We create and develop ‘online marketing, promotion, lead gen visibility and brand activism’ solutions for SME businesses that can scale up for use by enterprise level businesses.

Our goal is to give the ‘backbone of UK and beyond’ the means to ‘supercharge’ their on-line success and off-line development with products, tools and resources. To allow businesses to ‘punch’ well above their weight, swim in the bigger ponds and develop long term gain or market advantage over their competitors.

Current product sets I’ve created include:

***Entity123 (A fully integrated website system that focuses on ‘the important needs’ after launch – ‘one click’ promotion, self SEO, automatic back-link growth, full CMS, bespoke design)

***Beacon123 (a ‘one click’ multi-channel, mutli-medium promotion system)

***Basecamp123. (a fixed fee 28 days or less ‘saturation strategy’ to get multiple placement and longevity on Google Page 1)

***Giftmail123 (a whole new approach to driving willing action and growth of your email database and creating organic viral spread)

***Elevator123 (specific and targeted growth of social channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube on autopilot backed with a ‘real strategy’ for conversion and amplification)

**Storebooster123 (Sticky E-commerce solution which can embed in Social Channels, can be monetized, affiliated and also works on mobile platforms for shopping on the move and can carry big brand data sets from the likes of Argos, Staples, PC World, Boots + many many more that earn you income and give your store the product spread to maximise repeat visits and loyalty building)

***Listbuilder123 (Powerful Optin System to build your email lists)

Just ask us about them – always happy to do a screen share.

All products are available to purchase from our online store >>

When approached by our newest client (Direct Motherboards) to design their brand, we offered them 6 design alternatives and they settled on the above logo, no revisions, no amendments – just that logo… Send it now – we love it!

Do you feel you need a rebrand, or you have just ‘set-up’ and need a brand creating?

Contact us today or call 0151 3240020 to see what SCC can do for you and your business, just like we have done for 100’s of others.

We have been trawling the hard-drives at Slightly Curved Cube to bring to you some cool apparel. We have also created some new designs such as ’72DPHigh’ and ‘Blag’. We hope you like what we have done as we are proving design isn’t just brochures or websites – we can transpose design to any medium.

If you have an exhibition coming up and you would like to wear caps, or t-shirts etc. with your logo or design on them, please contact us and we will gladly help you in the creation of your branded apparel. For bulk buy items (50+) we recommend our proffered supplier of promotional items.

Telco64 a New Zealand based telecoms company have asked Slightly Curved Cube to design their logo and generally glam-up their brand.

If you think your logo is looking tired or shabby, why not contact us today to see what we can do for your business as we have done with 100′s of others.

We had a trail in Poland just last year to test the water, and the result was very positive. So in September this year we opened our doors to the Central European market. Here we can keep the overall spend of your project down, and still offer the same award-winning design we have always offered. Our UK counterparts have no comparison on price – that’s a deal signed and sealed.

Photoshop CS5 does have new features, but for those working with huge files, the 64-bit part is essential. It means that working with bigger files can be much faster, because operations can be performed in RAM.

The days of the scratch volume are over for Mac Pro users with adequate memory (excepting really monster jobs exceeding 60GB or so).

Memory usage

Memory in 32-bit CS5 is limited to 2100MB, nearly 1GB less than with Photoshop CS4 (3072MB vs 2100MB).

Problem is, many 32-bit plugins require 32-bit mode until new versions arrive. The only workaround seems to be run both CS4 and CS5 simultaneously.

The Cache Tile Size setting is a load of crap also. I mean… makes no sense!? The recommended default setting yields hugely impaired performance. And using a preset is well running blind. Adobe states “To quickly optimize these settings, click a preset…”. Rubbish!!! This is a careless decision (or maybe mistake). Something else should be done, perhaps maybe CS5 figuring it out automatically (self analysis).

Let’s just say that the performance levels were not to my liking. In fact, Photoshop CS5 performed worse than CS4. I was even more confused because Adobe touted the 64-bit nature of Phototshop CS5, which was supposed to bring all sorts of performance gains. I saw none of these, and in fact the opposite.

The Rotate View tool was sluggish and jumpy, brush resizing via the keyboard was jerky at times, zooming in and out was full of hiccups and lag.

Lest you think I’ve been holding on to some old outdated machine, I’m running a Mac Pro dual-quad 3.2 Ghz with 24 GB of RAM. And like I said, CS4 was blazingly fast for me. I was really disappointed in the upgrade. In fact, I was reverting back to using CS4 for my Photoshop needs.

Reaching the end of my rope, I finally did a Google search. I found the Mac Performance Guide article all about Optimizing Photoshop CS5 Performance.

The series of articles explains that most of the tips for CS4 were valid, but there were a few things specific to CS5 that could use a little work. In particular, the one tip that helped me was the Cache Tile Size tip. Seems this obscure little setting in the preferences has a huge impact on Photoshop CS5’s performance, and oddly it’s set by default to a number that kills Photoshop’s performance by up to 80% in some cases!

There’s also a Memory Allocation issue which — as the author suggests — is a bug and needs to be fixed by Adobe.

For general use, I’d probably use a history of 50 or so, because I like history then to these settings…

1024kb Cache   –   15 History   –   3 Cache levels
don’t even think about using 128K tiles with big files.

]]> http://slightlycurvedcube.co.uk/blog/more-free-wallpapers-to-download/feed 0 http://slightlycurvedcube.co.uk/blog/360 http://slightlycurvedcube.co.uk/blog/360#comments Thu, 24 Jun 2010 09:35:17 +0000 admin http://slightlycurvedcube.co.uk/blog/360

The first impression any potential customer will have of your brand is through the image it projects. We create logos for businesses that are solid, trustworthy and exude professionalism.

The logo is the face of any brand – a first impression – so the design is very important. When executed perfectly, ‘the logo’ is an extremely powerful asset to a client’s brand that should shine through with prowess. However, creating a brilliant visual representation of a brand requires much more than just graphic-design and a copy of Adobe Illustrator.

Slightly Curved Cube know that like any work that involves a set of specific skills, logo design requires plenty of practice and experience for it to be successful; knowledge is definitely power for any agency, and we have that knowledge.

You see – the whole point of creating a fantastic logo is to build your brand recognition. So, how do we go about doing this? Well, it varies from case to case but the goal with the logo is for the average person to instantly call the brand to mind. A few good examples of this are definitely the logos for Coca-Cola, Pepsi, McDonald’s, and Nike. Because just a glimpse of any of these logos is all you need to recognise the brand. The key to making a popular and recognisable logo is to combine size, style, colour, typography, and most importantly… originality.

Slightly Curved Cube never overlook any of these during the design process, as this would impair the quality of your final design.

Our process…

Our logo packages are concise and thorough. We carry out a fair bit of research before we design anything. We look at your competitors to see how you and your brand can be ‘different’ from your competitors and therefore shine through.

Slightly Curved Cube will sketch ideas on paper first to get a better understanding, as preliminary sketches are an important first step in designing a more effective logo. We will send you the sketched artwork via email before we commence ANY computer work.

From the initial sketches, we will initially supply our clients with 6 logo concepts as a PDF. Each will vary in style, but stay within the aesthetic qualities your target market. Then from the 6 logos delivered, we ask you to choose one and the chosen concept will be refined and tweaked with unlimited revisions until you receive the desired effect.

Our logos from £195 and full branding packages (POA), so why not contact us today? ]]> http://slightlycurvedcube.co.uk/blog/360/feed 1