Good Design in Practice

Adapted from Good Design: Deconstructing Form and Function and What Makes Good Design Work (Rockport Publishers)

By Terry Marks

IDENTITY
HAZLITZ BESPOKE STATIONERY
BROWN DESIGN, LONDON

Hazlitz wanted to create a contemporary brand that would challenge the more established and stuffy stationers such as Smythson. To do this, the design would use traditional materials and print techniques applied to traditional elements such as business cards, letterhead, and so forth. But to stand out, it all had to be done with a twist yet still imply a level of personal, high-end service that Smythson was famous for. After all, the target audience was socially prominen, high-brow Londoners. The name Hazlitz was inspired by William Hazlitt, a prominent nineteenth-century English literary critic, grammarian, and philosopher.

The design is based on reams of paper and a complementary font. Letter-spacing, stroke density, and negative leading and tints were carefully prepared. The client liked the simple, pared back typographic approach common to premium brands. The designers established a black-and-white design and then focused on the quality of materials and print techniques such as engraving, embossing, debossing, and foiling items that their customers wouldn’t sniff at.

Color Psychology

We all know that different colors have different meanings, connotations, make us feel nervous, tense, calm, neutral, etc.

But does anyone know a good book geared toward us designers that can be used as both a reference guide to color psychology, and an interesting book on how to choose color for certain projects, etc?

Preferably with breakdowns of major colors, and how they affect the human psyche.

Thanks ahead of time for the recommendations.

3D Design & Animation

From a unique 3D character design for your web project to a hi-fi 3D animation , team MARS has extensive experience in producing stunning 3D computer generated graphics and animation for the Entertainment, Media, Architectural, Engineering and Corporate sectors.

Recent advances in technology and the proliferation of broadband have fueled the demand for richer online experiences. Supported by these technologies our skilled artists utilize advanced 3D software to create spectacular 3D designs, animations, environments and imagery that bring our client’s interactive projects to life.

The latest rendering technology enables our team to deliver high-end broadcast and 2K quality productions in a fraction of the time previously required.

At MARS, our clients receive innovative 3D solutions with mind-blowing results.

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SEO & Content Writing

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a subset of Search Engine Marketing (SEM), and is a process of setting up your website so it achieves solid, high rankings of Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) for important keywords and/or key phrases. SEO uses a mixture of techniques, tools, and technical skills to get the desired results.

At MARS, we produce a risk-free search engine optimization campaign that creates top placements and that too, at extremely affordable rates. If you are a small business and expecting high quality and high standard of results in top search engines for a good price, we are meant for you! With flawless search engine optimization accompanied by targeted keyword phrases along with customized meta-tags and other useful strategies to control the description of your web pages, and with proper site planning, well-placed graphics, you will be guaranteed to get potential customers on your website.

Also, if you have your own content, then you are ahead in the game. If you do not have any written content, then we can help. We at MARS are available to write content for you. We have content writers that produce compelling, clean and easily understandable contents that best describes your business or services you are offering. Whether your firm needs a few pages written, existing copy edited, or total content development, the combined talents of our staff writers and editors create something extraordinary for you.

Web & Smartphones UI Design

Are you ready to facelift your online presence? Capture new markets on the World Wide Web? MARS is proficient with latest tools and technologies, and has quality experience to help you attain your goals. Our web design team is exceptionally well-trained in creating basic Website Template to innovative Graphical User Interface. Our bespoke designs will reflect your business and give you an extremely powerful presence on the World Wide Web. Our approach includes a phase for developing and documenting the requirements and preliminary design. This begins with a kick-off and information-gathering process by filling a website design questionnaire.

Our web design team organizes the information and provides creative, functional and technical options to meet the requirements. We firmly believe that developing a strong “blueprint” for the site will not only save money during the development phase, but also ensure that future expansion is cost effective. Unlimited changes are offered until or unless client is satisfied with the end result to ensure the client satisfaction!

Please browse through our website design portfolio to get a better idea of the quality of our work and if you are feeling a magical connection going on already, let’s get in touch!

Why MARS for Web Smartphone Design Services?

- Affordable price
- Conceptual page layouts
- Creative graphical site & phone app mockups
- Exceptional design team on board
- Thorough requirement analysis
- Unmatched customer service

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Social Media Design

Want to grow your business through Social Media but don’t want to take the time to figure out all the technicalities of creating a custom Facebook Fan Page or Twitter Background ? Let us take care of it all for you.

With social media marketing being everywhere you look on the web these days, every business, musician, and person should have a Facebook page & Twitter account to help promote their products/services, music, or even themselves. At MARS, we have an experienced design team who has the capabilities to provide custom Social Media Design services in a quick turnaround time.

Apart from above, we specialize in custom YouTube Channel & Myspace Page design. YouTube Channels are an excellent way to create a branded online entity for video content, and allow you to push this content out to other users.

Contact us at any time to learn more about our Social Media Design services and we will be pleased to help you stand above the rest.

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Web Applications Development

At MARS, we develop and deploy web applications that meet the customer’s specific business goals from the ground up. Web applications developed by MARS Global help our clients to solve business issues in the most efficient manner, e.g. to reduce operational costs, improve workflow, or to find cost-effective ways of carrying out business.

MARS experienced team develops highly-efficient and effective web apps based on the following technologies :

• HTML/XHTML/XML
• Custom/Core PHP
• WordPress
• Joomla
• Drupal
• Prestashop
• Zen Cart
• OsCommerce
• Magento

The web apps development procedures that MARS undertakes are listed below

1- The Start
This is the stage where your project begins, making your visions and your ideas possible with our highly-talented web developers. We treat your ideas as our own, which results in outstanding websites that exceeds the expectations of all our clients.

2- The Brainstorming
The first official step in the development of a website is the brainstorming session. Brainstorming session helps us to understand the vision of our clients better. Some of the questions discusses during the session are what font would look nice? What are the color schemes? What is the website hierarchy, and the navigational structure? And what is the website target audience? The objective of this session is to arrive at a common vision for the website that everyone involved agrees on

3- The Project Requirement Analysis
This is the middle stage between the brainstorming and decision making. We produce a project requirement document to help the team envision what the website will look like when completed. This helps the clients, and also allows us to gain knowledge on the “do’s” and “don’ts” of the website.

4- Website Flowchart
The most critical tool in developing of a professional website is the website flowchart. It sets the information flow, how each system talks to another, and so on. Our set-out website flowchart not only defines how the website will work, but also allows us to write high-end codes and distributes tasks in effective ways.

5- The Prototype and its Approval
The prototype turns our documents into reality. Once we have spent sufficient time on the website project as has the client enabling everyone to feel comfortable with the product. We will use our a-class web designers to develop intriguing visual website interfaces for our clients. As a client-centered website design firm, we treat the approval stage as VITAL. This gives a vision to the clients on how the website project will look, what our website designers are thinking and where the website project is going. Once the client approves and is 100% satisfied with the website design, we then proceed and divide the group into two; the designers and the developers.

6- Finishing off
At this stage the client is fully satisfied with the final website product. Then the website is fully developed, it has been tested and re-tested for bugs, and everything is immaculately designed and operational. All the hard work has now been completed by our exceptional web developers and all you have to do is sit back, and enjoy the final website product.

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Logo & Print Media Design

We at MARS acknowledge the crucial need for a good and market-relevant logo, so we treat each project with maximum responsibility and creative dedication. We have the experience combined with a unique sense of designing high quality logo design for your business in the required turnaround time and at a really affordable price. If you are looking for a custom logo or of a brand identity package, we invite you to contact us. You can browse our complete custom logo design portfolio to get a sense of what quality we are offering.

Apart from logo design services, we also offer complete Print Media Design solutions. We love to design and it is a great honour for us to create from nothing a design work which will be associated with an artistic manifestation, with an idea or with a product. We have wide range of services in this domain and give fresh solutions for your unique marketing needs and audience. We have vast experience in working on both digital and offset print media designs.

Please feel free to share your print design needs by contacting us. We are confident that we will have a successful collaboration!

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Social Media Design

Social Media Design is an integral part of today’s online marketing tool and we know what it takes to design a compelling and targeted design which is not merely just awesome but at the same time brings loads of traffic on your website !!

3D Design & Animation

3D is the BIGGEST tool to deliver and convey your message in the most effective and speedy way and 3D modeling can convert your hand-drawn sketches, design concepts and drawings into impressive 3D models for your architectural, interior, industrial and web designing needs. Our team is ready to rock your world from all the dimensions.