FSS Website complete

The website took the best part of a month.  I worked with a small team of professionals outside of Rewkachu.  My role was to create all the graphic elements and help design the overall look. Click on the link below.

Field Sales Solutions

If you have a spare moment and are at all interested in who FSS are, I'd suggest going to their "about us" section and clicking on the "view full movie" link.  The video is about 9 minutes long.  I was very impressed at their operation.  You will have to believe me when I say that it's not because they paid me to work on their website - I truly WAS impressed!

New Blog #3 - Rew-torials

The third and final new blog created for the Rewkachu collective is Rew-torials.

Rew-torials is a blog is a place for creative tips for intermediate designers and adventurous beginners.  Many times during my career I've had to google how to do a certain thing in the software that I use.  There are multitudes of sites offering such tips, which is great. However, I always found that their sites had confusing layouts, crazy text sizes everywhere, a billion pop-ups and about sixteen too many adverts.

So here are some self imposed rules I will follow:

1. I strive to NEVER have any pop-ups (if any do creep on to my page unbeknown to me, due to adding a widget or two…. please let me know and I’ll swiftly kill it!)
2. I strive for a clean design, with logical text sizes.  After all, I specialize in promotional design and understand the importance of readable/non-confusing text.
3. I strive to not have any ads.  Ok, well, maybe a couple (we all need extra revenue).  But I will not allow them to detract from the content you have come to see.
4. I strive to create clear and concise tutorials that will rival any out there.

I haven't set myself any goals as to how many, or how regularly I will post on this blog. I've left it open to suggestion, or as and when I think of a problem that I once googled - I'll add it.

New Blog #2 - Rewkachu Film

Rewkachu Film is part of the new Rewkachu concept I've been working on this month.  Film is a medium that we find ourselves becoming more involved in.  I felt it needed it's own space and a blog is an ideal way to do so.

Rewkachu is making a feature length independent movie at the moment and I didn't want to clutter the Rewkachu blog with all the thoughts and progress which relates to it.  I did however think it was important to showcase our love for the medium is a separate blog.

The Rewkachu Film blog has four authors; myself of course, Darren Laken (writer / prop designer), Steve Featherstone (3D animation / cameraman) and Andy Wilmot (Sound Department / cameraman).  Each of us will be adding our thoughts on technology, events, work, ideas, and the development of the first Rewkachu Film - Happy Place.

To get the blog up and running, I have taken all of the film related posts from this blog and added them to the new one.  This means that 80% of the posts on there dated before April 16th 2012 can be found here.  It's not important, but I just wanted to be clear.

This Rewkachu Film angle I am very excited about.

New Blog #1 - A Photographic Narrative

A Photographic Narrative is my first of the three new blogs I'm creating this month.  The site is hosted at "rewmitchell.com" so as you might imagine it's a personal blog rather than specifically a Rewkachu blog.  Although of course it is related.

As the blog itself states, it's "the artistic side projects of a little person". I created the blog because I felt that I am not spending enough time photographing for the love and art of photographing. So I wanted to get back into slinging my camera around my neck and heading off in to the world to see what interesting sites I could capture.  This, I think, is the ideal kick up the butt.

Each month I will set myself a personal project on any given subject that I happen to think will make interesting photographs. I'll then of course polish them and upload them (with a story) to my new photoblog.

I have back dated the blog to November 2011.  So there is five months / five projects worth of content.  I didn't want to start with an empty blog.

All for the love of photography :)

3 New Rewkachu Blogs

This month, in fact the next two months I am working on a new brand image for Rewkachu.  This will include a new logo, new website, an updated Rewkachu Green website, a Vimeo page and three new blogs.  Each of the blogs will be specializing in different areas.  I'm very excited about the new branding and the increase in web presence.  Of course, I'll post as and when each item is complete and up and running.

FSS Website videos

This was the final piece to the jigsaw that is the sleek FSS website. When the website goes live I will post a link for you to take a look at.

FSS had a company in to shoot and edit a few corporate videos.  Unfortunately that company wasn't Rewkachu, they were unaware at that point that we also shoot corporate videos. Unbeknown to the company that created them, the area on the website we had allocated for videos was a different size to what they had shot. This meant that when the web developer (non Rewkachu) placed them, a large portion of the edges were missing and thus cutting off some onscreen text. Apparently the company in question told my client they were too busy to amend them and the website needed to be up in a few days time. They then asked me if I could help, and help without having the original files.  I would have to use a bit of video magic!  I was delighted because it meant they had become aware of the collective Rewkachu skill-set.

The job itself was really simple. There were four two minute videos, and one ten minute video.  I went in to Adobe After Effects and created a composition the exact pixel dimensions that the website required. I then, in turn, took each video and sliced it into camera shots.  This allowed me to physically move each shot left or right depending on what was in the frame. The end result was five new videos which look like they were originally shot in the dimensions I created.  I also decided to replace the FSS logo with a much crisper, cleaner version to the one the original video company had used.  I don't know which company created the original videos, but I certainly wouldn't have passed them to the client in that state!

My client was impressed that I managed to edit and render all of these videos in one day.  To be fair, I thought it would take two days also. 

The most satisfying part came at the end.  When I supplied the newly rendered files to the web developer, despite working on my machine and my clients machine they would not work on the website.  After a little bit of liaising with the web developer we decided on a file format and off I went to re-render them.  He told my client that it would take me a day to get back to them. For your information, the web developer works in a company that also does video. So of course my client thought it was gospel.  Now, I'm not sure if it's something that's common in the industry where people give clients false time to rack up costs, or perhaps the web developer's video editing knowledge is not great.  It took me twenty minutes.  My client thought I was joking when I told him "I'm done, I'll send those over now".

To be fair, video editing is notoriously time consuming, more so that most people realise.  But re-saving five short videos as a different file format is nothing. We at Rewkachu pride ourselves on honesty and efficiency, and being very good looking of course.  I was pleased to make my clients day, and prove the above point. I guess some companies would indeed take a whole day to re-save five files, I personally wouldn't feel right about cheating the people that are giving us work.

FSS Trade Press Adverts

I was asked to create a trade press advert, or I should say three variants. The advert would be placed in three different publications and each one would be a completely different size.  This depended on how much magazine space FSS had bought.  One advert was a full page, one was a half page advert and the last one was a quarter page horizontal. I first created the full page advert and then once the client had seen it and approved, I adapted it to fit the other sizes.

If you are not familiar with the term "trade press" I'll explain. Trade press refers to publications (magazines or directories) that are read by executives at companies.  For instance, a Coke Cola executive would peruse the trade press for ways to save/make money for their brand. Whereas an everyday person would read the kind of magazine you'd buy in the news agent.

This difference is very important, and also for design.  A trade press advert must be clear, concise and free from nonsense.  Nonsense isn't the best word I admit, but you will see what I'm trying to say when you see the below advert. This advert is not the kind you would see in the pages of a news agent magazine.