Digital Briefcase comes alive

My colleague Chris Trevallion has written a very good piece on the Signals blog, about the perils of do-it-yourself design in a corporate environment.

 

Following up on that theme I’m very pleased that we are getting a fantastic response to the conversations we’ve been having about our Digital Briefcase software. It’s a difficult thing to get across because as soon as you mention ‘presentation software’ everybody thinks it’s an alternative to PowerPoint. Well that certainly isn’t what it is; in fact Digital Briefcase is a complement to PowerPoint. Of course we are all aware and have been subject to ‘Death by PowerPoint’, but that phrase is about the content and the way that it has been written, designed and formatted, not the vehicle that has been chosen to host the content. I have to say that I’ve been a PowerPoint user since it first appeared, (which I think predates the formation of Signals, so must have been at my last company, RS2) and I am a great advocate of this much maligned software.

 

What Digital Briefcase does is allow instant access, from a well designed, branded interactive interface, to launch any kind of digital file. In a presentation context that’s likely to be PowerPoint shows, videos, PDFs, Flash movies. But it could be Excel spreadsheets, web sites, databases, in fact it’s whatever is (or could be) appropriate in the context of the presentation environment you are in. It’s dead easy to use and makes you look like you’ve been planning it all for weeks and have spent a fortune with a digital agency. In fact as one of our clients so eloquently put it –“I can now put a professional, slick portfolio of presentation material together in the taxi on the way to my meeting, it’s presentation wizardry”

See www.digital-briefcase.com for more info.

Looking for Mermaids - Jon Everitt

Our good friend and long term colleague, Jon Everitt – the man behind our spectacular calendar, is touring an exhibition of his paintings. When we saw them here in the Henley Exhibition Centre I was so taken with his ‘Watching for Mermaids’ I had to put my hand in my pocket. It is now gracing a wall in our house; it is so nice to have such innovative original work to look at.

 

His next exhibition opens at the Oxmarket Centre of Arts in Chichester on Sunday 21^st January. Check out www.throughdifferenteyes.co.uk for more info.

I’ve spent some of my Christmas break sorting through some very old video footage. I acquired a Video 8 camera pretty soon after my first child was born in 1980 and have been building a tape mountain ever since then.

 

Having now made the foolish commitment to get it all in some order, I’ve started the process by getting the necessary kit to digitise the analogue tape. I’m using an iMac, a separate 500GB drive and a box that converts the video signal into bits and bytes.

 

Amongst all the family stuff there was the odd bits of filming I did at RS2, the company I formed back in 1981. Apart from the actual technologies used, not much has changed conceptually from then, in that we employed designers and techies and gave service to marketing and marcoms departments in various blue chip (mostly IT) organisations.

 

But here’s the point of this story . . . all the guys in the studio were wearing ties. Remarkable! Although we get suited and booted now when appropriate, on a day-to-day basis ties are never seen. I’ve noticed this at client’s offices as well; the tie is becoming a ‘rarietie’

I wonder if it will make a comeback?

What happened to December?

 

I hadn’t realised how long it had been since I posted on this site, but I guess my excuse is one of extreme ‘busyness’.

 

Putting me to shame though are the people in my team who are now up and running with our company blog and posting up some interesting stuff. Of particular interest to me is Chris Trevallion’s view on corporate do-it-yourself designers. I’ve been banging on about this for years, specifically in the PowerPoint presentation arena, but it applies anywhere that people have access to digital design tools and are producing material that represents a company’s brand.

 

Anyway, take a look at www.sigblog.com