Today I was giving Koogar a change of clothes. Koogar is dressed in smart/casual attire but we needed her to be leaning a little closer to casual and also looking more like Amanda. We gave Koogar a classic pair of mock Adidas trainers and replaced her formal slacks with some casual baggy trousers.

To help Koogar change her clothes, I simply drew her trainers on top of where the feet used to be. To make her new trousers I selected portions of her trouser layers and made them wider using the scale tool and then tapered them in to give them a little more shape. I created a new layer and added all of those new folds and creases in her clothing. Having all of this on a separate layer allows you to adjust the bagginess of the trousers easily.

In the tail end of last year I met a person who says “I do the same thing as you…“.

Have you ever met people who say that to you?

How can another company do the same thing as your company as all businesses are different:

• different way of producing work
• different quality of work
• different experience within their field
• use different products/software
• able to sell to different type of people/businesses
• have different products
• and so on…

There are a lot of factors that are not the same… and most importantly Koogar’s USP is different.

I feel at Koogar we walk the talk and deliver what our clients need and want to attract new clients/customers.

However recently we have been subject to what is called a Professional Business Stalker. Its a bit of a grand name for what this person actually does…

Just wondered… Have you ever experienced this? If you have what have you done to deal with the person involved… If you haven’t what would you do in my shoes?

Passing yourself off as another company must be illegal… surely…

When networking, don’t tell people you do the same thing as someone else as you probably don’t. You should have your own USP, target clients and pricing structure… but what cant be helped is if your a step ahead of your competition.

We would love to hear from you and your thoughts.

I began the day by completing a first draft of the microsite wording for one of our new campaigns coming up.  After I had completed this I made a start on the next one; three down and two to go.  Halfway through drafting this copy I was able to take part in a meeting with Amanda and Julie, who are thinking about organising some workshops where they will both be able to speak on different subjects concerning marketing.

This was a nice change to drafting up my campaigns and I am now helping to organise the event- which promises to be worth its weight in gold as both Amanda and Julie are highly experienced in their sectors.  I am going to be responsible for the website updates and information as well as emails.  The event itself will be taking place in May so watch out for our updates on the website as well as on Facebook and Twitter!

I then composed the minutes for the meeting, which left the rest of the afternoon to drafting up the wording for the two remaining microsites.

I researched around the subjects to gain a better perspective as well as ensuring what I had written flowed on well from the campaign leaflets themselves.  After a few hours of typing, erasing and scribbling frantically with a pen I have now completed all five campaign leaflets and the three or more pages of wording needed for each of their microsites!

All that’s needed now is a quick glance over and making any needed revisions before they can go live on the website- but don’t worry, when they do I’m sure you’ll be kept informed by my blog, Tweets, Facebook, the newsletter and Amanda herself!

Anyway, what I have managed to get done today is a lot of wording for our different campaigns and the microsites that accompany them.  All five will be done by Wednesday and ready to go live so you can see some of the fantastic work Koogar does – both new and old!

I have also written numerous letters regarding different campaigns as well as a small blurb about our new city centre location and signing clients up for our email newsletter.

Hopefully everyone will have received this at some point today.  It simply highlights that if you are on our mailing list we can keep you up to date with everything new and going on in the Koogar office – it’s a great way to track what we are doing and an even better way to pick up some useful marketing tips and other information, which leads me on to my new weekly post on marketing tips…

As most of you will know I am jotting down 5 marketing tips per day that I’m in the office.  I then research them and add an explanatory paragraph, which is really useful in helping me understand the whole concept of marketing!  Anyway, from now on, every Monday around 12:00 we will be posting one marketing tip that seems the most relevant and useful to our clients.  We will also be posting a snippet of the weekly tip on Facebook and Twitter to wet your appetites, with a link to follow to the blog post on our website.

If you have already checked out the marketing tip of the day, for curiosity’s sake if nothing else, I hope you found it interesting and insightful and look forward to more to come!

Once they return it you can then create a couple of pages just from a few questions.  Information includes their background, why they chose to work with you, what they expected from working with you and what they gained from the experience.  They are great to keep in a portfolio or you can use them on your website.

Why not take a look at our case studies on the Koogar website.

After writing up the day’s task list I went on to work on the map. The first thing I did on the map was changing the current colour scheme using a revised palette, which better suited the Koogar identity.

I marked out a pathway for which a walk from when arriving at Lime Street Station. To make the pathway I copied and pasted the section of the streets where you would walk when going from Lime Street to Koogar into a new layer. I then rounded off the outside corners of the pathway. After the route was the desired shape I then used the magic wand tool to select the contents of the layer. I contracted the selection and then inverted the selection and deleted the outer contents of the layer. This narrowed the strip of the pathway, which now appears to run through the streets and not on top of them.

Now the pathway layer was no longer simply highlighting an area of the map, it now implied a route of which to take.

This route was originally marked out in white I tried various other colours but no other tone shared the same synergy as the white so I returned to the original colour. The white contrasts nicely yet works in harmony the other features of the map and does not glare out from the image.

I drew in a few well-known landmarks, which are in close proximity to the Koogar office such as Lime Street Station and Saint George’s Hall. I did this by outlining simplified shapes of the structures, in-keeping with the style of the map.

I created a glass orb effect using the elliptical selection tool and gradients with various opacities. This makes map more attractive to look at and gives it a better chance catching a clients attention when viewing the Koogar website.

Today, I also made some subtle changes to one of the images of Koogar. Koogar is supposed to bare a close resemblance to Amanda. Amanda has a suit jacket with grey trim around the lapel and pockets and so we thought Koogar should have this on her jacket also. I added this to image on a new layer. In this image Koogar is sitting at an angle and because this you cannot see the left pocket upon her jacket. In order to keep the image looking consistent and symmetrical I added in the top half of the pocket exposing the grey trim.

I am pleased that I managed to get the map finished today. I like the way it looks and I hope Amanda and Andy do too.

Today I added the finishing touches to the latest image of Koogar. As usual I started off the day by writing a new task list and viewing plans from the previous work day for the day before I beginning practical work.

One of the most distinctive features that I added was the black markings around Koogar’s eyes and muzzle. I recycled imagery from an older image of Koogar. They markings did not fit straight away. They needed quite a lot of adjustments, resizing and rotating as well as some clipping here and there. The important adjusment I made to the markings was with a tool called ‘mesh warp’. Mesh warp is a powerful tool, it allowed me  to stretch and compress the layer into a shape bespoke to the image of Koogar.

Another alteration I made to the image was lengthening Koogar’s legs, giving her greater height and emphasizing her upright position differing from previous images of Koogar. I added the dark tones to the shirt and the trousers using old images of Koogar as a reference, to keep her looking stylistically consistent. And last but not least I added Koogar’s tail to complete the image.

After finishing the latest image of Koogar. I continued digitizing the map. I gave all of the streets a 16pt stroke to lift them off the page and increase contrast. Utilizing the layer effects I added a cyan Inner glow to the roads, which to make the map a little more visually interesting. Moving further away from that plain monotonous look that most maps have.

I placed circular frame over the map, which blocked of extraneous information so as the viewer could focus the important features displayed in the map. The frame also contributes towards the aesthetic style of the map.

I spent the first two hours of the morning on my own as Amanda was out of the office.  So, naturally, I thought I’d work my socks off and try and get as much as I could done to:

a)      Prove I can be very useful and productive when unsupervised. And…
b)      To impress Amanda :p

During these two hours I completed another one of our five campaigns and typed it up so that’s three out of five done now.  Well two that are complete with their very own microsite wording to accompany them and one that is in the beginning stages of becoming a flyer- but I still crossed it off my list, as in my opinion the first draft is complete!

Next I moved onto creating two pages of wording for a company in Manchester, who Amanda is re-designing their website for them.  It’s a very rough draft as I had to generate these two pages from only three small paragraphs of information, but as an English graduate and someone who likes to talk I managed to pad it out!  I also completed and finalised my marketing tips and now have 30 that are ready to be viewed.  And if that wasn’t enough I completed first drafts of the remaining two campaigns that Koogar is excited about- very, very busy today!

For the rest of the day I utilised my time from doing small, but time consuming jobs to big and time consuming jobs!  I sent out emails for everyone in our database (which, by the way, will update you every time we add something to our website.   Whether it be a new blog so you can keep up-to-date with what Koogar are doing or a new microsite detailing some of Koogar’s new and special offers).

I have edited two blogs which we are working on at the moment- one is going to be LIVE soon and is definitely worth a read.  It’s called ‘2 things people forget once their website has gone live’.   It gives a very informative insight into what may seem like mundane elements to a website, but are in fact the most important; Domain Names & Web Hosting.

As well as completing these and a few other small tasks I have read over and made several changes to the customer questionnaire Koogar sends out to new clients.  I am very pleased with this, although I have not began typing anything up yet, as I have been mentioning it quite a lot over the last couple of weeks, but until today had yet to make an impression on it!

Overall I am extremely happy with how today has gone and am thrilled that people, including clients actually know who I am, which is of course down to the blogs and Amanda telling everyone of course!  I was speaking to a client earlier today who asked me how I was getting on and wished me luck, which I thought was lovely to do and made me feel like a true Koogar member!

I have spent the morning working on the wording for the Email Marketing campaign micro-site.  After a couple of attempts I think I’ve finally cracked it- just need Amanda’s approval.  Once the site / page has been created I can upload the four pages I’ve been working on, which explains in a lot more detail what our email campaign is actually providing and why it is an important aspect of marketing for businesses.

I have also worked on the wording for another campaign we are currently working on; “If I had a pound…”  This is only on its first draft, but I am really pleased with how the whole campaign is progressing and can’t wait to get some feedback from prospective clients!

Throughout the afternoon I have been working on some new blog posts, which hopefully can either go onto the website by the end of today or tomorrow.  The new blog posts consist of tips, your competitors and things not to forget.  It came to Amanda’s attention from looking at the website that the blog posts seem to consist of just myself and Matt’s diary.  Now, there is nothing wrong with this as it means we ourselves, Amanda and visitors to the site can see how both myself and Matt are progressing in our new roles.  However, Amanda and I both felt the need for something other than a diary on this page.  As a result I now have a variety of topics which I am going to research and write a short blurb on so as to break up the diary entries and put some tantalising information up for clients and prospective clients to ponder over!

So, for the remainder of the afternoon (a whole hour) I am going to concentrate on the new blog posts and hopefully get one up on the website by 5pm- wish me luck!

I started the day off by writing a new task list. Detailing what had to be done over the course of the day. I added the notes I made from Day 4 to the task list. To avoid any issues being overlooked.

I made a lot of progress to the image of Koogar standing up, facing the camera. The image used to be just a digitized head on its own facing the camera. I digitized the body and limbs with colour fill layers and line. I recycled a lot of layers from the previous image of Koogar sitting down for the new image. I copy and pasted them into new layers onto the new image of Koogar. Amongst some of these copy and pasted items were the black markings on the outside of Koogar’s ears.

Another feature which I copied and pasted was the dark shading within her ears which adds the depth and the shape. Both of these features took a while to make the first time round and needed a lot of feathering out. I managed to side step most of that work by recycling what I have already produced. I had to make quite a lot of alterations to the layers that were copied and pasted but this still saved valuable time and most importantly made sure the features in both were matching and succinct throughout. The standing image of Koogar is now just shy of completion needing only the shadow layers added and a little touching up here and there.

Today I gave Koogar a suit jacket on seated position. I had sketched a couple of drawings of Koogar in a seated position. Using a light box I sketched the suit jacket over the top of an older  drawing of Koogar sitting down. Creating new images this way leaves you with very similar and more accurate drawings. I had scanned all of these sketches in so I imported the one with her wearing the jacket  into a Photoshop image of Koogar. I then digitized the jacket using the drawing as a reference. Having a reference can make life a lot easier and increase your work flow.

I gathered some more reference material for the Koogar twitter bird, which is half cat, half  bird. I searched for some mythical creatures such as griffins  and  some other fantasy creatures. I then drew up a  sketches based on the new reference material I had collected.

I also drew up a couple of sketches of maps and well known landmarks in close proximity to the Koogar offices. I added some arrows pointing to the location of some well known landmarks which are not visible on the map itself. This is to give the viewer a better sense of  their orientation when using the map. These maps are being created for potential clients to help them find their way to the Koogar offices.