ACT F.A.S.T. is a new national government campaign aimed at helping people to recognise the signs of stroke, and act to save lives and reduce the damage caused, created by the excellent DLKW.

A stroke is a medical emergency that requires immediate medical attention. This new campaign is both striking and informative, a perfect combination when one’s objective is to educate and inform. Only a hospital test can confirm a stroke for sure, but it is important to know the signs and the Face Arm Speech Time test (F.A.S.T.) can help you recognise a stroke or TIA.

Face – Has their face fallen on one side? Can they smile?

Arms – Can they raise both arms and keep them there?

Speech – Is their speech slurred?

Time – Time to call 999 if you see any single one of these signs.

What is a stroke?

Watch the powerful TV

Visit the website

Get more information on the F.A.S.T. website

Thoughts

Personally this is a topic I can relate to personally, a close family member suffering from a stroke a few years past. I admire how the campaign focuses on the facts and impact a stroke can cause. This is partnered by a strong educational message that’s hard to forget – F.A.S.T. If we stay F.A.S.T. and act F.A.S.T. we can make a difference. It must be the season of strong educational campaigns, take this cyber anti-bullying campaign fronted by the boxer Joe Calzaghe. I think the golden ingredient all these campaigns have is the educational message mixed with a dose of reality, coated for maximum impact. So for all these designers starting out, focus on the message it’s much stronger an asset than the technical artistic execution. Experience and research the subject, it will help the final product to full fill it’s potential.

Like a lot of people I know I was a little late attending the DIGG party. Achieving a front page listing for one of your stories a few years ago was extremely achievable, and many bloggers benefitted from what became known as the Digg-effect. A front page story can throw across a substantial spike in this social media themed traffic. Now a days it’s almost impossible for sites like this to benefit from the DIGG-effect so a lot of bloggers and web masters are slowly moving away from Digg and focusing their social marketing towards sites like REDDIT, Stumbleupon, de.lic.ious and now it seems Twitter.

When The Frog Blog was setup we installed the Diggthis button and averaged around 80 Diggs per post, thanks to our RSS readers and our Digg friends. Unfortunately Digg isn’t a great referrer for us and we never managed to fulfill the techniques required to get any one story featured. I feel thousands and thousands of other bloggers have gained very little from Digg and have given up on even submitting their stories.

Personally Stumbleupon is our greatest social media traffic source, referring over 180,000 hits on one article alone. My good friend Tim Nash gave a great talk on Stumbleupon a year or so ago and ascertained some useful facts about the service. Tim summarised “On average there are 250 visits per thumbup… but one thumbup does not equal 250 visits”.

Next comes REDDIT, but traffic is like a flash in the pan, dying out as quickly as it started.

The Twitter Effect

I have a prediction. The prediction is Twitter will become over the next year or so a major referrer to blogs and company websites, replacing Digg and a whole host of other social media sites. What used to be called the Digg-effect is starting to be replaced by the Twitter-effect. I believe Twitter will dig Digg’s final grave.

Twitter is a very simple status update service, incase you have never heard of it, and is becoming every more popular. Over the last few months it’s really started to hit the main stream with the likes of Jonanthan Ross (@Wossy) and Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) talking on the Jonathan Ross show and about Twitter, giving the service maximum exposure to the nation.

Over the last year or so hundreds of Twitter based web apps, websites and plugins have been created. The Twitter API has enabled the simple service to become ever more popular. Our friend Patrick over at Branded3 has even developed a twitter based petition service.

Now to aid bloggers and website masters to ascertain a slice of the Twitter pie there is a whole host of WordPress plugins they can use. One plugin which is particularly popular at the moment is the Tweetmeme plugin (the button at the top of this past on the left). Tweetmeme works a bit like Digg, presenting user submitted news stories on their website, where people can retweet the post on their own Twitter stream to boost the story up.

By using Tweetmeme you potentially have an unlimited supply of traffic and exposure. For example, you tweet the story and have 200 followers to your Twitter stream and 5% Retweet the tweet, that’s 5 retweets! Then if that sequence continues and 5% of their followers retweet the same tweet then 5 turns into 25 (30 in total). This pyramid style traffic can easily pull thousands of visitors across to your website, resulting in a very powerful Twitter-effect.

The difference with this Twitter-effect over Digg is that you start the chain off by communicating direct with your followers, who in most scenarios would be more than willing to retweet a worth tweet. It’s still new and hasn’t as yet been flooded by potential Twitter power users, unlike Digg.

If you liked this post why not retweet it by clicking on the retweet button above, thanks all, comments welcomed

Today sees the launch of a high profile anti-bullying ad campaign headed up by boxer supreme Joe Calzaghe.

Calzaghe, a patron of the charity Beatbullying, which is behind the ads, will today launch the campaign by describing how he suffered two years of bullying that turned him from a “happy, outgoing kid who enjoyed school and schoolwork into an introverted wreck, detached from [my] studies and scared of [my] own shadow during school hours”.

The Guardian reports

The national ad campaign, created by ad agency M&C Saatchi, features three print ads that feature silhouettes of young people that appear to have committed suicide by taunts from bullies. In one ad a boy is seen having hung himself on a rope made out of abusive words; the second ad uses a stream of taunts to show a slit wrist; the third ad shows a young person succumbing to a drug overdose.

A major aim of the ad campaign is to get victims and bullies alike to visit a website, www.cybermentors.org.uk, to get help and see the impact of their actions.

The ads will run on more than 1,000 billboards and bus stops across the UK and will be supported by a digital ad campaign.

Full credit and roundup from Underconsideration.com, thanks guys for the fantastic resources!

We follow on the theme of rebranding by major brands by having a quick roundup. Following on from the calamitous Pepsi rebrand here are 20 rebrands that have taken place over the last few months, let us know what floats your boat.

Starbucks, Back to the Future

Howard Schultz returns as CEO of Starbucks and has unleashed an unprecedented wave of brand nostalgia by deploying the original Starbucks logo.

Kraft Foods, making today delicious

With a new purpose and values setting a fresh direction, Kraft Foods also gave its corporate logo a facelift to more clearly deliver “delicious.” Starting today, people around the world will begin to see the new identity that deliciously features a smile, the natural reaction to delicious foods and experiences, and a colorful flavor burst. It signals to employees, consumers and investors what the new Kraft Foods is all about.
— Press release

Hudson’s Bay Co.

Hudson’s Bay Co., founded in 1670 by King Charles II, is a huge Canadian retailer with over 600 retail locations all across Canada.

Sci Fi becomes SyFy

When networks present their new programming, sell big chunks of advertising and announce any major changes — the 16-year-old Sci Fi Channel announced that on July 7 it will change its name and identity to Syfy.

Jack in the box

The old logo had all the fixings of a classic American fast food chain logo: red and quirky typography. Plus years of equity. The new logo is a very contemporary departure from the original, which is par for what’s been happening to fast food logos, and the new, custom script is quite attractive and dynamic. And, pending a press release, I’m pretty sure the tail of the “k” is meant to be a smile.

Citroen

Designed by Landor, the new logo comes as Citroën celebrates its 90th anniversary (founded in 1919) and as it unveils new models of its DS line

Air France

Operating since 1933, Air France has become one of the biggest and most recognized airlines in the world, traveling to nearly 100 countries. A new identity, replacing its last update since 1975, has been designed by Brandimage.

Asian Football Confederation

Hosted by the Asian Football Confederation, Asia’s governing body of soccer, the annual AFC Champions League features the best clubs from each country competing for Asian soccer supremacy. This past December they unveiled a new identity aimed towards the new and growing generation of soccer enthusiasts.

Sprite

Just in time for the NBA All-Star’s Slam Dunk contest which Sprite sponsors they are putting into use a new, dynamic and active logo that, in context, is actually quite decent.

My Fonts

With an ever growing library of more than 62,000 typefaces from more than 400 foundries and designers, MyFonts has been one of the most comprehensive shopping spots on the web since its launch in 1999.

Sandisk

SanDisk / Pound for pound, letter for letter, ligature for ligature, the best redesign of a wordmark that retains the essence of the original while pushing the company into the new, young century.

Ford

Ha! Only kidding. Making sure you’re paying attention.

Pepsi

Pepsi Rebrand, absolute waste of millions of dollars.

Capitol One

Capital One / A swoosh in 2009? And, even by swoosh standards, a crappy one at that?

Xerox

Xerox / Taking the marble-lowercase trend to the extreme. And sucking at it. Barclaycard came in close second in this category.

Barclaycard

Barclaycard / My sister works for them so I best be nice.

Roundup

Pepsi takes the crown for worst logo rebrand in the category years 2006-2009. Our personal winner has to be Citroen, simple, shinny and French – Au revoir!

Full credit and roundup from Underconsideration.com, thanks guys for the fantastic resources!

A superb creation entitled “Winter 1972″ by a student studying visual communications in Switzerland, called Adrian Merz. A portfolio piece using thousands of white posts-it notes in a living room.

Original reference and credit to Fubiz

I love encountering examples of businesses coming up a cropper when they try to cut corners and save money. It certainly isn’t a reason to gloat but it serves as a reminder that, in this unforgiving world, you get what you pay for.

This following case study, to file in the EPIC FAIL archive, can be categorised under hosting. This ‘unnamed’ client had their website hosted with us and was paying a fair price for an excellent service. They are a high profile client and advertise seasonally on local television. Online bookings is a major income stream for them so any downtime for the website can cost them hundreds, if not thousands of pounds an hour in lost transactions.

Unfortunately the descision was made to move away to a cheaper host to save a few notes. The end result was that the allocated bandwidth allowed was exceeded very quickly and the website was taken down…

Bandwidth Limit Exceeded

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.

Impact

If your website goes down what impact could it have on your business.

• Lost revenue – If your website is ecommerce than lost sales is an obvious impact
• Lost customers – An unreliable website reduces confidence a buyer has in the website and the company. One lost sale may add up because that customer may never return.
• Lost reputation – Reputation takes a life time to forge and a second to lose. Getting a bad rep can only plague the business.
• Your time – Unsupported hosting can raise your stress levels. Typically you don’t have a direct support line to an engineer so reponse times can be slow. If your business relies on trade passing through the website you need a quick turn around time to get the site back up. Without this support your business is going to suffer with the first three point coming into play.

Website monitoring tools

If you have a mass of websites it’s hard to monitor them all, here are some tools to assist you. All offer a free/trial service and a premium service for advanced users.

Pingdom

My choice

SiteUpTime

Suggested by Jim at Think Synergy

Are My Sites Up?

Suggested by Graeme at Graemepirie.com and Michael at Saltytech.com

Root Internet

Suggested by Jonathan at Jonathan.thirkill.co.uk/

Conclusion

If you do the maths, is it worth saving a few pounds on hosting if it means losing more through lost sales, traffic and reputation? It’s one sum that doesn’t add up!

Condomunity.com – The new film for Durex takes a decidedly comedic twist (umposition?) on encouraging the use of its products in the US. The short is called Get it On and done by the excellent Süperfad team. All video credits and sincere thanks Superfad.com.

Is this better than the Cabury’s Gorilla advert or the Compare the Meerkat campaign?

Aled Lewis is a designer and illustrator based in London, England. He has created an awesome collection of illustrations that you can buy on t-shirts at threadless.com.

Not As Far As You Think

Television Made Me Do It

Identifying Flying Objects

Freaks In The Fun House

Eating Brains, Throwing Shapes

Foam Monster In Emotional Reunion With Severed Limb

21st Century Pirate

Bigfoots Watch In Bewilderment

Infamous Mishaps Throughout History (collaboration with Mitch Ansara)

Self-Sufficient

8-Bit Investigation

Yeti Hated His Size 5 Feet

She Screamed, But To No Avail

Punk Rock Cock

Rhinos Hunt In Packs

Keeping It Real

I’m Sure I Used To Fit

Party Pieces

Smoke And Mirrors

One of my favourite websites Geekologie.com posted this awesome Periodic Table of Typefaces and I just had to repost it. It’s a typographers wet dream, a real geek feast for any nerd.

The uber geeky table features The 100 Best fonts Of All Time, according to 100besteschriften.de, ranking determined by sorting lists and opinions from this and a few other websites, all detailed on the bottom of the table.

Download and save it as your desktop wallpaper >

Simply click on the image above, save it to your desktop then set it as your wallpaper. There you will have a permanent typeface reference of some of the greatest fonts of all time. I’m just checking to see if Comic Sans is on the list… I hope to god not!

This week saw a new website launch at 9xb, a website I was very lucky enough to design, and for a client that was an absolute pleasure to work with.

Herriots for Leisure is an independent boutique hotel and restaurant based in the small town of Skipton, in the beautiful North Yorkshire Moors. After previously designing their original website, under the beady eye of a Business Link representative, 9xb was commissioned to relaunch the website with a new look, an online presence to match their new hotel refit.

May I add, if you are ever in Ripon and need a roof for the night this would be a wise choice for a luxury stay.

Anatomy

Visit Herriots for Leisure to see it in action.

Hire me

Like what you see? The Floating Frog is currently considering freelance work, get agency quality work and a personal service, contact us today. Alternatively work with 9xb, an award-winning digital agency based in Harrogate.