We have won a NZ Industry Design Award for Best Label Design
Design Lounge’s Label Design has won a major award at the recent 2016 NZ Olive Oil Awards, held in Parliament in Wellington.
The label was judged winner of the Best Label Design from 138 olive oil entries nationwide. It was apparently the largest and strongest field of entries they have had entered for many years. The design award was judged by invited Professional Graphic Designer.
This label design, was refreshed this year, to give it a sophisticated, crisp and modern look, while still keeping it simple and high class. It was a clear winner from the four finalists, and scored top marks in all 3 categories, including ‘Shelf’ Appeal, ‘Overall Design’, and ‘Printing’. So getting industry recognition for this hardwork is excellent.
The judges critique of the label was as follows:
“Sophisticated and classy are the words to describe this label. Well designed with a subtle use of line illustrations and type. Good balance of hierarchy between text and image and great use of visual space. This really does say ‘high end product’, quality and just a bit special. A step above the normal label designs.”
Jerry Gull, Senior Lecturer Eastern Institute Design School.
The label was printed on a foil stock, and coated in a matt laminate, giving it a very high quality look. The printing was done by the team at Excel Digital.
All New Mobile Friendly Website Packages to be Released Soon
We are really excited to shortly be releasing a range of New Website Packages, aimed for the lower cost end of the NZ Web Design market. These will be known as our ‘Starter Website Packages’. Our Starter Web Design Packages will be the perfect solution for many small New Zealand Business and Sole Traders, or for individuals who need an affordable and simple to use Mobile Friendly Website presence.
Our Starter Website Packages will allow us to setup powerful mobile friendly websites for clients, at a relatively low setup cost, and they can be setup in a relatively quick turnaround time. The Starter Website Packages focus is on simple mobile friendly websites, and will include features such as Unlimited website pages, Image Galleries, Slideshows, Videos, and a inbuilt blogging platform.
Our Starter Websites will be able to be updated by clients using just their website browser, via a simple Drag and Drop, WYSIWYG website editor. The Website CMS and platform that is utilized, is one of the best around, and allows people to easily edit their website with ease. The hosting platform has also been specifically designed for the website platform, providing great website performance and robust reliability.
Should I Retain My Existing .co.nz Domain Names?
Last year we saw the release of the new shorter .NZ domain name extension, which gave many businesses the opportunity to register the shorter version of their existing .co.nz domain name. For example, if a business had the domain mybusiness.co.nz, they may have had the preferential right to register the shorter domain mybusiness.nz.
As a result of many businesses taking up the opportunity to register the shorter version of their domain name, many business now have more domain names than they previously had. Many have registered multiple domain names in order to protect their Intellectual Property. But most businesses have an accountant who likes to ‘trim the fat’, and save money where possible. One way some businesses may see an opportunity to make some cost savings, is to consolidate the number of domain names they have. For example, a business may choose to let their old .co.nz domain lapse when it is next due for renewal, and only retain the shorter .nz domain name. However consolidating domain names in order to save a bit of cash short term can be a big mistake, and cause major expensive headaches down the road. As the .co.nz domain is focused toward companies, we believe any business should try to retain their .co.nz, and not let it expire. If your domain does expire, you may find that one of your competitors may buy that domain, or it may get purchased by a cyber-squatter, who buys and sells domains for a profit. Both may use your old domain name for different things. A competing business may use the domain name, to redirect it to their own businesses website, gaining the traffic that your website should be getting. If you were previously using the expired .co.nz domain for email, you may find that the organisation that has purchased your old domain now has the ability to receive emails from your clients who are still sending you emails on that old domain email address. These are just a few of the many potential problems companies may face in letting a domain name expire.
Major changes to Google NZ search results on mobile platforms
As of April 21st Google will begin to rank mobile search results, on the mobile-friendliness of your website. This means that if your website hasn’t been built to be mobile friendly, it may not rank well in mobile search results, and this could be a major problem for your business. This means all that money you may have spent on website design and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) may have been in vain if most of your visitors are mobile based.
So what does this actually mean? Apparently this change will only apply to Google search results on mobile devices. This would include Google searches from mobile phones, for example Apple iPhones, Android and Windows phones. Up to 40% of visits to NZ websites, are now made using a mobile phone, and most will look up the website via Google instead of typing in the website address, so this change is quite a big deal. If your website is not currently mobile friendly, this change does not mean that your website will not be listed in Google search results. It only means that those other websites that would normally appear in the same search results as your website, which are also mobile friendly, will get a boost and may jump ahead of yours in the rankings.
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Good Quality Web Hosting is behind every successful website
There is really nothing more important than good quality business grade web hosting and email hosting, when you get a new website designed.
Through our Wellington Web Hosting division, the Lounge Network, we offer some of the best and most reliable web hosting services available in New Zealand. We host all of our clients new websites on it.
Our web hosting service includes domain based email accounts for no additional fees, so you can have any email address you want, ending in your domain name eg. anyname@yourdomain.co.nz. Our web hosting service also isn’t just restricted to our own web design clients. We also have web designers and stand alone web hosting cleints all over New Zealand using our web hosting service, including many clients in Auckland , Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.
Introduction to Responsive Web Design – Making Your Website Mobile Friendly
Responsive Web Design, often abbreviated to ‘RWD’, is when a website layout is designed to automatically format to the screen size it is being viewed on. Essentially this type of web design allows your website to be ‘Mobile Friendly’, without the need of having a separate mobile website or special mobile web design template.
With a Responsive Website, the websites format and layout are automatically adjusted by the websites code, to give the best viewing experience for the individual device it is being viewed on. This means it is ‘Responsive’ to the environment it is being viewed with. With websites now being viewed on so many different screen sizes and devices, having a responsive website is a must.
The traditional approach to designing websites for mobile devices, was to have a separate mobile website designed specially for those mobile devices. But with responsive websites, this is no longer required, and the same website can be used for all devices.
NZ Web Design Blog
- Launch of the HomeSpace NZ WebsiteFebruary 22, 2021 - 8:18 pm
We have won a NZ Industry Design Award for Best Label DesignOctober 18, 2016 - 3:04 pm
All New Mobile Friendly Website Packages to be Released SoonOctober 6, 2015 - 10:30 am
Should I Retain My Existing .co.nz Domain Names?October 1, 2015 - 10:19 pm
The Great .NZ Domain Name Land Grab is Now OnMay 5, 2015 - 11:03 pm