Who are Eyedent Studio?
Eyedent Studio are a small full service design and advertising agency based in Mid Ulster Northern Ireland. From humble beginnings we have grown slowly by taking the personal approach to every design and creative project we do. Our ethos is simple – to deliver a personal and straightforward creative service for a changing environment. How we promote our business has changed very radically in the last 15 years with the perpetual rise of the internet and new multimedia technologies have revolutionised how business and customers interact. We work to provide creative solutions to individual problems and give straightforward advice to our customers.
What sort of qualifications do you have?
Our team are dedicated to professional excellence and not just in Graphic design. Our permanent team features a range of qualifications from HND and BA (hons) Degree level in Graphic Design, CIM Marketing qualifications and various diplomas and professional qualifications in Photography and Moving image. We only work with the best creative professionals and we personally vet all of our sub contractors and suppliers to ensure that our own standards of professional practice and professionalism are maintained throughout our company and that our ethos of creativity, straightforward talking and a friendly approach to all of our customers in Northern Ireland and beyond.
What services do Eyedent Studio offer?
Eyedent Studio are a full service small agency. What exactly does that mean? It means that we offer a wide range of services for our customers so that they can deal directly with us for all of their design creative and promotional needs. We are primarily a graphic design agency providing a wide range of creative design for our customers individual problems. We create everything from branding and logo design, corporate stationary and business cards to packaging and promotional items. Our team has great experience in digital and web design – from corporate web presence and content creation to ecommerce websites and content management solutions. Our design has expanded to production after our clients wanted our team to manage the production of their branding and advertising. We now offer digital and lithographic printing, signage, vinyl and display graphics through our production partners. With our level of experience and great supplier relationships we are able to offer these specialist production services at great rates. At our customers request we expanded our services to include marketing and online promotion management – with one company responsible for your brand image means that there is a more effective integrated control of your reputation and promotion and it means a much more effective use of your marketing and design budget.
Do you have any positions vacant - are you hiring?
Eyedent Studio are not currently hiring but we are always to interested to hear from freelance graphic designers, marketing professionals, and potential service providers as we seek to expand our network and service offering. If you want to get in touch email info@niallmckenna.co.uk
Where are Eyedent Studio Based?
Eyedent Studio are based just outside Draperstown in Northern Ireland. From our mid ulster base we are able to serve all of Northern Ireland with a large proportion of our customer base in Belfast and Derry City.
What part of the country do you cover?
We cover all of Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. From our base just outside Draperstown in Mid Ulster we are well positioned geographically to serve Northern Ireland. With our key client base in and around the greater Belfast area we are well positioned to offer a great Design and Creative service to all of Northern Ireland. We are increasingly working with customers from further afield utilising the latest communication methods we are able to provide a local service to any business anywhere in the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland with clients ranging from Cork to Manchester. With the regional advantages of working within Northern Ireland we can offer a competitive service to customers from across the UK and Ireland. Contact our team today to discuss your requirements.
What currencies do you accept?
Eyedent Studio accept GBP / £Sterling. We will also accept €/Euros but please advise our accounts department before making payments in Euros so an appropriate exchange calculation can be offered.
What forms of payments do you accept?
At Eyedent Studio we accept payments via bank transfer, cash or via Paypal payments (Username email2niall@gmail.com). Eyedent no longer accept Cheques as a form of payment.
Why is design important?
Design represents who you are its a statement of intent – a declaration of who you are, it will portray your company and give people a sense of your brand without your explanation. Good design can influence people – it can change perceptions and deliver a message. Image choice, colours, position and frequency can be used to trigger an emotional response in your audience – to appeal to or to influence their perspective. From your business cards to your vehicle livery every piece of design your company produces is a representative of your brand and as such should be carefully handled to ensure that the correct message about who you are as a company is delivered to your target market.
Where Can I get impartial Design Advice?
At Eyedent Studio we believe informed customers are adventurous customers and the best and most successful design and promotion projects are those which break the mould and dare to be different. We are here to advise our customers and point them in the right direction with their design project. No question is too simple, none too complex – we know that its hard to know where to begin with any project and our experience and creative instinct can be put to use to deliver a sense of direction to your project. The right advice may be that now is not the right time for your project and we believe in being straight forward and honest with our customers. A hard sell today will not be a customer tomorrow and we feel that our reputation and relationship with our clients hinges on our honesty and integrity in what we do – so the best thing to do is just ask!
What do you need from me?
To begin any creative project the first thing we need is a destination. We find that our customers fall into 3 distinct groups, Those who know the design process and what they require, Those who know what they want to achieve but are not sure how to get there and those who know that they need to promote themselves but are not sure how to go about it. We work with our customers to find out what a realistic target for their project would be. Knowing what the destination of your project is will invariably influence the road to get there. A firm understanding of what you want to achieve and how this achievement is measured will tell us how we approach the project. From there we will be well placed to
What does Design Cost?
Design is a service and as such now two design tasks are the same, therefore we cannot put a general price on it! Vague enough? Our design is charged currently at a flat rate of £25 per hour for all design tasks. Some jobs like web design we are in a position to offer a better rate due to the time scales involved. If you have a particular design task in mind – just get in touch and we can go through what is involved and provide an itemised cost estimate if required.
What are your credit terms?
At Eyedent Studio we offer 14 days credit only on all design services. Failure to meet these credit terms will result in a 5% penalty charge on top of the total bill for each business week that passes without the full payment being met. On third party projects such as print or signage we offer zero credit and all such jobs are purely payment on collection. For long running retainer payments will be established with a clear payment schedule – failure to comply with the terms of the payment schedule will result in a cessation of services 5 days after the agreed payment date is missed. A further penalty charge will be levied against the outstanding balance of 1% of the balance for every business day past due. Should you have any queries about any of our credit terms or to discuss a payment do not hesitate to get in touch with our accounts department by phone or by emailing accounts@niallmckenna.co.uk
What’s involved with logo design?
Your logo is your image. It forms the basis of your brand and the centre of who you are and how you are perceived by the outside world. A logo design therefore must perform a number of functions on your behalf. IT must be clear, universal, timeless and impacting but it also must convey to your target market a sense of who you are as a business and what you offer as a company. The wider creation of a logo will not just be a mark but will deliver a full brand identity to give your company a suggested colour pallet style and brand appearance. We begin with your company and look at who you are and what you want to convey to your target market. Many people start with an idea in their head of how the think the finished product rather than what it is they want to achieve. Creating a brand should always start with a blank page and build an image from what it is that you want to achieve rather than what you think it should look like. Our experienced team will guid e you through the process taking you through the stages of targeting, concepts and final design. We are not about creating 100 logos and asking you to choose – we create and present bespoke logos to build a brand and as such they are uniquely tailored to you.
Can you help me with my exhibition banners and displays?
At Eyedent Studio we are proud to offer a vast range of Graphics Design and production services. Working with our great team of sub contractors and production parters we are able to offer a vast range of exhibition and display graphics to suit your needs. Contact our design team today for more information.
Where can I see your previous design work?
We have an extensive portfolio section here on this website – Click here to see examples of our work broken into sections from PR and branding projects to Print design and website Design. Our work falls into many categories across lots of different platforms – each project includes a description of the brief we faced and the steps we took to fulfil the needs of our clients.
Can you let me know when you have completed a new project?
Yes, simply subscribe to our email based newsletter to keep up to date with all the latest developments and projects from Eyedent Studio.
CSS? HTML? SEO? Who? What?
There typically is a lot of jargon surrounding the business we work in. At Eyedent Studio we believe in simplifying the jargon and dealing in plain english with our customers. The terms surrounding web design can become overpowering to those who are less experienced with web based projects. Our policy is such that we begin with the end – starting with what it is that you as a customer hope to achieve from the experience. Our experienced team are on hand to break down the jargon and explain, in plain terms, the processes and practices involved in your design project. At any stage of the process you can ask a question no matter how simple or complex. We are here to help.
Do you work on a partnership basis?
Here at Eyedent we are always open to partnership opportunities. Should you have a service or venture that we may be interested in just get in touch via our contact page and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
What does full service mean when you refer to yourself as a full service agency?
However, with today’s leaner, faster client marketing teams that are now a fact of life for many companies, not least as a result of the hard times of the past year, this siloed way of working is becoming increasingly difficult to manage. It’s also potentially blinkering clients by pushing them to decide up front which route to take and therefore which specialist agencies they need to employ. As customer centricity is becoming more and more important and competition is fiercer across all market sectors, marketers should perhaps be looking outside their current expectations and unfetter themselves from traditional thinking.
Offering a real alternative to the traditional approach are today’s full service communications agencies who have embraced the opportunities offered by both long-established and new media channels. Only an agency that is truly media neutral can look beyond the brief and beyond marketing disciplines at what business challenges a client is facing - rather than focusing on what digital marketing can do for them, for instance. Clearly a mobile marketing agency will come up with an exciting mobile strategy and an advertising agency will create an impactful ad strategy. But what if the best way for a business to achieve its goals is neither of the above?
It’s hard these days for clients to have expertise across all marketing disciplines, but this is where a full service agency can help. They will have an overarching planning department, fuelled by media-neutral data insight, to help them formulate the strategy and then call upon the appropriate specialists in-house to implement the resulting campaigns. This joined up thinking also then comes back full circle in terms of tracking and analysing activity to understand exactly what’s happening across the whole campaign and the whole customer journey. It’s only by working with this 360 degree view on a business that you can create a true culture of continuous learning and improvement and ultimately maximise your return on investment.
For clients with procurement departments, though, working with a full service agency can bring its own complications. Procurement departments play an important and acknowledged role within the agency/client relationship, and they bring with them recognisable benefits in terms of cost efficiencies and a clear understanding of what is expected of any agency on the roster. However, the flip side of this is the tendency for the procurement department to put the agency into a channel ’box’; so you are put on the DM, digital or mobile roster, for example, thus limiting the client marketer’s choices regarding who they work with on different briefs.
Why do you work with third party suppliers?
"For example, outsourcing works well with new product development – a company may not want to employ designers to work on that new product internally since, once the design is completed, another new product may not be required for several years. Instead, they hire external designers to bring the new product from concept to market. I realise that this isn't necessarily the traditional view of outsourcing, but I think it is more realistic in the professional field. It is like hiring a lawyer to carry out house conveyancing or using an accountant to create end of year accounts for you – you hire a specialist for infrequent and demanding projects."
Specialised services
Equally, a service may require such specific equipment, as well as expertise, to make it unsustainable as an in house capability. One such service is emc testing, as Chris Marshman, development director of York EMC Services, points out. "The main reason to outsource emc/electrical safety services is access to the specific expertise, skills and facilities we offer. Whilst testing in house is an option, unless there will be sufficient throughput of products, the 'capex' is unlikely to be justified. Meanwhile, unless instrumentation, such as a receiver, is being used regularly, it is relatively easy to make mistakes."
Distributors are also becoming a font of (often free) knowledge into which engineers can tap. Some distributors use their expertise in certain technology areas as a way of differenting themselves from their competitors. Walter Puhl, rf business development manager at distributor MSC, commented: "People are badly informed about Bluetooth Low Energy for example; they think it is compatible with the Bluetooth Classic, but it is not. So we do a lot of design consulting on these issues – what people want to do with BLE and informing people of its limitations. - See more at: http://www.newelectronics.co.uk/electronics-technology/the-benefits-of-bringing-in-a-third-party-design-service/53104/#sthash.QUyahBbF.dpuf
Where do we start and how do you involve your clients in the design process?
Every design process starts with a question. To know were you are travelling you first must know where you want to go. Knowing your desired outcome and the results you want your design process to achieve will let us as designers know how to approach. This sounds like a grandiose notion but in essence its very simple. What do you want to achieve? What is it that you want from this Design. You may feel like a new logo – something for a change but that in itself is an answer – ushering in a new era in your business and you want to stay with the times. That gives our design team a basis to build a brief. A brief is an outline document we create at the beginning of every project. It covers what it is we will undertake on you behalf – We work this out with each client so that every body knows what direction the project will take. Nothing happens on any project until everyone feels the brief is correct, and covers everything you need then and only then we proceed. This brief is then held up to the finished work to ensure it covers all of your needs successfully before the final work is signed off.
What if I don’t like what you design?
We are always happy to take feedback from our clients and build on their response. We always aim to create design you like as well as design which is purposeful and effective. We liaise closely with our clients early in every project to create a detailed brief based on your needs and individual ideas and ambitions. This brief is the basis of how we approach every project because a successful brief is the backbone of a successful project. Throughout every stage of the project we work closely with our client to deliver a project which both parties feel address all of the issues highlighted in the brief. At any stage of this process the client has the ability to provide direct feedback to the creative team to influence the final outcome. It is this close working relationship which means that our customers can always feel in control of their project and they can interject to steer its outcome at any point along its path.
I’m impressed by your design portfolio how much do you charge for your logo design?
We do not offer a flat rate for logo and branding design. All branding tasks are different – with some more complex and wide ranging than others. There are various options and plans available. Do not hesitate to get in touch with our team to discuss your requirements.
Can you produce a style guide or brand guidelines document for other designers to follow?
We produce a style guide as part of all branding projects
Do you offer design solutions just for print or do you design for other mediums?
Do you provide a complete service such as design plus artwork and finally printing of a project?