How to Create a Style Guide

July 31, 2010 by The Sales Manager · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Uncategorized 

How many times have you dispatched business cards to print and picked up yet another version of your corporate colour? Ever been fired up to see your advert in the latest newspaper and then recognized that the crucial tag line is not present or your logo has been wrecked.

There is only one way to stop this from happening and that is to create a style guide. Not only will a style guide assist you conduct the reproduction of your logo - it will also help you reinforce your brand recognition – which many argue is one of the strongest selling tools.

We have placed the below steps together for you as a starting point.

Step 1 : Outline the audience for your Style Guide. Is this for staff to use in-house or is this for suppliers and contractors to refer to?

Step 2 : Outline what your output uses are. This is important because you will require different logos and file formats for example, black and white publication adverts in comparison to vehicle graphics.

Step 3 : Define the tone for the copy and content required. For example you may needcopy rules for printed content and then copy rules for website content.

Content rules cover all punctuation rules and how to refer to the business and team.

Step 4 : Make sure you layout all the design templates so it is clear how and where the logo and branding lies on all the different pieces of collateral that may be repeated.

Step 5 : Make certain to include any contributing logos or logos of business that are affiliated with you. It’s also important that you mail a copy of the layout to these companies to insure they accept the layout of their logo as they too may have their own Style Guide and hierarchy layout rules.

Step 6 : Ensure that grammar, spelling and contact details are correct.

Step 7 : Make certain that when suppliers are using the Style Guide they understand~know~discern~apprehend} that a proof needs to be dispatched~sent~mailed~commissioned}to you to be confirmed as correct.

Make your Style Guide completed and as secure as possible. Then have it saved in an email friendly file format and have a couple printed. Once this is done we strongly advise a training session – whereby your design studio arrives and trains your staff on how to put to work the Style Guide and most importantly your brand.

For graphic design Brisbane, logo design Brisbane and web design Brisbane, contact Bydaughters today. We help your brand build business.

Sphere: Related Content

Projectors: LCD Verses DLP (The downfall of DLP technology)

July 19, 2010 by The Sales Manager · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Uncategorized 

The typical question asked when buying a new projector for the home, office, or classroom is: should I buy an LCD projector or a DLP projector? LCD, which stands for ‘liquid crystal device’ and DLP, which stands for ‘digital light processing’ are the two top projector imaging technologies. With so many company brands and different models available, it can be challenging for the buyer to make a decision between these technologies. The simple fact of the matter is that LCD projectors have superior image quality and colour accuracy. The next paragraph explains why DLP projectors struggle with bringing up a comparable level of image quality.

Visualise a set of blinds in your home over your bedroom window. By twisting a rod you can turn the shutters open or closed, according to if you want to let light in or not. And such is exactly how an LCD projector behaves. Each pixel operates like its own shutter on a set of blinds to either send light through or to block it. DLP on the other hand is formed of millions of microscopic mirrors or ‘pixel elements’ as the experts like to call them. Each pixel element operates to either reflect light or block it.

How the light source is processed from the point when the projector is turned on to when the image reaches your screen is vitally important for image quality, brightness and colour accuracy. LCD projectors project white light from the lamp by splitting it into red, blue and green components, by three mirrors which send the coloured light to 3 separate LCD panels. The 3 LCD panels make the elements of the image by shining each pixel on and off. The pixels are then simultaneously processed in a glass prism to send the projector image. An important point to know about LCD projectors is that all three colours are projected onto your wall all at the same time. The way a DLP projector operates is widely different and even the produced image looks is not the same. With DLP, white light from the lamp is projected through a turning colour wheel with transparent red, blue and green segments, at speeds up to 11,000 rpm/s. This way of creating an image forms a sequence of red, blue and green light. The millions of micro mirrors as mentioned above reflect the coloured light on the pixels to create the image elements. The elements of the image are projected in sequence on the screen, one colour at a time. The viewer’s vision will then draw each coloured element of the image into the single total image. Using LCD projectors, all colours are available all the time to create top brightness and fantastic colour accuracy. In DLP, only one colour is available at a time, resulting in lower colour brightness and accuracy. Some designers have placed a white segment in the colour wheel to improve brightness overall, but this also lessens colour accuracy.

I hear in forums all the time that DLP offers a higher contrast ratio and ergo must be superior quality. For those who do not know, the contrast ratio is a measure of a display system defined as the ratio of the luminance of the brightest white to that of the darkest black that the machine is able to produce. DLP projectors do possess high contrast specifications in comparison to the majority of LCD projectors. At first glance, this seems to be a benefit, however, in real life, the true black level is determined by the ambient light in the room while the projector is being used. Do not be hoodwinked by contrast specifications on websites and in brochures.

When the content you are trying to bring to life needs moving images, DLP projection technology can also have image imperfections, or ‘artifacts’. The most commonplace artifact that a DLP projector shows with moving images is colour break up. Colour break up is unavoidable in DLP systems because moving images keep changing between the time red, blue and green colours are shone. LCD projectors do not have this downside because the colours are processed at once. DLP manufacturers have formed 3DLP solutions using 3 chips to answer the colour break up artifacts, but the cost of these projectors make them not practical for most businesses and consumers.

Another variance between LCD and DLP is how they match the balance for the refractive qualities of light. Think back to high school science, and recall how various colours of light refract differing amounts when passing through the same lens. The problem with DLP projectors is that they have the one same panel for the same lens to project Red, Blue and Green. All 3 colours are different and refract light in different ways. Often with a DLP projector, an extra yellow colour will be projected above and some blue will show below an image of something as simple as a straight black line. In building LCD projectors can be set to remove these effects on the projected image, because each colour is projected on separate LCD panels.

The isolated veritable advantage (excluding price) with choosing a DLP projector is its smaller overall size and weight. However, this is only relevant to mobility and needs to be traded off against the image benefits of LCD projectors. If overall picture quality is vital to you, then the decision is easy. Take an LCD projector! LCD projectors will constantly make bright, colourful images with fewer image mistakes. If you desire to find out more about LCD technology in more detail, have a look at this spectacular resource website: Explore 3LCD. If you have any additional questions, go to Projector Central and send me an email.

Jonathan King is the sales and marketing manager of Projector Central, Australia’s number one online retailer for projectors. Brisbane based, Projector Central has been servicing Australia for 15 years. For data projectors in Brisbane and Interactive Whiteboards, contact Projector Central today.

Sphere: Related Content

Yachting and Yacht Clubs

July 16, 2010 by The Sales Manager · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Uncategorized 

As the Dutch found dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht was a pleasure craft used initially by royalty and secondly by the burghers on the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, arising as private games. English yachting originated with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his return to the English throne in 1660, the city of Amsterdam presented him with a 20-metre (66-foot) leisure boat with a beam (maximum width) of 5.6 m (18 feet), which he named Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, sovereign 1685–88), built other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 wager. Yachting was found to be popular with the rich and royalty, but after that point the fashion did not last.

The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard organization, and had much naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club endured, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when conglomerating with other clubs, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was seen in some stipulated method on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to sovereignty in 1820, it was then known as the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded following a racing fight, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht club had been started at Cowes on the Isle of Wight in 1815, and royal patronage made the Solent - the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight - the continued setting of British yachting. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the accession of George IV. Every member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for great stakes were held, and the society life was superlative. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to over 350 tons.

In North America, yachting was first accomplished with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English held dominance. Sailing was largely for leisure and reached its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and set a benchmark of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht group, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
The Early sailing yachts took the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the later half of the 19th century. The style of sizeable yachts was first heavily impacted by the success of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a club headed by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) found its namesake after its victory at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and manufactured in today’s sense, with merely a model used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the use of the research of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what science had earlier done for hulls.

Because most of all sailboats were individually built, there came a need for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were designed. Therefore, a rating rule was written, which ended up in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and amended in 1919. In the present day, one of the fastest blossoming areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to standard specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between such boats can be done on an even keel with no handicapping necessary. A prime example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

As long as yachting belonged mostly for the royal and the wealthy, expense was no object, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The promotion and desire of smaller yachts occurred in the latter half of the 19th century in the sailing of the Englishmen R.T. McMullen, a stockbroker, and E.F. Knight, a barrister and journalist. A voyage around the world (1895–98) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the seaworthiness of less sizeable yachts. Later in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and leisure craft became more popular, down to the dinghy, a favoured training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, boats of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, at which point steam began to replace sail power in market vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed increasingly in personal craft. Sizeable power yachts were progressed to a high standard, and long-distance travel became a preferred activity of the well off. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave rise to boats powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht standard for a number of years. By the latter half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were solely power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.

From the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the design of more sizeable steam yachts. Conspicuous among these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was operated by a crew of more than 150. The Mayflower, purchased by the United States Navy in 1898, was the official yacht of the president of the United States until 1929 and was used in active service in World War II.

As bigger and better quality internal-combustion engines were created, many large craft started using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, was furthered during World War I. From the decade that followed, large power-yacht creation blossomed, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that time the largest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The building of larger power yachts declined from 1932, and the fashion after that was in preference of smaller, less costly craft. After World War II, a lot of small naval craft were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting is a widespread loved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally sailing and maintaining their own small leisure craft. The amount of craft and owners increased steadily, not only in the traditional places on the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.

Looking for yacht detailing Gold Coast ? Talk to Elite Yacht Services. We do great work at competitive prices.

Sphere: Related Content

Proportional, Progressive, and Regressive taxes

July 8, 2010 by The Sales Manager · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Uncategorized 

Taxes can be differentiated by the impact they have on the allocation of income and wealth. A proportional tax is one that applies the same relative liability on each taxpayer—i.e., where tax liability and income increase in equal scale. A progressive tax is characterized by a greater than proportional increase in the tax burden relative to the growth in income, and a regressive tax is recognisable by a less than proportional growth in the comparative onus. Therefore, progressive taxes are regarded as reducing inequalities in income distribution, while regressive taxes might have the result of increasing these inequalities.

The taxes that are normally regarded as progressive include individual income taxes and estate taxes. Income taxes that are categorically progressive, however, may become less so for the upper-income group—especially if a taxpayer is allowed to lower his tax base by nominating deductions or by excluding some particular income aspects from his taxable income. Proportional tax rates if applied to lower-income groups could also be more progressive if exemptions of a personal nature are claimed.

Income measured over the course of a given year might not absolutely give the most appropriate measure of taxpaying requirements. For example, transitory growth in income may be saved, and during temporary declines in income a taxpayer could select to finance consumption by reducing savings. So, if taxation is regarded with “permanent income,” it should be less regressive (or more progressive) than when compared with annual income.

Sales taxes and excises (with the exception of luxuries) are usually regressive, because the portion of one’s income consumed or spent on a specific good lowers as the amount of personal income is raised. Poll taxes (also known as head taxes), levied as a standard amount per capita, patently are regressive.

It is not simple to determine corporate income taxes and taxes on business as progressive, regressive, or proportionate, due to the lack of certainty about the ability of businesses to shift their tax expenses (see below Shifting and incidence). This difficulty of dictating who bears the tax burden depends fundamentally on whether a national or a subnational (that is, provincial or state) tax is being determined.

In considering the economic purpose of taxation, it is essential to differentiate between varied concepts of tax rates. The statutory rates include those nominated in legislation; generally these are marginal rates, but occasionally they are average rates. Marginal income tax rates signify the fraction of incremental income demanded by taxation when income rises by one dollar. Hence, if tax burden rises by 45 cents when income grows by one dollar, the marginal tax rate is 45 percent. Income tax statutes usually contain graduated marginal rates—i.e., rates that grow as income increases. Structured analysis of marginal tax rates need to take into account provisions apart from the formal statutory rate structure. If, for example, a particular tax credit (reduction in tax) falls by 20 cents for each one-dollar increase in income, the marginal rate is 20 percentage points greater than specified in the statutory rates. Since marginal rates display how after-tax income changes in response to changes in before-tax income, they are the relevant ones for regarding incentive effects of taxation. It is even more difficult to know the marginal effective tax rate applicable to income from business and capital, because it may rely on factors such as the structure of depreciation allowances, the deductibility of interest, and the provisions for inflation adjustment. A basic economic theorem grants that the marginal effective tax rate in income from capital is nothing under a consumption-based tax.

Average income tax rates determine the portion of total income that is paid in taxation. The pattern of average rates is the one that is important for considering the distributional equity of taxation. Under a progressive income tax the average income tax rate grows with income. Average income tax rates commonly rise with income, both because personal allowances are allowed for the taxpayer and dependents and because marginal tax rates are graduated; on the other hand, preferential treatment of income received predominantly by high-income households could dwarf these effects, forcing regressivity, as indicated by average tax rates that fall as income grows.

For MYOB Brisbane expert advice, contact Stone Consulting today. Stone Consulting also runs MYOB training in Brisbane.

Sphere: Related Content

Tangalooma Island Resort Holiday: One of the Best Holiday Destination in Australia

July 1, 2010 by The Sales Manager · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Uncategorized 

beach-front-21-300x225Tangalooma Island Resort is an earthly paradise found in Tangalooma, Queensland in Australia. Formerly, it was a whaling station and was made into an island getaway because of its unique flora and fauna and its wonderful views. Couples or families hunting down a great vacation destination would undoubtedly cherish a Tangalooma Island Resort holiday.

This earthly haven is found on the west side of Moreton Island, right near Moreton Bay. It is reknowned for its spectacular white beaches and for having been a whale sanctuary since the year the whaling station closed down, the year 1962.

When going on a Tangalooma Island Resort holiday, you can expect to be greeted by friendly and understanding staff while being taken aback by the glorious white sand beaches. You can also participate in a range of activities from wreck diving to feeding and playing with the dolphins. You are guaranteed to totally treasure every second of your stay.

Tangalooma has a very small population of 300, but its tourism has allowed this small township to grow and keep up the picturesque and majestic glory of the island. Over 3500 travelers stay at the resort every week, and even more throughout peak seasons. The local government has also formed a Centre for Marine Education and Conservation, to inform and train the local population as well as tourists of the necessity of maintaining the marine life in the area. The centre employs marine biologists to conduct information awareness drives and programs, part of the nature tour package for holidaymakers.

On a Tangalooma Island Resort holiday, everyone will definitely love their vacation with over eighty activities to select from - but perhaps the highlight of your time away might be the opportunity to enjoy the beauty of nature. You can go sight-seeing and see the glorious sunrise and sunset at the beach, or play with the dolphins that inhabit the sea around the resort.

Want to visit Tangalooma Island? For Tangalooma Island accommodation or Moreton Island accommodation, check out Moreton View.

Sphere: Related Content