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  1. WWC Planning Session 2007-4-20 Posted in Hot Stuff, Concocted by Mike Perk April 22, 2007 4 comments

    World Wide Creative’s Heavy Chefs went on a day-long forward planning session on Friday. Here is a highlight – mainly so that Mike can review his swing…

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  2. 25 Reasons You Might Be A Hardcore Graphic/Web Designer Posted in Cookin' Design, Concocted by Mike Perk April 19, 2007 1 comment

    Thanks to Paul, our awesome designer at World Wide Creative, for this list.
    (In no particular order)

    1. You’ve almost rear-ended the car in front of you because you were analyzing a font on a billboard.

    2. You get pissed when a free Photoshop brush you download is less than 1000px in size.

    3. You’d rather study the paisley pattern on your boyfriend/girlfriend’s shirt than listen to what he/she has to say.

    4. You can use keyboard shortcuts at light speed, blindfolded, but you can’t type a paragraph of text without staring at the keyboard.

    5. You’ve had "Software Nightmares," when you’ve been working way too much.

    6. You consider meals interruptions.

    7. You’ve learned your lesson and stopped using the word "final" in any file name when saving.

    8. You clean your keyboard more often than you wash your car.

    9. You’ve intentionally given up trying to explain your projects to non-designers.

    10. You see CMYK and RGB like Neo sees the Matrix.

    11. You’d rather organize your desktop than your sock drawer.

    12. When you heard that Adobe was acquiring Macromedia, you had a Design Orgasm.

    13. When you look at Album art all you see are grunge Photoshop Brushes. (Then you see the album art a couple minutes later)

    14. You’ve Photoshopped out a watermark for a comp or mock-up.

    15. You’ve actually $paid for a font.

    16. You’ve totally slaughtered a great design concept because the client thinks he/she knows best. (everyone thinks they are a designer)

    17. The amount of words you’ve written with a sharpie labeling burned discs total more than the amount of words you’ve read in novels.

    18. You’ve had to explain to a client that a layered file wasn’t part of the deal.

    19. You’ve kept a ragged concert ticket just so you could scan it.

    20. You’ve nicknamed the OSX spinning wheel. (and not affectionately)

    21. You bookmark a resource more often than you have a fun night out on the town.

    22. You’ve intentionally overbid a project because you can sniff out a bad client from a mile away.

    23. You can’t go to a restaurant without secretly critiquing the menu design.

    24. You have an amazingly huge font collection, and an amazingly short temper.

    25. If you had a penny for every mouse click, you would have been a trillionaire 3 years ago.

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  3. New websites from World Wide Creative Posted in Hot Stuff, Concocted by Mike Perk April 15, 2007 No comments

    We’ve been busy lately at the WWC studio.  In addition to all the moving and new members, we recently won the contract to redesign the Cape Nature website and we’ve gained a host of great new clients. We’re proud of the design and development work we’re doing now as well. Check out these two new sites recently gone up:

    Beautiful Bug: Want something for the wife? Look no further than this luxury lingerie site featuring the best and most affordable underwear in the United Kingdom.

    Beautifulbug

    Friday Island: a lifestyle and conference venue up the West Coast of Africa – perfect for those who want to test out some adrenaline-charged activities.

    Friday_island

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  4. A Green Cape Town – does anyone care? Posted in Recipes for Success, Concocted by Mike Perk April 15, 2007 1 comment

    I had a discussion with a guy the other day about environmental issues in South Africa, and more particularly, in Cape Town. The conclusion was that no one really cares, except for a quiet minority. This will change, as people become more aware of how much we are killing our city. I was browsing the Design 100 from 2 posts ago, and saw this US site called Greenopia (see below).

    Nice idea – maybe even an Accelerator Project?

    Greenopia

    Greenopia is simple a directory of ‘green’ businesses in LA and San Francisco. I’m thinking something for Cape Town – only way more Web 2.0. Users register like on Muti, and generate their own listings, content and reviews.

    The question is, are there enough people in SA to actually make this work? We live in a country where there seem to be more immediate and pressing challenges. I have a feeling that for many, the idea of separating their waste and cutting down on carbon emmissions is not really much of a priority.

    - Fred

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  5. What is an Accelerator Project? Posted in Recipes for Success, Concocted by Mike Perk April 15, 2007 1 comment

    At World Wide Creative we bandy the words ‘Accelerator Project’ all the time. If you’re an outsider to the team, you’ll probably wonder what the heck we’re talking about – and so, for the sake of clarity on this blog I will attempt to explain what it means.

    Accelerator

    We came up with the term as a way of describing the projects we start in-house at World Wide Creative. An example of one of these projects is The Bug Zapper, an e-commerce site selling a mosquito and fly killer. We did it partly for fun, and partly to test out the tools that we sell to our clients. When The Bug Zapper took off, we saw the potential of doing more projects like this – and how it could accelerate our profits. It also gives individuals within World WIde Creative the opportunity to begin projects of their own and accelerate their own income.

    Hence the name ‘Accelerator Project’ came into being.

    It is in-house project using our tools (website development and web marketing) to create a new profitable business.

     

    The benefits of Accelerator Projects:

    • They allow us to test new methods or tools to generate traffic to websites
    • They become great examples which we can show clients
    • They provide an opportunity for additional revenue for World Wide Creative
    • Employees can get stuck into a project that focuses on a topic that they really enjoy
    • It provides us with scalable opportunities to grow our business
    • They are an incentive for ambitious new talent to join our company

    - Fred

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  6. The Design 100 Posted in Hot Stuff, Concocted by Mike Perk April 15, 2007 1 comment

    At World Wide Creative, we are huge fans of great design – especially great website design or great logo design. Sipping my coffee this afternoon and trawling my newsreader in Flock, I stumbled upon this feature on Time.com. I love this kind of stuff – especially the blog section.

    Design100

    Not very good for productivity though, since it easily chews up an hour of your day (it’s a Sunday, so I forgive myself).

    - Fred

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  7. 30 free Google Adwords Posted in Recipes for Success, Concocted by Mike Perk April 11, 2007 No comments

    This link was passed onto me last week and I thought it would only be right to share it with you. If you have set up a Google Adwords campaign in the last 14 days or if you are looking to set up a campaign soon this link will give you 30 worth of free advertising:

    http://www.google.co.uk/aw-freecoupon

    Enjoy.

    - Perky.

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  8. Our clients are blogging champions! Posted in Recipes for Success, Concocted by Mike Perk April 3, 2007 No comments

    Not really ones to boast, but hey, this is about our clients and a little bit of fame. We were looking at the list of winners for the South African Blog Awards and 4 of our blogs have come up trumps in the final results.

    Blogsl

    The first, and our shining star, is Sophia Lindop (above), who came first in the category for Best South African Blog about Food. Sophia has spent many a month entertaining and regaling her loyal audience with recipes, stories and anecdotes all about food. World Wide Creative has been consulting with Sophia for 2 years now, and she looks to be going from strength to strength.

    Blogtm

    In the same category, Lisa Griggs of Lisa’s Little Wine Shop Blog (above) came third. Lisa’s wine cellar is the official supplier to World Wide Creative for any party, get together or soire that we feel like having. Lisa writes from her stunning balcony on the doorstep of Lisas Little Wine Shop in Kalk Bay, Cape Town.

    Blogv

    We are extra proud of Verity of Lucky Packet Records, with whom we have been working for a number of years now, The blog is an extension of her revolutionary concept of selling 5000 CDs before any tracks have been recorded in a studio. Verity was runner-up in the Music Category. Check out the blog here, and the website here.

    Blogi

    Then, last but not least, there is Ideate, which is a joint venture with fellow internet hooligans, Live Alchemy. Ideates audience has grown from a handful when it started 18 months ago, to a couple of thousand visitors in the past month. The secret to Ideate is its intense focus on doing small business right. Ideate came second in the Best Business Blog – no mean feat considering the oposition!!

    One question: How Is this all going to convert into profit for the abovementioned sites? Well, I’m not sure yet – but there are huge benefits to award ceremonies (other than peer affirmation). The most obvious one should be increased natural traffic, and this should lead to increased sales. Watch this space.

    - Fred

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  9. World Wide Creative Strategy Session Posted in Hot Stuff, Concocted by Mike Perk April 3, 2007 1 comment

    World WIde Creative decided on a new company policy on strat sessions. Apparently you think better when you’re cooler.

    Office_meetings

    The view is from World Wide Creative’s new HQ studio balcony in Sea Point, Cape Town. The two handsome fellas are the Heavy Chefs enjoying another sunshiny day in Africa. 

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  10. Pics from the first Heavy Chef Session Posted in Hot Stuff, Concocted by Mike Perk April 2, 2007 No comments

    On Wednesday the 27th of March, we held the first of the monthly Heavy Chef Sessions at the World Wide Creative studio. The Sessions are aimed at educating and informing people about Website Profitability. Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to get the whole thing on audio, but we’ll do better next time. Here are some of the pics.

    Verity_and_reg_2

    Verity from Lucky Packet Records and Reg from Eclipse Print.

    Hc1

    Mike demonstrating DIY Web Marketing.

    Hc2

    From left to right: Sophia from Sophia Lindop, Richard from Big Picture, Mike leaning over Verity, Gary from Peninsula Runners. Alycia Loftus from Agent of Choice and Reg.

    Hc3

    Reg looking in awe at our strapping presenter.

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