We’re back

Happy New Year 2013!

First day back in the office today (Jan 7th) and we’re just getting back into the swing of things.

Hope you had a prosperous Christmas and hopefully a break from work.

Here’s some of the things we’re doing in 2013

• Brand Review for e-see® to be completed
• e-see app/BrandFM interface overhaul to be completed
• Complete Embedded Brand Guidelines roll-out
• Mobile app roll-out
• Brand DNA roll-out

So good luck and happy branding. Talk soon.

100 WINS! - Our first Centurion

We wanted to make a special mention of Santiago Sadous a Logosauce designer from Buenos Aires in Argentina.

Santi as he’s affectionately known on Logosauce reached the 100 competition win milestone on the 16th December with a winning logo for Plasti Dip Center.

It was neck and neck for a while there with a race on between Santi and Estween.  Santi won the race with a sprint to hold Estween off in last 2 weeks.

Congrats Santi. You were first.

Logosauce is different

With the explosion of high profile crowd-sourcing sites like 99Designs, Design-Crowd, Freelancer, eLance, etc - we wondered a liitle about our relevance.

After all we beat all of these guys to market.

But we’re a small firm in a small home market (NZ). That’s no excuse mind you, but we feel our approach and purpose remains different enough. We’re happy being a niche player.

Our purpose is bringing logo designers and clients together.

We try not to crowdsource anything else beyond the logo. No website projects, no stationery projects, no collateral projects. Just the logo.

That’s what makes us different,  for us the Logo Design is the entree, the starting point of a new relationship between a designer and a client. 

Once you have that relationship, our job is done.

Our hope is that the client will continue to work with the designer on the additional brand collateral, stationery design, website, etc that is typically required following the logo design.

Why we resist extending into other types of design projects?

Our parent company e-see® provides brand management systems for new and established brands. We work with a huge variety of brands and their designers.

Logosauce™ is our way to establish a relationship with brand owners and designers at the point of creation, without competing with designers.

In the end - we hope that our Logosauce clients and designers remember us
(e-see.com) when they’re ready to think about a Brand Management System for their (or their clients) now established brand.

Oh and we really do love logos. :-)

Closed for Christmas

We’ll be closed over Christmas, off on holiday.

Close: 4pm Friday 21 December 2012
Open: 9am Monday 7 January 2013

If you need support or urgent assistance during that period you can contact the helpdesk as usual, on 0800 300 373 or help@e-see.com.

If you need assistance with publishing new data or product photography during that period, please contact us as soon as possible to arrange prior to the Christmas break.

Thank you

It’s almost over, this year of 2012 and we’re looking forward to a break over Christmas, the opportunity to recharge, relax with our families and friends, Christmas crackers, yummy food, sunshine, a good book …and plenty of sleep.

Naturally we couldn’t have made it through the year, without all of our customers, brand users, colleagues, partners, suppliers and supporters.

So thank you.

The Santa Claus™ brand

We asked ourselves, what would Santa’s brand guidelines look like.

We think something like this:-

So there you go. The Santa Claus™ brand is free to use but follow the rules and you should be good to go.  As always, if in doubt check with Santa HQ in the North Pole, who make the final decision about fair and proper use.

Feel free to share these guidelines.

e-see® Brand Review

You know the story about the Builders house that’s never finished.

Well as a branding company we’ve felt a little out of sorts, especially around the differences between e-see® and BrandFM. We decided we needed to “eat our own dog food”, so to speak. Late this year we started a brand review and realignment process (which we highly recommend).

As a result of this work (which is still ongoing) you’ll see some changes in the new year. However you can get a sense of the changes coming in our new tagline; Everyone on-brand, everywhere.

We’re looking forward to a big year in 2013.

What next: Fat Blocking Cola from Pepsi

Japanese lab rats have paved the way for a new wave of sodas. Back in 2006, Japan’s National Institute of Health and Nutrition found that rodents that were fed dextrin and fat simultaneously absorbed less of the fat into their system than the rats that were given fat without dextrin.

Welcome to your new dextrin-rich diet, Japan! Earlier this year brewer Kirin released a Mets Cola beverage, which contains dextrin, onto the market, selling it as a soda that would keep consumers from packing on too much fat. It sold well enough that PepsiCo and Suntory, the sole bottler and distributor of Pepsi products in Japan, are jumping into the fat-blocking cola fray on Nov. 13 withPepsi Special. As the Huffington Post notes, the “Japanese government certifies these colas as ‘food for specific health use.’”

Spied at BrandChannel in a post by Mark J Miller. 

New ebay logo, echoes of the Google, new Microsoft logos

Ebay recently announce a new logo.

The ebay folks or branding agency seem to be drinking the same water as Microsoft and Google. Or this just validation of the idea - the more things change the more they become the same.

What do you think?

Winemakers warned Chinese consider screwcaps cheapen wine value

October 2nd, 2012 from Foodnews. See original article here

Recent reports from Australia have sent a warning to New Zealand winemakers that their obsession with screwcap closures threatens to lower the value of their potential exports to China.

A report from Australian radio network, ABC, has declared, “In China, though no research exists, experts reckon that close to 100 percent of consumers want a cork in their bottle.

“It is said that Chinese consumers make a strong link between cork and value, and with gift giving an important part of Chinese culture, turning up with a bottle with a screwcap could be a serious faux pas. With a glut of wine and a proximity to the Chinese market, Australian winemakers are keen to sell more wine to Asia, but realise they need to use corks.”

This report, and a recent comment by British wine writer Jamie Goode, published in the September issue of the wine journal WBM, send a strong message to New Zealand producers that their own commitment to screw cap closures could compromise their market potential in China.

Commenting on the Chinese situation, Goode said, “I think the semi-religious zeal for screwcaps on the part of some Australian producers… has led to a… closed minded dogmatic stance [that]…hasn’t looked good to outsiders.”