StuffStuffhttp://www.mokso.com/stuff/2012-04-11T23:29:49ZSquarespaceCheaper than coffeehttp://www.mokso.com/stuff/2012/3/4/cheaper-than-coffee.htmlsim2012-03-04T10:06:50Z2012-03-04T10:06:50ZThese are tough times for most. Tough times means it's becomes harder to make the decision to invest in necessary marketing for your business, partly because often the return is so difficult to quantify. It's a should I, shouldn't I situation, and more often than not small businesses opt for the cheapest solution possible - why pay more when I can get a site for €400 - which is understandable, particularly in this climate.

Why pay more? A website is like a window into your business. If it looks pants and is frustrating to navigate, guess what - that's going to reflect directly on to your service or product. It's not rocket science. People subconsciously draw all sorts of conclusions from just the first few seconds of being on your site. If it looks shoddy, with no care or time taken over it's appearance or how people find information, you're going to look bad from the outset. Straight away you've coloured the business client relationship, possibly to the point where they'll simply go somewhere else. Somewhere that looks more professional and like they actually care about what it is they do.

Well, I think I have a great idea to help businesses in this situation. It's not reinventing the wheel or anything, but it's not something you see offered by most design companies. Simply put, Mokso is prepared, in some cases, to design and build a bespoke website for less than the price of a cup of coffee a day! For just €65 a month (about €2.16 a day) your business could have a website that is not only updateable by your good selves from your own web browser, but stands out from the crowd visually, representing your services in a way that does justice to the time and effort you put in.

Mokso's offer of €65 a month is a flat rate. There's no upfront fee, no hiddedn costs. This obviosuly means you don't have to absorb the trauma of a larger chunk of your capital for a well designed, considered website in one go, freeing you up to invest in improving your services in other ways. 

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Cheaper than coffee.  
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]]>Typo nerds put to the test!http://www.mokso.com/stuff/2011/10/8/typo-nerds-put-to-the-test.htmlsim2011-10-08T14:14:07Z2011-10-08T14:14:07Z

Here's a little challenge for any Graphic Designers out there, or non-designers for that matter. Let's see how you fare with this simple but elegant test of your typographical sensibilities. 

Click this link and take the test: http://type.method.ac/#

 

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Good design means good business - get in touch if you have a project you'd like to discuss.
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]]>A solar system music systemhttp://www.mokso.com/stuff/2010/4/5/a-solar-system-music-system.htmlsim2010-04-05T02:56:47Z2010-04-05T02:56:47ZSolar Beat - it is what it is. Check it out.

I enjoyed running multiple solar systems at the same time, each on a different time/tempo.

 

 

 

 

 

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Good design means good business - get in touch if you have a project you'd like to discuss.
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]]>Real reality TVhttp://www.mokso.com/stuff/2010/1/23/real-reality-tv.htmlsim2010-01-23T19:00:41Z2010-01-23T19:00:41ZQik is a website that lets you stream video from your mobile phone. It's live broadcasting from wherever you are, anytime you want - an amazing thing. I just spent a couple of hours looking at the 'recent videos' page, refreshing it each time, and checking out peoples 'live' video streams from around the world.

It gives you quite an odd sense of things looking in on peoples lives. I felt quite touched to be watching part of a wedding in Thailand at one point, another time I was looking at a new born baby in an incubator. At the moment it's a not like there are thousands of people watching the live streams. I was probably one of only a few people (if that) watching this which is quite an intimate situation (it has a 'views' counter on the clips). 

I just went on to the site and found myself walking along a beach with someone in Brazil, then saw a bit of a school basketball game, then at a Ferrari car show somewhere in Italy. Mostly it's just people experimenting with the technology, pointing the camera and their desk, panning around the room or at themselves making funny faces, giggling a bit and announcing how cool this. I like the lack of intent or narrative in it - generally it's just people playing with media.

The potential of this thing is amazing, live broadcasting in your hands - Real reality TV. I'd really like to be able to embed the latest live streams so you can sit back and watch them live, like a TV channel. Anyone fancy sorting this out?

 

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Good design means good business - get in touch if you have a project you'd like to discuss.
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]]>Capturing realityhttp://www.mokso.com/stuff/2009/10/15/capturing-reality.htmlsim2009-10-15T08:26:52Z2009-10-15T08:26:52ZI wanted to point anyone who is interested to this website - http://films.nfb.ca/capturing-reality/ - a site I found really engaging. The interface, although essentially grid based, conjures up a real fluidity, partly by the use of music, but also through a tasteful use of flash design. The way the music (which I normally detest on websites) interacts with the footage and the navigation gives the space a fluid, malleable felling. On the site you're the editor, and all this content bends and flows dramatically to your will. 


Also, the consistent nature of the visuals - it's all interviews - helps set the scene of the thing. All set on a black background the heads and torsos of the interviewees talking away. Also a clever bitmapping of the images I suspect not only makes it a quicker load and smoothly resizable, but also gives it a visual texture that realtes directly to the filmic subject matter of the site.

It might be worth worth visiting this site just because it's a good site, but the I found the whole package really engaging - maybe more than I would have viewing this content in any other way.

It would be good to see more film and documentary material appear in this format. The non-linear nature of websites is illustrated here and it gives one a sense of exploration, adventure, making me want to click more, learn more, something that maybe some film seeks to do in it's viewers.

 

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Good design means good business - get in touch if you have a project you'd like to discuss.
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]]>Birthday dancehttp://www.mokso.com/stuff/2009/8/26/birthday-dance.htmlsim2009-08-26T14:25:42Z2009-08-26T14:25:42Z

I was 37 the other day - I took it upon myself to celebrate by 'throwing down', much as I did in my youth. A friend filmed the incident and took it upon himself to post it on youtube.

 

Please note

If you want break dance lessons, contact someone else, but if you want some groovy graphics get in touch with Mokso
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]]>David Carson - a light look at designhttp://www.mokso.com/stuff/2009/8/17/david-carson-a-light-look-at-design.htmlsim2009-08-16T22:17:39Z2009-08-16T22:17:39Z

 

This talk by David Carson is a pleasant look at the world of design, mainly through his own work and imagery. I liked this talk partly because of it's light hearted nature and his relaxed presentation. It's different to my last posting - Serious play - which, although is about 'play', has a slightly more academic feel about it, although I think they have a similar sentiment.

I first came across David Carsons work in Ray Gun magazine while I was in college at Londons Central St.Martins. I think it's great that he is a world renown designer, and rightly so, and he came to design with no formal trainging. He just kind of did it - had ideas and put them out there.

 

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Contact Mokso if you need design work done, just because that's what we do and we like doing it
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]]>Serious playhttp://www.mokso.com/stuff/2009/8/7/serious-play.htmlsim2009-08-06T23:49:09Z2009-08-06T23:49:09Z

This is an interesting talk by Paula Scher worth checking out if your interested in graphic design and communication.

Paula talks about the illusive state of play that often leads to the most compelling actions. On a personal note, I can't say I really align myself with her attitude toward Helvetica (one so beautiful), but I found this a really interesting and inspiring talk.

I found this clip on the TED website. The TED website is designed by Method. I might start adding more of these clips to this Mokso 'Stuff' section in the hope I may help in the inspiration of others if nothing else.

 

Please note

If you want your company to engage in some serious play, then talk to Mokso. There's nothing more serious than play.
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]]>Questionable practicehttp://www.mokso.com/stuff/2009/6/7/questionable-practice.htmlsim2009-06-07T18:51:23Z2009-06-07T18:51:23ZThis article is not related to graphic design, web design or Mokso per-se, but I have the urge to write about this somewhere and get it off my chest.

I'm a director of a holiday rentals website called rentability.com. In brief, it's a self-catering holiday rental search engine with a difference. Instead of paying up-front for a years advertising of your rental (with no guarantee of any return), we say it's free to advertise but you pay a small fee for your first 50 enquiries/leads per year. This way we (as the service providers) have to effectively earn our annual fee of €100 lead by lead rather than, as an advertiser, paying it up-front not knowing what you're going to get. With Rentability if you don't get any leads, you don't pay anything.

This isn't about our site though, it's about the market leaders, or more correctly, the market leader - the Homeaway Group. They are a 'group' that have bought up nearly all of the existing successful rental listing sites - holiday-rentals.co.uk, cyberrentals.com, homeway.com, a1vacations.com and the original giant vrbo.com amongst others. The Homeaway Group own all of these sites.

That in itself is fine I guess, but as a rental property advertiser, what gets me is that I might have to pay this 'group' multiple times for what is effectively the same service. For example, I'd pay $249pa for a listing on VRBO, $329pa for a homeaway.com listing and £139pa for ownersdirect.co.uk. So for a single listing on just these 3 homeaway sites it's a total cost of nearly £785 with no guarantee of anything other than a presence on each site.

What I find questionable is that the same company (the Homeaway Group), supplying effectively the same service, are charging independently for each platform (you do get different deals for signing up from different sites like a 'basic listing' on a selection of their sites). It seems to me that this isn't altogether exactly proper. I have to question the morality of charging the same people multiple times for what is the same service (but I can't question the business sense).


Diagram of the HomeAway monopoly business model

I was trying to think of another example of this model happening in the world of business. Can anyone enlighten me - I'd be interested to hear about it.

 

Please note

If you have a holiday rental and are looking for an honest and fair way to advertise your holiday rental on the internet, then take a look at Rentability.com. Or perhaps you need a quality website for your holiday rental, that is easily updateable, to give your place a touch of class... then feel free get in touch for a quote.
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]]>A website marketing essentialhttp://www.mokso.com/stuff/2009/5/23/a-website-marketing-essential.htmlsim2009-05-23T18:32:33Z2009-05-23T18:32:33ZOne of the great services Google supply is Google Analytics. In their words "Learn more about where your visitors come from and how they interact with your site. You'll get the information you need to write better ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives, and create higher-converting web sites. Google Analytics is free to everyone, whether you are an advertiser, publisher, or site owner".

Google Analytics breaks down your sites performance giving detailed information about visitor search queries, activity and geographical location, time on page and loads more. It's a must have. If your site doesn't have it then you're seriously missing out.

We give all our clients who want analytics a crash course in how to use it and how to get the best out of it. It also runs in tandem with Google AdWords if you're running a pay per click campaign giving you all the information you'll need to get the best performance from your keyword selections. If you don't have this on your site, you seriously need to ask your webmaster why.

 

Please note

Contact Mokso and we'll see you through the process of getting the best from your website.
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