As we mentioned earlier in the year, we’ve been awarded four prestigious 2011 Hermes Creative Awards for our work in design, social media and animation.

The Pixel8 team are thrilled to be awarded a Gold and three Platinum trophies as judged by judges from the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP) from over 4,400 international entries.

Our awards arrived in the office today and we couldn’t wait to get them on display. It’s the most recent in a series of great achievements by the Pixel8 team and a good sign of things to come. Our biggest thanks go to all those who worked so hard and gave it their all. The awards are as follows:

• Gold Award for Web Design: Accident Compensation Website (Design/Illustration/Graphic Design category)
• Platinum Award for Video/Corporate Image: Pixel8 ‘Powered by Smart Pixels’ animation
• Platinum Award for Social Media: Hotel Indigo Facebook & Twitter Campaign
• Platinum Award for Video/Internal Communication: Hotel Indigo Brand Refresh Journey Animation

Ed Thorne, Director of Global Brand Management for Hotel Indigo and Crowne Plaza at IHG spoke of the awards in relation to Pixel8’s brand refresh, “We’ve had great feedback from customers and our hotel colleagues alike, winning these awards not only confirms this feedback but it’s also a great boost for the team.”

In response to the success in the Hermes Creative Awards, Jamie Watson, Pixel8’s Joint Managing Director said, “These awards are testament to the way that the clients trusted us to deliver creative and effective marketing communications that reflect their overarching values and vision for the future.”

Hermes Creative Awards recognizes outstanding work in the industry while promoting the philanthropic nature of marketing and communication professionals. Judges are industry professionals who look for companies and individuals whose talents exceeds a high standard of excellence and whose work serves as a benchmark for the industry. To see all Gold and Platinum Winners in 2011 visit Hermes Creative Awards.

A brand design refresh, web design and e-commerce website development project is vibrant at Pixel8 in Manchester.

Reviber, part of Zen Lifestyles Group, works with sports scientists, physiotherapists and biomechanical professionals to design health and fitness equipment that utilises vibration exercises originally created to prevent astronauts losing muscle and bone mass in space.

Reviber supplies over 1,500 distributors in 12 countries and sells direct to consumers worldwide. Reviber approached Pixel8 to refresh the brand and to design a new website to wow new customers.

Pixel8’s extensive experience in graphic design, brand development and implementation enabled us to quickly get under the skin of Reviber’s requirements to provide a creative online solution.

Paul Rudge, Managing Director of Reviber said, “After consultations with several design and marketing agencies we have been delighted with our choice of Pixel8 for the branding of our Reviber range of health equipment. Pixel8 took the time to really understand our business, the market sectors we supply and the customer demographic; enabling them to create tailored and very effective branding and web design solutions”.

After the Pixel8 brand design workshop to understand Reviber’s vision, Pixel8 began by designing new logo options, the aim being to create an overarching logo that can be used as an umbrella for new products and sub brands going forward.

When the new logo design and branding were established, the next stage was to design and build the e-commerce website which also offers opportunities to inform and inspire new customers.  The website design utilises the colour palette established in the brand development process, together with a simple template to promote the key products.  Visit the new website now at Reviber.co.uk

The Sunday Telegraph’s opinion described the Reviber Original as “one of the hottest exercise machines of the year.  It will leave you tingling all over as it stimulates muscular activity and circulation”; and The Independent on Sunday gave Reviber 5 out of 5 Stars!

Jamie Watson, joint MD of Pixel8 said, “We’re very excited to work with Reviber and look forward to supporting the brand over the coming years”.

Pixel8, which recently developed new global branding for two of InterContinental Hotels Group brands Crowne Plaza and Hotel Indigo, offers complete brand design and development solutions, along with web design and CMS driven e-commerce websites.

For more information please contact Pixel8 in Manchester on 0161 228 6489 – 0845 230 1336 or contact us by e-mail.

The web design team at Pixel8 in Manchester has launched a new website for Geoffrey Miller Solicitors.

This national company defends drivers nationwide for all traffic and motoring offences, particularly for dangerous driving, speeding tickets and penalty points totting up.

Jamie Watson, Pixel8’s Co-Director said, “Pixel8 has a proven track record of designing successful legal sector websites, having designed sorrymate.com, a website for solicitors representing motorbike riders, Accident-Compensation.co.uk, a quirky Personal Injury website for Forbes Solicitors and a white-label website for DWF.

“We impressed Jeanette Miller with our legal sector branding and website designs, then Jeanette provided us with a brief to create a new web design and a logo design refresh that would make the brand stand out”.

Pixel8 provided a fully content managed (CMS) website featuring videos, testimonials and a unique calculator which provides a simple, straightforward method for a drivers to evaluate their offence online.

Check out the new Geoffrey Miller Motoring Offences website today! You never know when you might need them to help you! Please visit http://www.motoroffence.co.uk/

Pixel8 in Manchester have recently refreshed the design of the Expert Patients Programme website and provided initial SEO services to help expand the websites’ reach.

The web design refresh also included an upgrade of the platform together with a refocus on the core Expert Patients Programme proposition.  The website content can now be fully managed by the client and the platform enables future developments such as forums and e-commerce functionality.

Expert Patients Programme Community Interest Company (EPP CIC) provides free self management courses aimed at helping people who are living with a long term health problem to manage their condition better on a daily basis. The courses offer the confidence, skills and knowledge to manage chronic health conditions such as Arthritis, Asthma, Diabetes, Epilepsy, Heart Disease and Multiple Sclerosis.

Most Expert Patients courses are delivered by trained tutors who have personal experience of living with a long-term health problem themselves. EPP CIC also runs specialised courses for young people with health conditions, courses for carers and for health care professionals.

John Reed, IT Manager at EPP CIC said, “Fundamental to the website refresh was both clarity in the proposition whilst providing a platform that enables us to develop new services, and to reach a larger audience in the immediate future.”

For more information please visit the Expert Patients Programme website or call Freephone 0800 988 5550

The Pixel8 Design and Branding Agency in Manchester has created two off shoots of The Open University and are currently working on a third.

Shared Solutions is a forum to promote academic partnerships, and Back On Course is a service for people that have withdrawn from higher education before completing their studies, and offers support for returning into education.

Pixel8 provided logo design, web design and content management systems for both projects.

The websites are now live at www.sharedsolutions.ac.uk and www.backoncourse.ac.uk

Jamie Watson, Account Director at Pixel8 said, “It’s great to be working with such a progressive organisation on these exciting projects. We look forward to opening up this relationship further in the future”.

The Social Media Marketing team at Pixel8 in Manchester is pleased to announce that the Hotel Indigo Facebook site, which Pixel8 developed and manages, attracted over 3,600 fans within its first five months; and that Hotel Indigo is generating revenue through both Facebook and twitter.

Hotel Indigo, the InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) boutique brand, currently has 38 hotels open in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, UK and China and 56 new hotels are in the pipeline. New Hotel Indigos opening in 2011 include Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Saddle Brook, Vancouver, Liverpool, Glasgow and Taipei; future hotel openings include Madrid and Manchester!

Pixel8’s Social Media Marketing consultants immediately identified a “pet friendly boutique hotel” niche and used twitter to promote the weekly Canine Cocktails party’s held at several hotels in the USA. The response was excellent! Dog owners around the world retweeted Canine Cocktails event dates and hotel locations, many added great comments, others asked if a Hotel Indigo could open in their city so they could bring their dogs to a Canine Cocktails party! The brand quickly won admiration and generated new business from travelling pet lovers.

To further engage twitter followers, Pixel8 developed and managed a series of Free Weekends for Two at Hotel Indigos, giving away free weekends to the first five callers. On each twitter giveaway campaign, the hotels phone lines lit up within a few seconds of the winning tweet. All the giveaways were completed within ten minutes, and the hotels booked new reservations by offering a special “sorry you didn’t win” room rate!

During Pixel8’s development of the Hotel Indigo brand Facebook, which includes a Photo Album, a Notes page, Book Online and links to TripAdvisor reviews for each hotel, the “pet friendly boutique hotel” niche was enhanced with Canine Cocktails photo albums displaying images from the latest events. As Hotel Indigo provides free dogs treats, large water bowls and $3 cocktails like ‘Salty Dogs’ and ‘Greyhounds’, both hotel guests and local residents are more than yappy to attend.

To further engage Hotel Indigos pet friendly Facebook fans, Pixel8 suggested and managed a campaign to donate funds to a US pet charity. The campaign included the opportunity to win a Two Free Nights plus Restaurant, Golf and Spa packages at the Hotel Indigo in Miami Lakes. Facebook fans eagerly supported the cause and spread the word to their friends, family and work colleagues; resulting in a $10,000 donation from Hotel Indigo to Adopt-a-Pet.com

In addition to creating and managing the content for Hotel Indigo social media marketing on Facebook and twitter, Pixel8 also provides search engine and social media reputation management services for the brand. This allows our client to spend more time doing what they do best!

Visit www.facebook.com/hotelindigo and http://twitter.com/hotelindigo

For more information about Pixel8’s Social Media Marketing services please call Pixel8 in Manchester on 0161 228 6489 – 0845 230 1336 or contact us by e-mail today.

Hotel Indigo, Facebook, Twitter and TripAdvisor are trademarks of their respective owners.

When Pixel8 creates new corporate branding and website designs for clients, we always provide a selection of creative branding ideas, design formats and colour options.

A personal injury law firm wanted ‘something different’ for their new Accident Compensation claims website, and researching the sector revealed that many of the websites lack creativity and exciting colours were nowhere to be found!

Pixel8 began creating different strap lines and icon designs that could be incorporated into the logo’s identity. Working closely with the client, the strap line ‘You’re in Safe hands’ was chosen giving the logo a ‘reassurance’ look and feel to it, and didn’t have the bold, brash selling features that most compensation websites have. Pixel8 and the client wanted the logo design and the web design to feel friendly, fun and approachable.

The client was then provided with a selection of logo and web designs, and picked the quirky design featuring unique characters of people involved in everyday types of accidents. For each accident category Pixel8 wanted to portray something different, and went with the idea of illustrating multiple characters to play out the scenes from different types of accidents. The characters are bright, colourful and have a fun, caring style to them with a little humour too.

Pixel8’s graphic design team also created a character named ‘Bob’ who shows the different amounts of compensation payable for various personal injuries; see Bob now.

Lime green and blue colours were selected for the logo and Pixel8 ran the same colours and tints throughout the website design.

The website is now live at www.accident-compensation.co.uk

For more details about Pixel8’s corporate branding and web design services, call Pixel8 in Manchester on 0161 228 6489 – 0845 230 1336 or contact us by e-mail

Calendar industry leader Danilo, which supplies over 10,000 retailers globally, asked Pixel8 in Manchester to create a new brand, and to develop a new eCommerce website that would allow consumers to personalise officially licensed calendars and greetings cards online.

Pixel8’s brand design team developed the Personalise.com brand then worked with their in-house web design and web development teams to create an eCommerce website that would:

A)     Appeal to a wide consumer audience as the website offers calendars and cards ranging from Manchester United and Hello Kitty to Wallace and Gromit and Hollyoaks.

B)      Allow people to order personalised official calendars and greetings cards easily.

Pixel8 developed bespoke backend software for the website that produces print ready artwork after personalisation. Using a simple four step process, consumers can now get their favourite celebrities from the worlds of music, football, TV and film personalised on calendars and greetings cards which are despatched within 24 hours.

The website allows people to put their name, or a loved one’s name on a Manchester United shirt held up by Sir Alex Ferguson or on the billboard outside Old Trafford. Hollyoaks fans could find Gemma Merna (plays Carmen McQueen) asking them to be her valentine in February or Ashley Taylor-Dawson (plays Darren Osbourne) requesting a meeting under the mistletoe in December.

Jamie Watson, joint managing director of Pixel8 said, “Danilo saw there was an opening in the market for personalised, officially licensed calendars and greetings cards, so we have set them up to fill the niche.

“Pixel8 has produced numerous award winning licensed calendar designs for Danilo over the last decade and was well placed to help them diversify with this exciting new brand. The bespoke software we created for Personalise.com has several other applications, including the creation of uniform marketing collateral for multi-site franchises. This is an avenue which Pixel8 is keen to explore.

Danilo produced its first design, an Elvis calendar, 32 years ago, and is now licensed to produce the official calendars for top brands including major football clubs, Top Gear, Cliff Richard, Glee, Toy Story 3 and Hollyoaks.

For more information please visit www.Personalise.com or call Pixel8 in Manchester on 0161 228 6489 – 0845 230 1336 or contact us by e-mail

Warner Estate Holdings Plc., which manages almost £1.5 billion of property around the UK, has appointed Pixel8 in Manchester to provide complete design and marketing services for five of its North West shopping centres.

The Manchester design and marketing agency’s brief includes managing graphic design for both print and online, promotions, event management, advertising, PR,  website redesigns and Facebook sites.

The five shopping centres Pixel8 will be working with are Market Place Shopping Centre, Bolton, Fishergate Shopping Centre, Preston, Middleton Shopping Centre, North Manchester and The Grange and Pyramids Shopping Centres in Birkenhead, Wirral. Pixel8 will report to Jennifer Morris, Group Marketing Manager at Warner Estate Holdings Plc.

Pixel8 has already recruited a retail marketing manager to work across the five centres, has launched an Autumn fashion campaign, and redesigned and redeveloped the five shopping centre websites, and deployed a Facebook site for each shopping centre.

Pixel8’s joint MD Jamie Watson, who formerly held marketing roles with both Sainsbury’s and Iceland, said, “This is a particularly exciting win as it allows me to get back to my roots in retail.

“Given the tough environment, it’s an exciting time to get involved. There’s lots of uncertainty given the increase in VAT from January, but we relish the challenge and look forward to driving both footfall and spend in the centres.

“We are looking forward to bringing a new creativity and focus to the centres’ marketing strategy in the run up to Christmas”.

For more information please call Pixel8 in Manchester on 0161 228 6489 – 0845 230 1336 or e-mail

Paul Leybourne is head of sales for Greater Manchester-based Vodat International, a supplier of managed networks and IPT solutions to the UK retail market.

Vodat’s clients include Jaeger, Beaverbrooks, Fat Face, White Stuff, Karen Millen, Lush, Reiss, Dune, 99p Stores and B&M Bargains. Vodat has not lost a client in more than seven years.

Paul started working with Pixel8 in Manchester 17 months ago…

“I think truth, honesty and really engaging an agency to understand the goals and core objectives of your business are the most important things in a great client-agency working relationship.

“The more an agency understands, the more they can give. I think too many sales and marketing people keep agencies at an arm’s length out of fear. They don’t want to lose control of any aspect of the business. And I think insecurity can play a part too – if your agency is coming up with all the ideas, then what is your role?

“We see both Pixel8 and our PR agency as business partners, and that’s not just rhetoric. We have bought into Pixel8 and they have bought into our business vision.

“I think poor client-agency working involves the client being too directive and the agency just running around to their orders. But we brought Pixel8 on board for their design and marketing expertise, so we’re not going to just leave them with the donkey work. Pixel8 adds value to our company and they do a lot of the creative thinking that we just don’t have time for. They allow both me and our MD Mike Bielinski to concentrate on running the business and generating sales.”

Jamie Watson, joint managing director of Pixel8 said, “Vodat are excellent communicators and invite us to a monthly meeting which is always very productive. They are honest with us about any issues their company is facing and encourage us to really get involved with ideas and solutions.

We originally started working with Vodat’s MD Mike Bielinski then as their company expanded Paul took over the sales department. We are really pleased to have developed an excellent working relationship with both Mike and Paul.”

For more information please visit Vodat International.