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Africa Trade Corporation Corporate Profile

When Africa Trade Corporation (ATC) approached us to develop a brochure for them, we were very excited because we have not designed a brochure for a security products provider before.

This is always interesting for a design firm as it presents an opportunity to do design work without any  skews from previous experience – the design is inspired completely from and of itself.

Speaking of inspiration, we spent hours looking at ATC’s products, attempting to establish what made these products unique and how we could show potential buyers this.

One thing that became very apparent early on was that ATC deals in quality products only. There are no poor quality products stocked by them and everything sold by ATC comes with a guarantee.

That is unique in Kenya and perhaps in East Africa – a supplier who offers you a guarantee with products? We had not heard of it before.

With that unique selling point backed by solid, quality products, we had to develop a brochure that reflected as much.

So we embarked on designing a brochure that was not squeezed and allowed the products to stand out, in their environment and on their own. We backed these powerful images up with copy that described how the products have been used all over the world. The copy also briefly covered why the products were the best in their class.

Check out the result below:

ATC-Brochure-front

ATC-Brochure-inside-front-cover

ATC-Brochure-centre-spread

ATC-Brochure-inside-back

ATC-Brochure-back

Aidspan roll up banner

Aidspan needed a banner that would quickly explain what aidspan does in to visitors to a stand it had an exhibition in London.

They provided the text they wanted on the banner and we laid it out in a flowing story that showed how Aidspan had worked to make the Global Fund more effective and how this was what Aidspan typically did.

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Enaai Lolldaiga’s masterplan

We do all sorts of 3D rendering and architectural visualisation work, but, the masterplan we developed for Enaai proved to be very challenging as we had to translate eight hundred acres into a clear and appealing 3D graphic.

Working from our Nairobi offices, we set out on the project first doing many rough pencil sketches, until we were happy we had developed the correct style and then we made a sample of about 5 acres and sent it to the client to approve.

Once Enaai had approved the style it took us a month to develop the balance of 795 acres into a nice 3d masterpiece.

Do you need a masterplan for you golf estate or real estate development? Contact us, we have many years experience in the field and will happily develop your master plan in 3D for you.

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How a PR / Marketing consultant can work for you

Having worked in various design agencies over the years, I have observed that the simplest projects are those that are brought by a consultant. These consultants are usually either hired to oversee the spending of funds by donors or as brand experts or even purely to oversee the design process for technical companies who have none to spare to oversee their branding process.

These consultants usually have heard it all from their various clients in their various fields, from ‘too plain’, too busy, too white, too bright, format is too large to too small… name it, they have heard it!

They therefore approach the design brief with as much specificity as they can muster based on the information they taken from the client committee either based on their last designer or on what their competitors are doing.

Suffice it to say, most of the ones I have worked with are very clear about what their clients’ wants without being rigid or overly directive in supervision. I think that they, like us, swear to NEVER be like their finicky clients and that effort makes a world of difference.

Our client here was AgMark represented by Tara Dooley, the consultant, and she was by far the best I have ever worked with, patient, polite, as complete an opposite of unreasonable as can be :).

The result was a Company profile we enjoyed working on despite the rigid brand rules on what could and couldn’t be done.

Check out the resulting profile here and the resulting website here.

– Thithi Kinyanjui

Enaai Website

We developed a parallax website for Enaai Lolldaiga, Nanyuki’s first 18-hole championship golf course and gated community.

The website was built with three key aims, the first was to showcase the plans of the developers and where they want to take the Enaai real estate development.

The second objective was to show visitors where the development has reached at any given point when they visit the website. The site has a twitter integration to Enaai’s twitter account and progress bars that can be added as and when needed to highlight progress of the development quickly showing visitors what they need to see when they are looking for updates on Enaai’s progress.

The third function of the site was to make the offering very clear to visitors, we achieved this by designing a custom master plan in javascript that allows visitors to get a bird’s eye view of the development and visualise their new home and maybe even where their friends will be living on the project’s completion.

Enaai---Masterplan

enaai-site

 

 

5 simple steps to a good brief

Many times we receive calls from clients in need of a variety of services ranging from logo design to web app development. One thing I have observed that is consistent in 90% of such clients is that they most often have not thought through their expectations of the project.

Just like a suit or a tie, any functional design project makes a statement about your Company or project, it therefore needs to fit right, look right and feel right. Here are 5 simple steps that will help you achieve that:

1. Describe the project – Describe the why of your design requirement in simple layman’s terms to enable anyone who reads it to understand exactly what it is you want. Avoid using marketing language that is often used wrong such as ‘branding for my company’ simple language like ‘ our logo needs a fresh new look because our company was set up 20 years ago and our logo feels dated’ works better because it is specific and clear. Here you can provide list of colors you want used and reasons why or list of colors you don’t want used with reasons why, you can indicate specific fonts to be used or not used with reasons why.

2. Describe the company’s key business – This will assist mainly with associations and brand placement. To ensure that the end product matches up to industry standards or is even better. Here you can provide the company tagline/slogan or request that one be worked on by the copywriters.

3. List your immediate competition – This helps with product and brand differentiation. Ensuring you are able to give the difference between your product or brand and that of your competition and get it reflected in the design/ copy or both.

4. Describe your target market clearly – This will enable the design company to conceptualize a design that fits in with your target market i.e. young working mothers, busy executives, housewives, affluent greys, students, health conscious demographic etc All these varying demographics will help provide the much needed specificity to your design project to enable it to speak the right language to its intended target.

5. Provide a deadline if there is one – This will enable your designers to prioritize their projects and provide you with timelines that are realistic and deliverable.

AgMark Company Profile and Brochure

AKSENT designed a profile for AgMark that allowed AgMark to showcase its work throughout Africa in the agricultural space and also highlights to potential partners areas that they can partner with AgMark to further boost farmer incomes.

The profile was designed to communicate to the above audience as well as partners in the same space to expose opportunities for synergy as well as the farmers themselves so that they can quickly see what AgMark can do for them.

We worked with a consultant who was hired by AgMark to roll out its corporate brochure and website right here in Nairobi, Kenya.

See the corporate profile below.

agmark-brochure-cover

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back-cover-agmark-profile

cover-agmark-profile-aksent-again

 

 

10 design trends of 2013

Graphic design is like fashion, there will always be new trends. This is because both industries are inspired by art; art is inspired by different cultures and people and can therefore never be the same.

Though trends are important to know, you don’t have to follow them to the letter, as a good graphic designer, it’s important to always put your own twist into the trend and reinvent it to your best ability.

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01. FLAT DESIGN
Flat design is simply 2D art that is quite reminiscent of pop art-full of colour and clearly defined. This trend is mainly characterized by shapes, bright colours and minimalism.

 

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02. HANDS ON DESIGN
At a time where designers can easily copy each other’s design techniques, it has become important for designers who want to set their designs apart to get their hands dirty and hands on with their designs using simple tools and media such as stencil, potato cut outs, paints and brushes in order to achieve designs that are 100% original and unique to the designer, yes-unique-I know people say that there is nothing new under the sun but you do a paint splatter on a surface, no one can do it the same way.

 

basics

03. BACK TO BASICS
More and more designers today are realizing the importance of minimalism when it comes to relaying information in print and web design; this is because basic design allows the message to be refined rather than distract the reader from it by over using elements of art and design.

Basic design is mainly characterized by the use of very few colours or even text to clearly and fully communicate the message or context as per the design brief.

 

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04. SHAPING TYPOGRAPHY
• Slab- this architecture inspired element is playing a clever role in making layouts look sophisticated and chic. When used creatively, the slab gives an art work an essence of laid back luxury.

 

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• Line- you’ve probably come across this trend- a line over or below text. This simple element does the trick that colour and bold strokes have been doing in typography over the past years, which is to creatively bring the desired attention to the typography; the beautiful thing about using line is that it does this in a very subtle manner.

 

distorted-text

• Distorted Text- this technique is about cleverly cutting up text to create a kind of puzzle that leads the viewers eyes around; it’s fun and most importantly, its trending.

 

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05. TYPOGRAPHIC CONTRAST
When designing with typography, the further apart the type faces the better the composition. It takes great understanding of design to pair contrasting type faces to create illustrations that look incredible.

 

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06. CONCEPTUAL DISTORTION – NOT FOR THE FEINT HARTED
This trend not only takes great understanding of the concept to be relayed but it also takes great confidence because without the right amount of distortion, your final artwork can end up looking like a mess or unfinished therefore it has to be executed cleverly.

 

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07. ITS NOT WHAT YOU ARE SAYING, ITS THE PAPER YOU SAY IT ON
The textures and colours of paper can not only compliment the quality of a designers work but can also compliment the concept of the design.

 

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08. GO AHEAD, PLAY WITH IT
Let’s take the example of the Absolut vodka bottle – no one bottle is the same; this offers the consumer a unique exclusive experience.

Playful designs are characterized by vibrant colours, abstraction and distortion of elements beautifully to create an incredible composition.

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09. TRANSPARENT OVERLAP DANCES
This technique has been catching on for some time with some designers going monochromatic while others use a variety of colours. This simple technique can add playfulness and visual appeal to the composition.

 

color-combos

10. COLOUR COMBOS
Colour combinations have been evolving from pop culture to fashion and all industries that leverage on colour for creative expression.

Designers now are either going back to the basic black and white or pastel palettes that are sometimes creatively combined with more serious, somber colours like grey, black, rusty greens – colours that are nostalgic.

The colour palettes now are mainly romantic and sensual rather than bold and loud.

To wrap it up, follow trends to keep up or create trends to set yourself apart.

– Aina Kiwelu