Tips from Idea15 Web Design

Last year I met the photographer Riel Noir at a networking event.  Riel is an Artist with a capital A; she sees the world through different eyes than most of us, but knows her craft well enough to translate that vision from her mind’s eye to the canvas or screen.  I eventually sat for a portrait session with her, and was gobsmacked when I saw the final results.  Riel made me look like a movie star.

Riel has now added baby photography to her portfolio of photography services.  (I have no doubt that Riel’s studio assistant, Dani the doggie, had something to do with the smile on the baby below.)  Of course, she still does amazing portrait and event photography, as well as fine art.  If you are looking for something really special, give Riel a call.

Riel Noir - Glasgow baby photography

Between us, my husband and I have seen Simple Minds perform over 50 times in six countries, and own a library of concert recordings dating back to their punk rock club days in 1978.  So it’s fair to say we’re authorities on the subject.  And before last night’s concert on the esplanade at Edinburgh Castle was even over, hubby and I were in firm agreement that it was the most dreadful show we’d seen in years, and the worst Simple Minds gig we’d ever attended.

Note rain ponchos and cascading ennui

Most of us know that Jim has slowly changed from singing the songs live to crooning them, making up new lyrics, forgetting them altogether, or speaking them in something closer to beat poetry than music.  I can buy that as an embellishment for a few songs.  But that was how the entire gig went.  There was literally only one song that he sang the whole way through.  The rest were so badly mumbled, mashed up, or left for the audience to sing that Mel lost the beat twice.  How you can forget the lyrics and lose the beat to the standard greatest hits you’ve peformed almost weekly for 25 years is beyond me.  (Even hubby, who broke his Bruce Springsteen cherry this week, observed that The Boss never forgot a single word to songs he hadn’t played in years.)  See The Lights wasn’t even See The Lights, it was like watching someone’s dad doing karaoke at a wedding.  Call me picky, but if I shell out £90 just for tickets, I want to hear the band actually perform the songs, not mumble and fluff through them as if it was a soundcheck.  The Wee Man, Andy Gillespie, and Molto Sexy Boy were on fire as usual, so credit to them for salvaging the gig from being a walkout.

Which brings me to my other problem, the set list.  It was standard issue greatest hits, despite the fact that they have a new album out.  They only played two songs from that album and never mentioned it once.  (Great marketing, guys.)  They just did a greatest hits tour last year, so it’s not as if the Castle gig was a one-off celebration.  As any fan of any band knows, you can love a band while wanting to fling yourself from the castle walls on hearing that horrid pop radio hit that was big in America for the 438th time.  But that was the whole gig.  In the pre-gig fan meetup, there were people from more countries than I can count who had flown in from all over the world just for this show.  What a shame not to give them something to remember.

Now, I sound a little crabbit about the whole thing, as every person in the audience had the right to be. Between the opener and SM, a good old
Edinburgh gale blew through. I do not mean a drizzle, a rain shower, or even a torrential downpour.  There was a waterspout in the sky.  I wasn’t sure if I was watching a gig or the freakin’ Discovery Channel.  It was that severe. Two hours after the concert ended, my fingers were still pruned as if I’d just gotten out of the bath.  Being Edinburgh Castle out in the open, there was nowhere to run for shelter other than under the wooden seating risers, which were even worse because the water was pouring down through them. But the show must go on, so they started the gig while the gale was tapering off. Try enjoying a show standing on wooden risers in a gale in a plastic poncho when you’re so wet that your clothes are starting to bleed their colours. Once the gig was over, you’re discharged from the scenic vista of the Castle Esplanade to the Grassmarket, a street whose only inhabitants at 11 PM are hen nights, stag parties, and drugged-up lads looking for a fight. And you’re left to dry yourself off in a pub loo between vomiting hens, hours after the bog roll has run out.

When Jim first came out he said “I can tell tonight’s going to be something special” – and you would think, in the vista of Edinburgh Castle, it would be – but it was the most uninspired gig I’ve seen since, well, nevermind that one.  They were running through the motions to the point where it was taking the piss. In the last song Jim even sat on the amp and said “Taxi for Kerr. I’m starving.” Easy for you to say, Jim. You’ll be in a dry warm dressing room in 60 seconds eating sushi.  We’ll be wringing our clothes out in a pub loo with miles to go before we sleep.

We see them next in December at the SECC and hopefully they’ll have gotten their act together by then, literally and figuratively.  It was lovely to see the old crowd and old friends (especially the lot from Liverpool), but all in all, I’ve never wanted to be at home with a warm drink and WordPress more than I did last night.

You may recall that last year I launched my “labour of love” web site project for MND Scotland.  Having lost my mother to MND I’m committed to helping out the cause wherever possible, and lending advice about the web is my way of doing that.  To that end I recently helped them to post a controversial video on their web site as part of a dedicated campaign in support of MND Awareness Week.  The video was well advertised in the Scottish media and in quite a few railway stations, and I felt quite proud to see the cause getting such prominent publicity.

The video is not on social networking sites (that was a deliberate choice on their part) so I invite you to watch it at http://www.mndscotland.org.uk and either comment here or email them directly. Personally, the video does not speak to my own family’s experience with the disease, but it is not meant to be a soft-touch PSA.  It’s meant to do what it does.

The video was banned from television for being too graphic.  If it was something out of a crime drama it would have been on before the watershed without a second thought.  But it’s showing the real progress of a terminal disease, so it got banned.  Figures.

http://www.eurotactics.com

A recent addition to my portfolio is a revamped site for Eurotactics, a business development consultancy which brokers trade development between Scotland and the EU.

I met the managing director, Ian Traill, at a networking event last autumn.  His existing site was designed for 800×600 resolution, was heavily reliant on images for information and navigation, and had no CMS.  He had no SEO or site analytics either.  A full upgrade was well due, so we set to work revamping it onto WordPress.

Ian’s use of the very bright EU colours for his corporate branding means that the colours almost act as the site’s design on their own, so it was down to us to select a few descriptive images from iStockphoto.  We found an absolutely perfect conceptual picture of business networking across Europe, which we’ve used on his home page, and a few similar photos to use on inner pages.  For the page where he describes the political changes that have made his business possible, Ian asked me to colour-code a map of Europe divided into the original EU countries, the “new Europe”, the likely accession countries, and the potential accession countries.  (I had to chuckle as that four year university degree in international politics was finally put to good use Gimping a map.)

To position the site as a business resource, I used Feedwordpress to add an RSS feed of the latest EU-themed business news, as well as a facility for Ian to add events such as conferences and seminars which may be of interest to his business partners.   And finally, for SEO, we ran a keyword analysis on similar businesses and government agencies, with some amusing results (amusing in the sense that it proved that SEO is not hard nor is it brain surgery; it simply has to be done correctly, and done at all, which is more than can be said for some nationwide competitors.)

We actually launched the new Eurotactics site last month, but I did not want to show it off until this week, when we put the final touches on it: translations of the home page in three target market languages.  I used the “Shelly Method” (it’s a Wise-Women thing) to simply store each translation in its own category, rather than installing actual multilingual functionality.  Same result with no extra work.

Ian’s now very comfortable updating and maintaining his web site on his own, and finds his weekly Google Analytics reports fascinating.  He’s learned that having a good business web site behind you boosts your confidence as you set yourself out to potential clients and customers, which is the main goal I set for all of my web site projects.

I was interviewed on BBC Radio Scotland this morning for a story about rogue recruitment agencies and their dodgy practices. My experiences with them have been well documented on this blog and, almost three years after I last had to deal with them, still infuriate and bother me perhaps more than they should.

Much like the unfolding expenses scandal, it’s as if an egg has broken and the collective consciousness – and rage – is finally free. I feel strangely liberated knowing that someone actually listened to me and took my concerns seriously for the first time in five years.

Although the full report is no longer available, here’s me being interviewed. Don’t worry, you only have to put up with my Midlantic accent for two minutes.  Many thanks to the gallant Graham Stewart for getting things moving so quickly on a dreich Monday morning.

My written comments as well on Graham Stewart’s blog.