When design was a real skill...

If anyone can remember, before the advent of the Apple Mac, all artwork was done by hand, using technical drawing skills to create logos, artwork and drawings etc. In principle, you had to be able to at least draw and have a some creative/artistic skill to even think about entering the design field. It was a real craft.

One of the tools we used to use was the technical pen. Several brands were available with the market leaders being Rotring and Staedtler.

I tended to favour the Staedtler brand mainly down to the fact that the 0.5 nib seemed to block less oftenthan the Rotring version of the same. While rooting through one of our cupboard here at the studio I found this brand new virtually unused set of pens in the original box!

This brought back memories of having to physically draw keylines for artwork using CS10 board, red film, and of course set squares and technical pens...

With computer aided design and so many application to help with design, it's easy to see how the craft element has been lost over the years...however, here are PE Creative we still believe that crafting a design is one of the key differentiators that we bring to your design.

Anyone can style something up, but not anyone can develop a concept in quite the same way we do.

If you'd like to see how we can help you to diffentiate your brand, give us a call on 01332 291141 and we can discuss your specific needs.

New Branding Excites the Unions

PE Creative client UnionLine provide specialist claims services for union members across the UK. Being nationally recognised the company requires a logo style which reflects both professionalism and trustworthiness. The new brand utilises the UL element of the name as a clever device that is also be used as a social media icon and as a general graphic device.

The team spent a lot of time developing the exact font style, line weights and proportions of the various elements in order to create a clean, professional and fit-for-purpose brand identity.

The logo development is now being rolled out across newly published literature, stationery, exhibition panels as well as on-line collateral.

UnionLine said "We are really pleased with the new look and believe that this will help us to continue to take our organsiation successfully into the 21st century, Jonny and his team have done a really professional job, on budget and on time"

Jonny Evans commented "it's always exciting to work with an existing brand along with its loyalties and customer expectations and to be able to successfully help them improve and expand their reach. Both in terms of brand identity and visual appeal we are delighted that the new identity has been so well received".

One of the key remits was to ensure that Scottish law be included across the identity. To this end we developed UnionLine Scotland with the same amount of care and attention. Subtlety along with a quiet confidence underpins both brands, whilst retaining a strong link between the two markets.

If your brand is looking tired and you would like to talk to the brand experts, then please give us a call on 01332 291141 and we will be happy to help and advise. Take a look at our creative portfolio here

When a line means so much more...

Some artists have a way of making the simplest line mean so much.

This beautiful pencil sketch is a great example of how much emotion and feeling can be achived with the skillful use of line.

There is a real sense of movement, flow and weight. One can sense the effort to move the ski.  The weight running through the shoulders and the spine. The force needed in the hand on the ski pole. Yet this is only some pencil marks on paper...

We know that marks on paper can evoke so much emotion. Design isn't just about pretty pictures, its about conveying a message in a specific tone of voice. At PE Creative pride ourselves on never loosing touch with this simplicity. Yes our ideas may sometimes require complexity, but we will never loose touch with our love of simplicity and pure design.

Give us a call if you want to simplify your message or if you have a complex proposal that needs an elevator pitch...we are the experts:  01332 2911451

Scoffield Stone - from 'Funeral Parlour' to Estate Agents

We surveyed a number of 'people in the street' about a logo which clients' Our House had inherited from a recent buy out.

As you can see, Scoffield Stone had a very old school 1970's look and feel. In fact, out of the random  people we asked, no fewer than 20% of them felt it looked like a funeral directors. Were it not for the fact that there was a caption saying "estate agent" then this was the consensus. We know what they mean. The old logo in its black and gold certainly evokes a feeling of victoriana gothic, combine this with an old style typeface and you are left with a rather 'dark' looking brand.

So we knew we needed to make it look contemporary, yet retain the black and gold colours (at the clients' request).

After exploring a huge variety of options, the clent eventually chose our recommended first design, which as you can see is a vast improvement.

We developed the idea of 'steps' using the letter 'E' to denote subliminal steps up the property ladder. The concept works for both sales and lettings. We wanted to evoke an inspirational path to home ownership.


The brand is now being rolled out across shops, for sale and to-
let sign boards, datasheets, website and advertising.

Paul Morris, director of Scoffield Stone commented "we are really pleased with the new design and look forward to doing business under this new banner in the years to come".

Paul, with your enthusiasm and knowledge, we are sure you will be even more successful!

If your business could do with an exciting and fresh new look then give us a call on 01332 291141 and we will be happy to help.

Puss Pic

This great painting of Rumble is completed in oils. It just needs to
dry now for another 4 months before it gets its varnish and framed.

If you'd like any illustrative work doing or you have a favourite pet/person/car/bike etc that you'd like to see in watercolour, oils or pastal pencil then let us know.

If you want to know more then give us a call on 01332 291141 and we will be happy to help...

Kimberley College Gets Makeover

Being involved in education has always been part of the PE Creative remit. We were delighted to be invited to tender for the Kimberley College information booklet project.

Head of College Tim Detheridge wanted to create an impact for the college's next open evening. With this in mind we partnered with the his team to produce this informative and fresh new booklet.

Alongside the booklet was helped to develop the Kimberley branding. Being in such an iconic building allowed us to develop this new logo device. Tim plans to roll out the branding across the whole college over the next few months.

PE Creative MD Jonny Evans said "This is a prestigious project for us to be involved in, we are always proud to see our work bith in print and in situ and we look forward to working with Tim and the team in 2018."

If your college or school needs help with branding or literature why not give us a call on 01332 291141 and we will be happy to help or advise.

There is no such thing as 100% uptime

Over the years we have had customers reporting an outage on their websites. Most clients would never even notice this as they occur usually in the middle of the night. However, lots of IT departments use 'pinging' software to continually monitor their sites and take great pleasure in reporting an outage to anyone who cares. (Usually the MD or or the Marketing Department/Director).

So the question of uptime is one we get a lot. And the notion is that if we work hard enough, test out the hosting companies enough, talk to enough people, and generally get smarter, we can find and recommend the right hosting partner who will deliver 100% uptime.

This is not true. And it has nothing to do with our effort, time, research, or overall intelligence.

It’s related to the nature of the internet. And no one can promise you 100% uptime (for a price you’re willing to pay). Want to test what I’m talking about?

The test for what I’m saying is simple:

Here are the steps you can take.

1. Look up any hosting provider you like (or want to use)
2. See if they have a 100% uptime guarantee.
3. Then see if they have any statements after the 100% uptime guarantee.

If they do, they don’t really guarantee 100% uptime. Right? Because why would you need to say more after the 100% uptime guarantee.

If I tell you that I won’t stab you, there are no further statements, right? Not like, “If I do stab you, I will be sure to put a bandaid on the wound,” or “If I end up stabbing you for a reason that isn’t your fault, I promise to drive you to the hospital.” Nope. If the guarantee is 100%, there are no “if” statements afterwards. An uptime guarantee is – no matter which host you look at – simply a promise of what refund the host offers customers if there’s a network outage. The reality is that many companies simply won’t offer you a 100% uptime guarantee. But if they do, they’ll likely articulate exceptions.

• Failure of systems, internet, infrastructure, network, power, facilities or connections delivered by third parties
• Applications, software, or operating system failures because of denial of service attacks, hacker activity, or other malicious events
• Acts of God (weather, etc)

Oh, and maintenance is also an exception. So trust me when I tell you that the tests are clear – you won’t get 100% anywhere.

You could get 100% uptime…but it will cost you
Let’s talk, for just a second, about how you might go about getting 100% uptime, if you really wanted it. To do that, we need to understand what’s happening behind the simple things we do with a browser and the web. When we make a request for a website, imagine that you’re actually asking someone to send you a book, in chapters, via snail mail. (I know, who would do that??)

So let’s say I ask for "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Stone". Here’s what happens in a normal network.

• I send you a note asking you for the book.
• You collect all the chapters (117 of them).
• You send me each chapter in a separate manilla envelope addressed to me.
• You take them all to the mailbox and drop them off.
• The postman sends them through the system and they arrive at my post office.
• My mailman delivers them to me.
• Only, I don’t get chapters 10, 43, 86, and 92.
• I send you a note asking for those again.
• You grab copies of those and you resend them to me.
• The same thing happens, but I still am missing 92.
• I ask again and this time your delivery reaches me.
• Then I open all the envelopes and arrange them in order and I start reading.

This is what happens every time we ask for a web page. And all those chapters are data packets. And those post offices (and mailmen) are like routers. And that chatter back and forth about getting all of what I want / need – that’s the internet protocols that send communication back and forth between my browser and your server.

It’s kind of crazy!

Where it gets even more complicated is when you imagine that those packages aren’t getting delivered using the same route. Ever order 10 things from Amazon and get them in different shipments? If you track them via UPS or Fedex, they don’t necessarily go through the same locations or hubs across the country.

That’s the same thing with routers and packet traffic.

Now why is this all important?  Because in a high availability setup, you have to mitigate issues on several fronts. This isn’t just a “use Cloudflare and everything will be ok.” That’s just not true.
One way to mitigate this is to use a different kind of protocol – anycast instead of unicast. This means that instead of me asking you for the book, I can make a request for the book and you and all your friends, spread out everywhere, could react to me individually – based on who is closer.

This translates, technically, to the notion that confuses people because we told everyone that every domain has a unique IP address (like the address of your house). And the reality of using DNS on an Anycast network, is that the IP can be registered on several servers in several locations. Crazy, I know.

That would help with the speed and performance of requests (like the need for some chapters sent again) because they could go to many different locations. Since I’m in Derby, I could hit a server in London. If you’re in New Jersey, you might make a request to a server in New York.

But that’s not the only place where you need redundancy.
You would also need to mitigate issues with the servers themselves. That means that the place that stores books (a bookstore, if you will) needs its own support if something happens there.
So you’re going to need more than DNS redundancy, you’ll need server clusters. And while you might want to pay for the cheap cold or warm failover, true high availability (100% uptime) will likely require hot failover with a heartbeat monitor.

Think of that heartbeat monitor as one of  those young interns at the bookstore that has to keep running to the back to see if a book is there. Only this time they need to run all over town because your cluster might not be located all in the same spot.

And the moment he comes back to tell you that in warehouse A the book isn’t there, you need to update your infrastructure to route all requests away from that warehouse and to another that has it. But you also need him to go run an order to get that book back in stock.

Are you starting to see why this is expensive and likely more than you want to pay?

You can’t get this for £10-100/month

I love that all sorts of hosting companies offer tremendous deals. Many are doing great things.
But none of them will reserve for you twice the servers you need, located in different places, with a heartbeat monitor, and synchronization, along with anycast DNS services all for £10 a month.
Some hosts will help you with this, but you won’t be paying a few bucks.
But there is good news.
If you really want this, or need this, you can create it yourself on Amazon Web Services. They have everything you would need, assuming you want to get into that configuration game.

In this way, all hosts are equal

What I’m telling you is this. The reality of storms, earthquakes, flooding, DDOS attacks, hackers, and more – they don’t distinguish between hosts. They don’t care about you and your specific site.
In the end, these things happen.
And unlike SimCity (the original), there is no setting to turn on that protects you from it all. And just like when you’re in the slow lane on the motorway, changing will likely just mean you’re about to get into the slowest lane now. It’s just the rule.

Swapping won’t change much, if your host is good to begin with.

So today, you either pay a lot of money for high availability systems, or you recognize that there’s no such thing as 100% uptime...

(With thanks to Chris Lima for most of this information)

When Work Experience Pays Off

The studio team were pleased to have second year graphics student Becky Leam in to help out over the last few weeks.

Becky has been working on some of our projects and has (hopefully) gained some good studio experience too during her time spent here.

She says "I have really enjoyed my time at PE Creative. It has been great to see how a real studio works and was surprised at how busy yet relaxed the studio is and just how quickly the work is completed"

Jonny says "It has been a pleasure to have Becky helping out, we have enjoyed her company and wish her all the best with the rest of her course".

As a bonus 'thank you' Becky gave us some really nice biccies and Lindt balls...yummy and thanks!

We wish her all the best with the rest of her course and future career. It is to be hoped that we have given her some insight into the creative sector...

Old School - the web world in 1995

It is really amazing how the internet has changed all our lives. How we buy, how we research, how we market ourselves, how we communicate. Truly a revolution in our own lifetimes.

We cannot believe how quickly time has passed since we built our first "Parkhouse Evans" website. It was in 1995. Twenty one years ago.

Think about that for a moment. We have been successfully providing websites to customer for over twenty years. You'd think we'd know what we are doing by now!

So here is a list of things from 21 years ago which would have influenced our lives:

Biggest Selling UK Record: Robson and Jerome - Unchained Melody
Biggest Film of the year: Toy Story
Album of the Year: Jagged Little Pill, Alanis Morissette
Top TV Show: ER
Jennifer Aniston is a hit on Friends and influences hairstyles
Blue M&Ms are introduced to the other colors
John Major becomes Prime Minister
OJ Simpson Trail ends in Not Guilty verdict
Javascript was released by Sun Microsystems
PHP was launced officially (if you use Wordpress your DB is 20 years old!)
Larry Page and Sergey Brin begin developing a search engine called BackRub with PageRank, an important technology that becomes an important part of Google.
Microsoft Windows 95 is launched (obviously)
EBay is founded by Pierre Omidyar on September 3, 1995.
Masters Tournament  was won by Ben Crenshaw
U.S. Open by Corey Pavin
British Open by John Daly (it was the last time the official record of scores was written by hand - I have the actual record sheet form the Open in 1995 - offers in writing please!)
PGA Championship by Steve Elkington

Some seem like only yesterday whilst others seem like distant memories. One thing is constant, quality always wins...its a maxim we have lived by at PE Creative. It has served us well.

To see the original PE Creative website in all its glory (and also testament to the longevity of the code) please click here.

If you'd like to reminisce about any of the above, why not give us a call on 01332 291141 and we will be happy to indulge you!

Sweet FA

The FA have not really been having much good press recently, what with mentions of bungs and no poppys allowed on players.

Westfield saw an opportunity to help them to improve their image with offering team fans the chance to monitor their health. The concept being to engage every team in the UK and to develop a program to encourage their fan base to get fitter.

We can see a national league of health - which team has the fittest fans!

To help sell this concept into the FA, we helped Westfield Health by develop this engaging communication piece. Entitled "Match Fit Fan Fit" this quirky mailer is football shaped and 'fans' open to reveal a compelling message about the benefits of taking part.

Only four initial visuals were created by hand and we understand that some of them are now in the headquarters of the FA...under consideration. If this project goes ahead it could be replicated in specific team colours and branded to each team/division etc. A very exciting and worthwhile program could be underway.

If you need some concept work or an idea developing, why not let PE Creative help you to make it a reality. Just call us on 01332 291141 for a chat and we can discuss your needs.

Go West!

It was a real pleasure earlier in June to be invited to Westfield Health's internal Comms Day.

The day is designed to give Westfield staff an opportunity to learn and gain knowledge about various company activity.

Feedback on the day itself was very positive with everyone involved having input and as far as I could tell everyone seemed really upbeat and excited but the prospect of the future.

Professor Steve Hake was the guest speaker and enthralled his audience with a superb talk about social health and wellbeing, along with some shocking facts about lifespan and 'healthy lifespan' disparity between different demographics.

PE Creative were in attendance because we produced all the voxpop videos and presentation material used on the day. We were also able to help by creating and unique microsite illustrating the Westfield timeline for activity. This interactive tool allows staff to see who and what is happening within the Group as well as being able to feedback to the HR department.

HR Manager Fiona Lowe commented "Thanks for all your help Jonny, its been a fantastic day and feedback is really great"

As a special guest it was a real privilege to have been invited and it gave me an insight into the culture and background of the Group, which will prove essential for future projects.





If your organisation wants to improve its internal commas then feel free to contact us on 01332 291141 and we can help with your event.

Education and other animals...

Some of you may already know that I used to run a creative design course at Loughborough University. I have always had a keen interest in education and being able to pass on some of my
experience to upcoming designers. It's a really rewarding aspect of my job and can also be inspiring too.

Running the PE business takes up most of my time nowadays so I don't get as much time as I used to for my lecturing interests. However I always spend at least three days per year working in education and its always refreshing to do so. It kind of brings you down to earth when you realise that after 30 years you know quite a bit about your specialist subject!

This week I was back in the classroom with some young design students in Leicester. My task was to give a talk on the design business and to hopefully inspire. In addition I was asked to set an "industrial project" for the second year students to undertake.

Part of the brief I gave them was to "create a strapline" for their campaign. This simple request was met with some quizzical looks and I realised that most of them didn't realise what a strapline actually is. Of course it's easy to think that people understand what we are all talking about and I often use phrases and words that mean a lot to us within our profession but to the uninitiated can seem like total gobbledegook!

So, I had to expand on my description about what a strapline is and by means of demonstration asked them to tell me what product or brand I was referring to but by my only saying the strapline.

Below are the examples I used, why not see how many you can get...?
I'm loving it
Is it
Finger lickin' good
Vorsprung durch tecknik
Just do it
Every little helps
Never knowingly undersold
Does exactly what it says on the tin
Helps you work rest and play
Think different
I think therefore I....
Because you're worth it
Believe in better
Taste the rainbow
The ultimate driving machine

I have no doubt that most of these will be easy to recall and it underlines the importance of having a consistent brand presence. It is true that some strap lines have made it into popular culture going way beyond their original intention. When is happens it can be very powerful but can often remove the brand from phrase.

Whasaaaasaaaaaap.....
Go to work on an egg
Beans meanz Heinz
Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet
Tell them Sid sent you
I'm tiger woods
All because the lady loves...
A taste of paradise
A dog is for life, not just for Christmas
Probably the best (anything) in the world
Because she's worth it

This crossover into popular culture has resulted in some becoming a part of our everyday life. A bit like calling a vacuum cleaner a Hoover, or a loudspeaker a Tannoy. Same goes for calling any MP3 player an iPod...or if you were around in the 80s, a Walkman!

And don't get me started on cinematic straplines  - there are so many brilliant ones:

In space no one can hear you scream
He's afraid, he's alone, he's three million light years from home
They're here...
Who you gonna call...?
The greatest fairytale never tld

For the record, one of my absolute favourite straplines was used to change the perception of a seemingly mundane product into a premium brand:

"Reassuringly expensive"

Only two words, just TWO words, think about that....that turned Stella Artois from its Belgian cheap booze pedigree into one of the UKs premier seemingly higher value alcohol brands. Brilliant. Simple.

Such is the power of the strapline. Get it right and it can be a powerful ally in your marketing armoury. If you are really lucky it could cross over into popular culture, if not that at the very least recognised by your peers.

And on to my least liked - and this is such an over used strapline it almost looses its credibility the second I read it. Ironically it can be applied to how most organisations believe their product or service is. It the inimitable and ubiquitous "Simply the best"......Arghhhh! All I can think of is Tina Turner dressed as an 80's style Amazonian warrior in Mad Max - Return to Thunderdome.

I am hoping 'my students' will come back in a couple of weeks with some brand new inspiring straplines (hopefully not 'simply the best') If they do I will let you know...but no matter,  I am excited to be back helping them and am looking forward to the results. 

Why not let us know what your favourite strapline is and if you don't have one, why not get us to help you develop one?

Call us now on 01332 291141 and we can discuss the possibilities...