that it’s always good to add extra thoughts, comments, ideas, anything you think might be helpful.

Too big for a brief sheet

For a branding project or major campaign, we prefer to meet in person to co-create a brief. A follow-up workshop with key stakeholders may be required to determine functional and emotive benefits, brand personality, values and map the customer journey.

Easy does it

Don’t understand the questions? Just talk to us and we can talk you through it. Or we can do it together face to face. The concept of a briefing template is to make sure we get the best results for our clients – and not to be a burden!

So there you have it! Our approach to writing a comprehensive brief. Remember, it’s not a case of more is more, it’s about providing quality, structured information that will give your designer a clear idea of the task at hand. That way your results will speak for themselves.

We have developed a range of briefing templates with editable fields suited to all sorts of projects – feel free to download them and use them for your next creative project.

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2 October 2019

31 Fascinating facts around colour

Another day, another colour

Bananas change from Green to Banana Yellow when the residing chlorophyll breaks down, letting you know when they’re ready to eat.

Selective Yellow is used for automotive headlamps. In France, it was mandatory for all vehicles until 1993.

Gamboge is the colour of Buddhist monk’s robes. It is attained using dye from the gamboge tree.

One of the original “fruit-flavoured” iMacs released in 1999 was the Tangerine iMac.

Safety Orange is used to set objects apart from their surroundings, particularly in complementary contrast to the azure colour of the sky.

Persimmon the colour is named after the persimmon fruit, which in Korean folklore has a reputation for scaring away tigers.

Since the 1920s, Alfa Romeo, Maserati and Ferrari race cars have been painted in rosso corsa (“racing red”).

Crimson is the national colour of Nepal. It is also the colour of the country’s national flower, the rhododendron.

Bisque-coloured “leucistic” axolotls descend from a mutant male that was shipped to Paris in 1863.

Demonstrated to have a calming influence, Baker-Miller Pink is often used in prisons to keep inmates relaxed.

Morocco is called the Rose City because many of its buildings are coloured various tones of Rose.

Tyrian Purple, made famous by the Romans and Cleopatra, was made by soaking rotten shellfish in urine.

The Purple Tree Tarantula emits a Purpureus iridescence on the surface of its body and legs, and hunts bugs, lizards and sometimes birds.

The periorbital purplish discolouration occurring in dermatomyositis is called the “Heliotrope Rash” after the colour Heliotrope.

The 1890s are referred to as the “Mauve Decade”, due to the popularity of the subtle colour among progressive artists.

The first recorded use of Amethyst as a colour name in English was in 1572.

Eliza Lucas, who invented the colour Indigo for Levi’s, was only 21 years old when she successfully created an indigo crop.

The turban of the Girl with a Pearl Earring by Vermeer is painted with a mixture of Ultramarine and Lead White.

Your veins look Dark Blue because subcutaneous fat only allows blue light to penetrate skin.

Pale Cornflower has the fun and easy-to-remember hex code #ABCDEF.

Uranus is Cyan because of the abundance of methane in the atmosphere.

Cuttlefish have three hearts and Cerulean-coloured blood.

In 1998, Apple christened the colour of the exterior of the iMac G3 computer “Bondi Blue” after Bondi Beach.

Non–Photo Blue is a particular shade of blue that cannot be detected by graphic arts camera film.

As a trademarked colour, Tiffany Blue is not publicly available and is therefore not printed in Pantone’s swatch books.

The Statue of Liberty was originally a dull copper colour but turned Verdigris, caused by the oxidation of the copper skin.

Botticelli is the colour of the planet Neptune.

Celadon-coloured glaze is commonly used in Chinese and Korean pottery.

Mantis is named after the praying mantis, an insect which has just a one ear, located on the underside of its belly.

Pear Green comes from pears, a part of the rose family. While some species are cultivated for their fruit, others are cultivated simply as trees.

Volt-coloured Nike Air Max 90 Hyperfuse sneakers were introduced in 2011.

A self-published project

Intended to be used as a weekly planner, each page-turn of Another Day Another Colour presents a joyful splash of the spectrum. Embellished with whimsical illustrations and nerdy facts, the book comes complete with HEX and CMYK codes to reproduce colours at will. Reworked into mug and thermos form to make the perfect client thank you gifts.

Illustrations by our talented Tia Alisha — check out her gram account @tia_alisha for more surreal cuteness. 

Bring some colour home with you

We used Blurb to self-publish our notebooks. Get in touch if you would like to discuss how we can bring your book idea to life. Mugs and thermoses were produced with Society 6 — you can purchase your very own from here. 

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