And very cool it is too.

Apparently meant to stand “strong and true, resilient and universal” the logo wouldn’t look out of place on the chest of a superhero, or on the shield of a reminiscent 80′s warrior (Transformers anyone?)… No doubt it will spend most of it’s time adorned across the t-shirts of web developers though. Mine’s on order.

W3C and Ocupop (the design agency responsible) have done an excellent job here of explaining HTML5, making it cool and encouraging us developers to do away with our geeky garbs (except t-shirt), don our capes and make the bold step into the future and start coding in HTML5. Check out the site at http://www.w3.org/html/logo/

Technically HTML5 isn’t actually finished yet but that doesn’t mean we can’t get cracking now – deep down every superhero is a planner – and the best way to drive progress and support will be to unleash it in the wild and report back on how it copes.

A badge of honour

There has been an explosion in open-source technology in the last couple of years, coupled with an appreciation of standards and it is responsible for some of the most exciting, creative developments on the web for a long time. The success of the likes of WordPress, Apache and Android just go to show the power of a passionate community working together to create something amazing.I get the feeling HTML5 will quickly be adopted by these talented and generous communities.

Using HTML5 is already something to be proud of and the logo will start popping up on sites all over the place – a badge of honour.

Media Temple have achieved something similar with their logo; developers are so pleased to be using Media Temple as their hosting provider that you’ll often see them actively promoting them with a little logo in their footer.

To supplement the new logo W3C have created the mighty-sounding BADGE BUILDER 5000 to help you show off what new technology you’ve used on your site.

Here is the all singing, all dancing, bells & whistles HTML 5 badge:

Nice, eh. Any superhero would be proud: strong and true, resilient and universal. Unfortunately we didn’t build this site with HTML5, so we can’t really have our own badge of honour just yet but we’re working on it.

Our next launch is indeed an HTML5 site.

Watch this space. We should be launching in the next few weeks.

.htaccess is basically a little file that allows you to overriding the config of Apache, which is the server software that websites run on. It is a very powerful file and you can control anything from rewrites to caching options.

http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/htaccess.html

We’ve had traffic from:

• All around the UK
• USA
• Australia
• Vietnam
• Hong Kong
• Greece
• Japan
• Holland
• New Zealand
• France
• Switzerland
• Canada
• South Africa
• Qatar
• Singapore
• Turkey
• Belgium
• Ecuador
• United Arab Emirates
• Argentina
• Luxembourg

Nothing from Lapland yet though… I guess they are pretty busy at the moment

http://www.bannerblog.com.au/news/2010/12/agency_and_brand_christmas_ecards_2010.php

Lots of good examples but this one has to be my favourite, just genius.

http://www.quietroom.co.uk/qr/2010/12/06/the-santa-brand/

Anyway, regardless of the motive, we think CSR is great. I’ve read that more and more young people are starting to consider it a big deal when choosing who to work for, not to mention consumers becoming far more astute and cynical in their ethical purchasing; so I hope it will continue to result in a lovely self-fulfilling prophecy whereby companies feel the pressure from their key stakeholders to spare a thought for more than just their pockets.

We’re often asked by our clients if they should develop or improve their CSR. But the triple bottom line doesn’t have to be all recycled bells and low carbon whistles. (Did anyone else feel mildly sick at Bono and his fashion designer wife’s appearance in the latest Louis Vuitton ad campaign featuring ethical label Edun, to encourage trade in Africa…? Sorry, call me a cynic).

What about just helping each other out a bit more? When Dan and I started Dan&Jo we had a good think about how we should approach our own CSR, Dan already volunteers as a leader at The Swift Youth Club in East London and I’ve occasionally been known to get on a plane and give some love to orphaned elephants – but isn’t this just general altruistic human being stuff that we should just do? Outside of trying to promote that we’re the sort of company that does this sort of thing? So we said no to CSR in any outstanding form but a big yes to helping small businesses around us  that share our values get off the ground, even if it means quoting a bit less and finding a bit more time. Small businesses that can receive an agency standard service with their marketing and comms can really help give them that initial push. We feel it’s about little and often rather than grand gestures and our aim is to do these smaller projects as and when we can.

Check out a couple of our latest:

www.thehaslemeresweetshop.co.uk (web design, build, copywriting, illustration)

www.butterflieschildcare.co.uk (advice and guidance on marketing, plus development of web content management system)

Add mobile into this mix and you get a rapidly evolving range of combinations.

I don’t mind this, in fact I quite enjoy the opportunity to learn about the new technologies and push the boundaries a bit. However what I don’t like doing is spending hours ‘dumbing down’ a website so that it works in Internet Explorer 6 (IE 6).

IE 6 is not far off ten years old now and even when it was launched it wasn’t particularly good. Full of security flaws and a law unto itself when it comes to rendering websites, it didn’t exactly offer a great user experience.

Fortunately usage is dropping but it still lingers on in some areas, China in particular. My inclination is to completely drop support for it, perhaps not even test new websites in it, but occasionally I see statistics for a live website that show that up to 20% of users still browse with IE6. Now that is a sizable number of users, easily enough to warrant fully supporting IE6 in my mind.

I suspect part of the problem is simply ignorance. Not everyone will realise they have a choice in how they access the internet (or even that the browser makes any difference)… In fact I remember when I first started using the internet back in the late 90s I didn’t realise it extended any further than the AOL “walled garden” for quite a while. The ‘Spread Firefox’ campaign has done well to get many users to switch over but it is still mainly tech-savvy people. In the UK Google are currently running a billboard campaign promoting Chrome, with an emphasis on it’s speed, which should help inform the masses.

Anyway back to my original point. Until usage drops significantly I’ll still have to spend a fair amount of time making sure each new website we develop doesn’t fall to pieces when viewed in IE6, or as I have done here, stop supporting IE6 and provide instructions to the user on how to upgrade.

So if you are reading this and you are using IE6 (go to Help > About Internet Explorer to find out) then please, please, please upgrade to something better, trust me you’ll be amazed at how much greater the internet looks and works. Here are some options to get you started:

• Firefox
• Chrome
• Safari
• Opera

Just click the link, follow their download instructions and enjoy a whole new world of fun!

P.S. I personally use Firefox and Chrome.

The shop opened in my old home town of Haslemere in September and we have just launched their new website which involved us doing design, build, copy and illustration. Part of what has been so nice about this piece of work has been working with such lovely people who, as a small family business, care so much about what they do.

So if you’re ever passing through I recommend a quick browse for a very sweet trip down memory lane and I bet you a pound of Pink Porky Pigs that you won’t leave empty handed.

Visit The Haslemere Sweetshop website here: http://www.thehaslemeresweetshop.co.uk/

As you may have heard, having launched a new Gap logo to replace the old, the much loved clothing retailer discarded the new version after just a week, following a huge online public backlash on social networking sites.

With 20 years and a lot of love behind the old logo, it was always going to be a lot to compete with. Ok, it might just have been a blue square with three capital letters but those big three letters have adorned every college student’s chest – just look at the hoodie product placement portraying a typically dressed Harvard student “Mark Zuckerberg” in the recent film ‘The Social Network - and every trendy baby and toddler since about 1985.

This logo was everything a logo should be, as in it was not just a logo. It gave every Gap customer an identity, and that is what they bought: a little piece of wholesome, successful, clean living, sporty America that allowed them to be exactly that when they wore it. By wearing those letters they were not just advocating the brand – they were the brand – and with that, it grew.

We marketers are often asked why a rebranding exercise can be so exhaustive and, at times, so expensive, “when all you get at the end is a slightly better or slightly worse version of the logo you had before”. But if you look at what getting the brand right can achieve for a company, using Gap as an example where customers are actively advertising your logo for you just by wearing it on their clothes and are in uproar at the prospect of changing it, I hope we can agree that you’re investing in more than just a logo.

You see the logo is really the very tip of a very big iceberg. Deep underneath, the branding process has been busy establishing the organisation’s core values and where it wants to be. Along with values a whole attitude is developed to go alongside the strategic business plan and a whole visual identity to work with the logo. So where the business plan is the brain of the organisation, the brand is the heart, and the logo is really just the makeup on the face. Only once these core insights have been established and our stakeholders are understood, should we consider which face to put on to greet our customers. Here to help the brand / heart beat are our most important stakeholders: our customers, followed by our internal teams. From the MD to the person who answers the phone and sweeps the floor, everyone must live and breathe the brand and our customers must feel part of that rebranding process: it’s imperative. So when a brand has grown and customers and staff have played their role as we wanted them to, it’s not going to go down well when we don’t ask their opinion about changing it.

Yes, Gap made a classic mistake in not considering its brand values (and therefore its customers’ values) and should have thought about how they would strategically change direction and put this to their staff and customers first if they wanted to change such a classic logo – clearly extensive audience research was not commissioned or managed effectively. However, unlike a lot of marketers who are rubbing their hands with glee that one of the ‘big guns’ has messed up while not on their watch,  I’m going to stick up for Gap… I think this episode has demonstrated just how right they got it the first time and reaffirmed customer loyalty. Giving their customers a reason to realise how protective, loyal and proud of what has been dubbed ‘just a box with three letters’, so much so that they can’t bear for it to be any different, shows what a strong brand it is and, had it been planned, is nothing short of genius.

When Heinz announced in 1999 it was discontinuing Heinz Salad Cream due to poor sales, customers hit the roof, ‘Save Our Salad Cream’ newspaper campaigns were launched, Heinz Salad Cream was hailed a national institution and everyone from Jo Bloggs down the road to celebrity chefs, MP’s and Zoe Ball had something to say about it… no, and I mean NO other salad cream could possibly, ever be the same; and it had to be Heinz. I remember feeling equally as distraught at the news, despite not having bought the stuff for years, and you can bet what came next: every Jo Bloggs, Zoe Ball and Jo Clarke went straight to the supermarket to stock up for life, feeling bereft at the thought of our fridges empty without it, guilty for not paying it more attention and for being seduced by zingier, more colourful and exotic alternatives. It was up there with rediscovering an old battered teddy that had once been loved more than anything in the world, but swiftly relocated to the back of a cupboard and forgotten once Barbie came along. Was it really the ingredients of Heinz Salad Cream that could not possibly be replaced by another brand? Or was it in fact the brand? The history we had with the brand and our attachment to it that went far deeper than taste? Following the public outcry, Heinz decided to keep the product on the shelf giving customers instant restoration of, and reconnection with, something they came so close to losing. Surprise, surprise, Heinz sales shot back up and Salad Cream has remained on our shelves, revived with new worth and, for the cynics among us, demonstrating one of the best publicity stunts of our time.

Gap has had a similar injection of customer passion that can only strengthen its brand for the future. If it learns from its mistake and sticks to what it does best, I predict a big increase in the GAP hoodie and a reminder to us all that a logo is always more than just a logo.