Green Energy South West that we recently installed a market leading email management system for, came back to us after winning a “Grand Designs Eco Product of the Year” award to produce a new web site to reflect their success and growth in the South West region.

Green Energy SW, needed a website that was designed to reflect their new technology and green identity. It was also important to them that their catalogue and fact sheet information was immediately apparent on the arrival page of their website.

Of course it was important to the client that the website provide a simple solution for clients to contact them but were frustrated with the common method of a online submission form being the main and only option for contact. We provided them with a page that clearly located them in the South West of England, and offered an email address, whilst keeping the option for an online form in the right sidebar of the site.

Green Energy SW needed to provide access to a large number of PDF documents from their suppliers live on their site, in fact it constituted the majority of their content. We were able to source a simple plugin which met those needs in a simple and usable way and fast hosting which ensured this vital content loaded as fast as possible.

If you think we can help you with your commercial or launch site, contact us here.

Earlier this year we were in South Africa and were shocked by the massive figures given by the US State Dept and local immigration authorities esimating the illegal trafficking into South Africa for the World Cup. Human-trafficking can seem a fairly benine term, but when we realised this is modern day slavery involving real people, we began to ask God for his compassion for these victims and researched the issue. .

We only spent 3 months in South Africa, we realised that we would not be the sole solution to this massive issue, but we had a desire to play some part in seeing this evil practice ended. Our friends who I worked on this for at JusticeACTS told us stories of how they hear of missing girls from local schools, this wasn’t just another advocacy campaign, modern day slavery involves real people, in real places, and I wanted what ever we did as a project to convey that somehow.

When I started this project I though alot about how the influx of trafficked persons into South Africa for the fifa world cup was caused by an expected influx ‘custom’ for prostitution. So we decided on a campaign that we could print beer mats/coasters posing as adverts for prostitution, with the flip side of the coaster describing a short narrative which includes the current stats for prostitution and trafficking in South Africa.

I began researching advertising for prostitution which happens in the local newspapers in Cape Town, South Africa, and took note of the common words used to draw the attention of the potential customers and incorporated them into the design.

The desire for the back of the coaster was to engage the reader with the personal reality for someone who has been trafficked, giving them the catchy phrase of the campaign (the truth isn’t sexy) and ways to report anything they have seen and connect with the issue through a campaign website.

This beer mat has now been printed and distributed in the FIFA Fan fest zones in every stadium city in South Africa for the World Cup, 10’s of thousands of these are currently in bar, pubs and clubs in South Africa, informing their readers that often for people caught in prostitution ‘The Truth Isn’t Sexy’.

To become involved in this campaign see the website (note: graphic, concept and coaster design by LABDesign and Anna Brndiar- Webdesign by Artificial Studio – www.thetruthisntsexy.co.za

The most important image you leave is often you one you leave in a potential business connections hand. We will help you develop a business card design, that is attractive, communicates clearly, and reflects your organisations values.

Contact us now, to get a quote on designing and printing your next batch of business cards.

Green Energy SW is a exciting new company based in the South West of England offering a new technology to heat houses which reduces bills by a reported 70%! The system works through infra-red heating which means instead of ‘radiating’ the air until it reaches the objects and people, the infra-red heats directly the things you need to be warm, you and the objects in the room.

Email can be the bane of any business or it can act as a tool to make business more efficient, we are committed to see businesses enjoy the latter. We have a wide knowledge of every scale of email system that can be installed for your organisation and are confident that we can find the solutions to the email based problems. Why not contact us with some questions and see if we can deliver the solution you need.

Green Energy SW came to us looking for a high-grade email system which reflected their professional image and included plenty of room to grow. We quickly offered a solution, installed a system right into their company’s website that offered the top SPAM protection in the industry, that also included the most usable interface for our client.

Jake Gillespie, the owner of Green Energy SW said: “Labdesign has been fantastic. They instantly knew what I needed and supllied the ideal system for the problem. Their service was quick and reasonably priced, I will definately be using them again”

We are looking forward to working with Green Energy SW again soon, and encourage you to check out their website to find out more about this great new company.

There are a lot of much more in-depth reviews and discussions about how to backup your precious data, and as has been famously quoted, there are only 2 types of people in in this world, people who have lost data, and people who are going to lose data.

This is just a very quick run-down from someone who has trawled through the various setups offering his opinion.

At least 2 Backups are important

1. Onsite – You should have a regular protocol of plugging an external Hard drive in and having backup software automate the process. I RECOMMEND: For mac users there seems to be little competition for the included ‘time machine‘ software with Mac OSX.

2. Offsite – This is important in case your house catches on fire, or your kids jump on your computer whilst simultaneously you cat throws up into the ventilation holes of your onsite backup! Seriously though, if something catastrophic happens, loosing all your financial data and family photos really isn’t something else you want to be dealing with.  I RECOMMEND: Dropbox, It really is an amazing tool, constantly syncing your folder (or whole HD) online. The added benefit to this is essentially your HD exists in the cloud and you can access the latest files from any computer by using their online interface.

One more is very handy:

3. Onsite bootable – If you have a second HD, creating what is called a bootable clone (a copy of your HD you can actually start a computer with) helps you get up and running within less than 5mins of any data loss which renders your computer a non-starter. I RECOMMEND: SuperDuper

And then, one more for the really worried:

4. Most hardcore back-upers burn DVD’s every month or so and keep them in a fire proof box, but these are also the guys who think the CIA is bugging their house, so feel free to miss this out.

Conclusion: These days the stuff on our computers is much more important than it was even 5 years ago, it is definitely worth doing at least the first 2 options. That being said, my budget won’t stretch to a premium dropbox account, so I sync my iPhoto library to Flickr and will use something like pod to mac to get my itunes library back, my documents are on a 160GB Passport drive (manually) and I have a 500GB WD MyBook connected to time machine every few days.

All that is to say, the above is an ‘ideal’ setup from what I’ve distilled, but Im making 60% of the way without shelling out the cash for another external drive or premium online storage. A parting tip would be, buy a firewire800 drive if you can, my time machine backups over USB can take a hour or so if Ive been working on big files, it’d be much nicer to save the time.

Hope this helps all our customers out there stay data-loss free!

With the pace of technology going so fast it’s not surprising that organisations, companies and individuals feel overwhelmed by what to buy, what to install, what to steer clear of. LAB Design stays at the cutting edge of technology in the area of web management, cell phones, laptops and computers and can help you navigate the murky waters of technology acquisition.

Should you buy blackberries or iPhones? Should you pay thousands or hundreds for your domain name? we promise to offer well researched, impartial advice. We also offer to help you install and migrate between technologies to help your business continue running without a hitch.

With the difficult economic climate you need to be sure that your money, time and effort are well spent, and employing technology consultancy will help you do just that..let us know

This was a personal tumble-log site which with a customized colour scheme. The design itself is adapted from a theme, but the colours give the blog a unique feel and help the pictures and quotes “pop” in a way I was really pleased with.

Why you may want to consider a tumble-log?

There’s a lot of buzz around having a blog, and for good reason, communicating with the world has become a central value for almost every type of organisation. The reason we would suggest a tumble-log is for a great looking site, which can be set up within a day or so, and is easily updated by txt, email, or online, with photos, audio or text in an extremely simple way. Want to speak to us about it, click here.

This logo design project had me getting in touch with my feminine side! After discussing the project with the owner, we decided the Cool Wicking PJ’s logo design needed to appeal to women suffering from night sweats, a common occurrence during menopause as this is her main market for her products. We wanted to communicate comfort, woman, sleep (sleeping until morning), coolness, and pajamas. The resulting logo design became one of my favorites.