One of our series of animal safety posters for Charles Taylor & Co
We were asked by marine insurance specialists Charles Taylor & Co to produce a set of posters to promote safety on ships. Ships’ crew knew about safe working procedures, but they occasionally ignored them, with sometimes disastrous results. Of course, each one of these incidents was not only serious, but expensive too, and Charles Taylor wanted to do all it could to prevent them. One problem was that crew members’ first language was often not English. Another was that previous ‘blood and guts’ approaches were being ignored. Our solution was to use animals to point up messages. We hoped that by raising a smile and providing an attractive, friendly image, we could make more of a point. Our series of posters was enthusiastically displayed on ships, and helped to reduce the number of crew injury incidents and, just as important, the value of claims that stemmed from them.
Published on
August 26, 2009 in
Corporate, International and Web.
Tags: blue lagoon, central Europe, cocktail, Czysta, Fernet Stock, limonce, Stock Spirits, vodka, vodka martini, Web, web design, web site.
Boznia-Herzegovina and Croatia will be getting their own Stock Spirits web sites later this year, reflecting how Stock sales (of brands like Czysta de Luxe vodka, Fernet Stock and Limonce) are expanding throughout central and eastern Europe. Wild West will be building these multi-language sites with the same stylish design as www.stockspiritsgroup.com and national sites for the Czech Republic, Italy, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. The corporate site for Stock Spirits also includes recipes for some exciting cocktails, from the classic Vodka Martini through to an exotic Blue Lagoon. To view them, just click on the button in the illustration panel to the left of each page.
We were alerted to the potential compromise of database information via the web when we started working with Secerno, a company whose business is database security. Basically, if there is the potential for user interaction through your site, then there is also a high risk that a hacker might ‘inject’ his own SQL code and download information that you would wish to keep safe – like passwords, clients, products.
If you are password-protecting databased information, (making it available via a closed user area perhaps) you may have locked the doors, but you will need to check that the windows are closed too. Damage from SQL injection is just one of the issues that Secerno helps protect against.
Wild West clients too, (including our various banking, investment and private equity clients) are safeguarded against this very prevalent form of attack. Read more here: http://www.secerno.com/?pg=SQL-Injection
Guidance on Responding to Pollution for Dutch shipowners
All over the world, shipowners and seamen are being told to eliminate pollution, to such an extent that, in many areas, it is a criminal offence to cause or allow pollution to happen, even accidentally. Much of the burden of this problem – and everyone agrees that pollution must be prevented – falls on those who insure commercial shipping. This is true especially for the many commercial craft who ply their trade on Europe’s waterways. One of the leading insurers is the Standard London organisation, whose managers are longstanding Wild West clients, the city-based Charles Taylor & Co., part of Charles Taylor Consulting. As part of their response to the need for continued vigilance about pollution and the need to handle it effectively, Pollution Response sheets like these are designed and produced by Wild West in a variety of languages – Russian, Dutch, German and English. Just another example of how designers have to deal with multi-lingual issues these days! You can see more our design work for Charles Taylor at www.standard-club.com/knowledgecentre/
Ships are big things. Giant, slow-moving, difficult to stop once they have momentum and prone to all kinds of forces that wind and wave can throw at them. And no matter how technology advances (GPS for example), ships can be subject to, and the cause of, all kinds of problems – piracy, pollution, dock damage, fire, cargo damage, crew accidents among them – and all those problems have to be insured and regulated.
The International Group of P&I Clubs is the trade body that works with the insurers of all these risks to ensure that, no matter what the problem (an oil spill in the arctic for example), the problems are dealt with and trade continues. The P&I clubs themselves (P&I is protection and indemnity, and the organisations are called ‘clubs’ because they are mutuals, working on behalf of their members, like old-fashioned building societies) insure over 90% of the world’s shipping, and work ceaselessly to try to prevent accidents and hence reduce claims.
We were introduced to the International Group by our friends at Charles Taylor and Co, who manage one of the most successful of the world’s P&I clubs, the Standard Club (www.standard-club.com). Our project was to redesign the International Group logo and then to design and implement a new web site for this very influential trade body, which includes links to all the members, a self-administered news service and even a page with links to the European Union portal.
See for yourself at www.igpandi.org
Okana are a very specialised high-tech company. Using search technologies from Autonomy, they create tools and appliances that help companies to search electronic traffic well beyond the limitations of text and data. Okana asked us to provide animations that would help them show what they were able to do on their web site. These are what we came up with! See them live (and at the proper size!) at www.okana.com
The Making BrITain Great campaign, initiated by MicroFocus and their PR agency Brands2Life has attracted an impressive list of supporters for their technology and jobs manifesto, published on July 21. If you’re involved in technology, you can leave a comment or add your name to the supporters list at their web site www.makingBrITaingreat.co.uk Wild West designed the manifesto and the accompanying web pages.
Wild West clients Carrington Accountancy have posted a free guide to beating the recession on their web site. Go to www.carringtonaccountancy.com for your copy.
Everyone in business is talking about how deep this recession might be. For every green shoot that’s seen, there’s someone else who will call it a ‘dead cat bounce’.
No matter where you are on the spectrum of optimism and pessimism, you have to acknowledge that there are companies out there who are continuing to make things happen – to find new opportunities for their products, to develop new products and services, or just to improve on the quality that they are able to offer to the market.
Take a look at our client Inflexion. Their business is about investing in companies, and helping them realise potential value. If you go to their site (at www.inflexion.com) you’ll be able to view a remarkable range of investments. They have a hand in companies working in fields from offshore exploration to processed cheese.
Some, like clothing retailer Jack Wills, you will have heard of. Others may be a closed book.
Not all of them will make it big, but if the Inflexion track record is anything to go by, many of them will significantly enhance their value, whatever the prevailing economic climate.
