The name of the new company is AKSENT Ltd. We will continue to do the great work you are used to so have no fear .

The East African Wild Life Society requested a basic website with a CMS from us and we went ahead and did as was requested. We threw in online payment and automated forms to the deal for free.

The website is also used to as the basis for the newsletter. It runs on a PHP CMS and CSS.

Its not often we get asked to go wild on anything by our clients and it is even less often that K-Rep request something off the wall so when they called and asked us to go crazy, we obliged.

The brief is actually very simple. K-Rep Bank were launching Safaricom’s the M-Pesa product at all their branches, we were to communicate this to the public on an A2 poster. As you can see below we went to town on this one.

Net result? They went for the quieter options we provided. We think they should have gone with this… You?

We were approached a while ago to develop a logo idea for Skunk Works. As we understood it Skunk Works was a group of programmers who got together to figure out ways to of bring open source to the general Populace in Kenya.

Our brief was to create something fresh and not related to the original Skunk Works in California because those guys make airplanes for various air forces and these guys are the force behind open source in Kenya (which, looking at the guys involved, may one day be making the code that runs the planes – but not just yet).

So we set out to create something that was fresh and positive and looked young and classy. We came up with the above, any thoughts?

We are offering a free collateral audit this time round. This is a process in which we will establish what all the collateral in your armory is achieving, whether it is indeed working together like a system to achieve all the various goals set out for it and if so how.

We will look at include the following aspects on your collateral (it is only a taster of what we will do):

1. Family: It is important to ensure that all the collateral feels the same. Sometimes people feel that simply slapping on a logo onto anything makes it come into the family, and to some extent that is true, but the type of family formed is the dysfunctional type and trust me you don’t want that – unless of course you do.

2. Objectives: We will examine your objectives for all the individual pieces of collateral and then check that these are actually being met.

As said earlier, we will do much more than this but this is just a taster of what you can expect when we do a free audit of your collateral. Please be in touch to find out how you can take advantage of this offer (0721 449 604).

I say this because as you drive by an adopt a light ad for Tangerine you see people holding onto a pole (the light pole onto which the adopt a light ad is placed) for dear life. Now this is fantastic imagery. I would mark the creative behind that imagery 100% for the concept.

Obviously he knew the medium he was going to use and took that knowledge a step further by integrating it into the final artwork. There is no word for the genius behind this visual.

My problem however is that despite the good use of the medium in graphic design the rest of the ad is extremely poorly thought out. Firstly the artwork, by my estimation, is split up into two separate adopt a light spaces. This is no good because if a driver (target of the ad) sees one adopt a light and not another the message is incomplete.

The next issue i have with Tangerine’s ad on the adopt a light is that there is simply way too much copy on the ad itself. It is beyond me why on earth a designer would let his client strong arm them into turning a brilliant concept into such a poor execution. There is literally too much on each adopt a light space.

in my estimation anyone you are selling broadband to will understand a simple message and go to your site for info (or did tangerine forget they were selling internet?). The ad need never have had more than “broadband internet cheap” and a url.

Not sure who to blame, the client who wouldn’t follow the advice of the graphic designer he hired or the designer who wouldn’t tell his client how crazy the copy demands were… hmmm.

Kitengela Glass Studios asked us to do som art work for an upcoming trade magazine that would highlight the work it mianly does. We asked for their picture of a given peice of artwork and got this one. They will need to do a photoshot soon but menawhile we came up with this single page advertisement.

What do you think?

Job Ballard Design was commissioned to design and produce a dynamic website for By Appointment Africa, who pride themselves in providing corporate and executive search services to local, regional and international employers.

The brief was to develop a website that was first and foremost both African and classy. Other features the website needed were a CMS that allows updates to be made and forms to be created by non technical staff.

Have a look at the site, leave any comments you come up with here .

A website dedicated to the auto dealers in Kenya has just been launched. JBD looked at the site and had an idea for the logo as we would have done it.

There are many things that one can take from that lesson: 1. give people useless repetetive tasks to do to kickstart the economy. 2. develop a new and innovative strategy to encourage an economy to recover. 3. Nothing.

I must give our Kenyan decision makers the props for not taking option number three away from this lesson – as they sooooo often do, at least someone in that thieving bunch (9 billion shillings budget typing error? Yeah right! That is about 125 million dollars)  went to University and read their photocopied notes from some bofin – I am certain they never attended any classes, that would require discipline, something the current occupants of our August House are desperately lacking in.

Anyway, I am sure at this point you are wondering what the point of all this is. Well if you have been keeping your eyes open as you drive from A to B,  you will have noticed masses of people desguised as Mungiki activists (dislexically dressed mobs of people weilding pangas, slashers, etc) standing by the roads huddled in a menacing manner. They almost look like they are waiting for the right moment to pounce on you and instantly strip you of all the earthly possesions you may have on you.

Well, if you think like me you will be happy to find out that you are wrong. These guys are actually the fruit of some Kenyan vote-seeking luminary’s strategy. The strategy is this: instead of cutting grass with machines (and similar tasks that can be quickly done by machine) use human energy. The net result is a massive mob of poeple just attacking anything green coming out of the ground in a desparate attempt to earn their wage at the end of the day – or look busy.

I wondered for a moment if this was bad or good. I decided it was good. At least smeone is trying to reduce the masses that gather at our numerous jobless corners by giving them something to do… but cut grass and trim hedges? Seriously? Is it just me or is Kenya just from begging the global community for money due toa drought of some sort (or was it just an excuse to ask for more money that can be ghosted upon arrival?), so why would we be cutting grass right now, the little buggers are just recovering!

In the spirit of not just critisizing the Kenyan Governemtn and moving on – like so many of us do, I have a proposal… Why don’t they pay these same guys to build houses/schools/hospitals and any infrusture we might need… I guarantee you that 100% of the guys doing this work or at least that should be doing it, don’t have a proper house to live in. So why not find some place and start them off building houses en masse that can later be given ‘em. Then pay them for that.

Even if the government decides the finished product is too nice to give away, at least a genune contribution will have been made to the Kenyan economy , but cutting grass. Seriously?

Anyway, maybe it is just me… let me know what you think…