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How to Create a Style Guide

How many times have you commissioned business cards to print and received yet another version of your corporate colour? Ever been frantic to see your advert in the latest newspaper and then noticed that the crucial tag line is gone or your logo has been squashed.

There is only one way to prevent 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 : Mark the audience for your Style Guide. Is this for staff to work in-house or is this for suppliers and contractors to refer to?

Step 2 : Mark what your output uses are. This is important because you will need 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 : Assure 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 : Assure to accommodate any contributing logos or logos of business that are linked with you. It’s also important that you send a copy of the layout to these companies to insure they agree with the layout of their logo as they too may have their own Style Guide and hierarchy layout rules.

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

Step 7 : Confirm 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 comes in and trains your staff on how to utilize 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.

July 31st, 2010UncategorizedRead More >No Comments


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

The typical question heard when buying a new projector for the home, office, or classroom is: should I buy an LCD projector or a DLP projector? LCD, short for ‘liquid crystal device’ and DLP, which stands for ‘digital light processing’ are the two commonplace projector imaging technologies. With so many different brands and different types available, it can be confusing for customers to pick between these technologies. The simple fact of the matter is that LCD projectors offer far better image quality and colour accuracy. The article below will tell you why DLP projectors struggle with creating the same level of image quality.

Visualise a set of blinds in your home over your bedroom window. By twisting a rod you can have the shutters open or closed, according to if you want to let light in or not. Such is exactly how an LCD projector functions. Each pixel operates like an individual shutter on a set of blinds to either shine 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 works to either reflect light or block it.

How the light source is processed from when the projector is switched on to when the image reaches your screen is vitally important to image quality, brightness and colour accuracy. LCD projectors process white light from the lamp by cutting it into red, blue and green components, by three mirrors which project the coloured light to 3 stand alone LCD panels. The 3 LCD panels cast the elements of the image by processing each pixel on and off. The pixels are then combined in a glass prism to deliver the projector image. An important point to understad about LCD projectors is that all three colours are delivered onto your wall at the same time. The way a DLP projector functions is totally different and even the final product of how an image looks is not the same. With DLP, white light from the lamp is directed through a rotating colour wheel with transparent red, blue and green segments, at speeds up to 11,000 rpm/s. This method of projecting an image requires a sequence of red, blue and green light. The millions of micro mirrors described above reflect the coloured light on the pixels to form the image elements. The elements of the image are projected in sequence on the screen, one colour at a time. The viewer’s eyes will then pull together each coloured element of the image into the single total image. In LCD projectors, all colours are available all the time to form the best brightness and superb colour accuracy. In DLP, only one colour is available at once, and so causing lower colour brightness and accuracy. Some developers have included a white segment for the colour wheel to improve brightness overall, but this then detracts from colour accuracy.

I read in forums all the time that DLP has a higher contrast ratio and ergo must be superior. For those unsure, 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 capable of. DLP projectors do have high contrast specifications in comparison to many LCD projectors. At first glance, this must be a benefit, however, in the real world, the true black level is determined by the ambient light in the room where the projector is used. Do not be fooled by contrast specifications on websites and in brochures.

When the content you are trying to project has moving images, DLP projection technology also creates image imperfections, or ‘artifacts’. The most commonplace artifact that a DLP projector forms with moving images is colour break up. Colour break up is to be expected in DLP systems because moving images keep changing between the time red, blue and green colours are shone. LCD projectors do not have this characteristic because all colours are sent at once. DLP builders have formed 3DLP solutions using 3 chips to resolve the colour break up problem, but the price tag of these projectors make them not practical for the majority of businesses and consumers.

Another difference between LCD and DLP is how they match the balance for the refractive qualities of light. Take yourself back to high school science, and recall when they taught you how various colours of light refract differing amounts when shone through the same lens. The downfall with DLP projectors is that they have the one same panel with the same lens to project Red, Blue and Green. All 3 colours are obviously different and refract light differently. Generally with a DLP projector, an extra yellow colour will appear above and an extra blue will come through below an image of something as simple as a single black line. In building LCD projectors can be adjusted to reduce these effects on the projected image, because each colour is refracted on separate LCD panels.

The isolated true benefit (excluding price) with deciding on a DLP projector is its smaller overall size and weight. However, this is only relevant in regard to mobility and must be traded off against the image benefits of LCD projectors. If overall picture quality is vital to you, then the decision is a no-brainer. Choose an LCD projector! LCD projectors will constantly make bright, colourful images with fewer image imperfections. If you want 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, visit Projector Central and send me an email.

Jonathan King is the sales and marketing manager for Projector Central, Australia’s number one online store for projectors. Brisbane-based, Projector Central has serviced Australia for 15 years. For data projectors in the Gold Coast and Interactive Whiteboards, contact Projector Central today.

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July 19th, 2010UncategorizedRead More >No Comments


Yachting and Yacht Clubs

As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht had been a leisure craft used initially by royalty and later by the burghers on the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, coming out of private games. English yachting originated with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his reaffirmation to the English royalty in 1660, the city of Amsterdam sent him 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), ordered for additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 wager. Yachting rose as classy with the rich and royalty, but after that time the trend did not last.

The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, with great naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club endured, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when joining with other groups, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing began in some organized manner on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to monarchy in 1820, it was then known as the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded following a racing dispute, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht society had been started at Cowes on the Isle of Wight in 1815, and royal sponsorship made the Solent - the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight - the continuing site of British yachting. The club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the ascension of George IV. All members were required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for great bets were held, and the society life was lovely. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to bigger than 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 gained dominance. Sailing was for the most part for leisure and rose to its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and created a minimum of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht society, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts were within the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the latter half of the 19th century. The craft of large yachts was originally greatly put upon by the victory of America, which was created 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 success at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and built in the modern sense, with just a model for an outline. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the science of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what it had previously done for hulls.

Because nearly all sailboats had to be individually custom-built, there was a need for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were made. Therefore, a rating rule came into being, which ended up in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and edited in 1919. In modern times, one of the rapidly flourishing areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to single specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between those boats can be had on an even playing field with no handicapping at all. A perfect example is the generic International America’s Cup Class taken on board for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

So long as yachting belonged largely for the royal and the rich, money was no issue, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The rise and desire of smaller craft 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 trip around the world (1895–98) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the hardiness of small yachts. Following this in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and leisure craft became more common, down to the dinghy, a favourite training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, yachts of less than 3 m were sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
After the decade 1840–50, at which point steam started to take the place of sail power in commercial vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed more and more in leisure craft. Large power yachts were developed to a high standard, and long-distance travel became a favoured occupation of the affluent. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave way to yachts powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht archetype for a number of years. By the latter half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were solely power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.

In the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the design of large steam yachts. Conspicuous among these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, with triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was manned by a crew of at least 150. The Mayflower, bought by the United States Navy in 1898, was the official yacht of the president of the United States until 1929 and saw active service for World War II.

As more sizeable and more reliable internal-combustion engines were produced, many bigger craft started using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, progressed from World War I. From the decade following, large power-yacht creation flourished, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that point the largest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The construction of larger power craft declined from 1932, and the trend thereafter was in preference of smaller, less expensive craft. From World War II, many small naval craft were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting had become a globally loved competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually sailing and keeping their own small leisure boats. The number of craft and sailors is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional locations by the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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July 16th, 2010UncategorizedRead More >No Comments


Proportional, Progressive, and Regressive taxes

Taxes are differentiated by the impact they have on the allocation of income and wealth. A proportional tax is a tax that puts the same relative onus on all taxpayers—i.e., in the case where tax liability and income grow in equal scale. A progressive tax is characterized by a greater than proportional increase in the tax burden in relation to the increase in income, and a regressive tax is characterized by a less than proportional growth in the comparable onus. So, progressive taxes are viewed as taking away the lack of equality in income distribution, while regressive taxes may have the effect of an increase in these inequalities.

The taxes that are generally thought to be progressive include individual income taxes and estate taxes. Income taxes that are nominally progressive, however, could become less so within the upper-income class—especially if a taxpayer is allowed to lower his tax base by declaring deductions or by removing some income components from his taxable income. Proportional tax rates if applied to lower-income demographics could also be more progressive if exemptions of a personal nature are declared.

Income measured over the period of a year may not necessarily offer the best measure of taxpaying status. For example, transitory increases in income may be saved, and within temporary declines in income a taxpayer may decide to pay for consumption by taking from savings. So, if taxation is regarded along with “permanent income,” it can be less regressive (or more progressive) than when it is held in comparison with annual income.

Sales taxes and excises (save on luxuries) tend to be regressive, because the share of one’s income consumed or spent for specific goods lowers as the rate of personal income is raised. Poll taxes (also termed head taxes), calculated as a standard amount per capita, obviously are regressive.

It is complicated to classify corporate income taxes and taxes on business as progressive, regressive, or proportionate, principally due to the uncertainty regarding the ability of businesses to shift their tax expenses (see below Shifting and incidence). This difficulty of nominating who bears the tax burden lays essentially on whether a national or a subnational (that is, provincial or state) tax is being debated.

In analysing the economic effects of taxation, it is important to distinguish between several concepts of tax rates. The statutory rates include those nominated in legislation; generally these are marginal rates, but sometimes they are mean rates. Marginal income tax rates denote the fraction of incremental income that is taken by taxation when income rises by one dollar. Ergo, if tax liability increases by 45 cents when income increases by one dollar, the marginal tax rate is 45 percent. Income tax legislature often contain graduated marginal rates—i.e., rates that rise as income rises. Structured analysis of marginal tax rates should take into account provisions apart from the formal statutory rate structure. If, for example, a particular tax credit (reduction in tax) declines by 20 cents for each one-dollar increase in income, the marginal rate is 20 percentage points more than specified within the statutory rates. Since marginal rates signify how after-tax income increases or decreases in response to changes in before-tax income, they are the relevant ones for considering incentive effects of taxation. It is even more complicated to understand the marginal effective tax rate to apply to income from business and capital, since it may be dependant on factors including the structure of depreciation allowances, the deductibility of interest, and the provisions for inflation adjustment. A basic economic theorem holds that the marginal effective tax rate in income from capital is nothing under a consumption-based tax.

Average income tax rates signify the part of total income that is demanded in taxation. The pattern of average rates is the one that is relevant for considering the distributional equity of taxation. Under a progressive income tax the average income tax rate increases with income. Average income tax rates usually rise with income, both because personal allowances are provided for the taxpayer and dependents and due to that marginal tax rates are graduated; on the flip side, preferential treatment of income received mostly by high-income households might swamp these effects, producing regressivity, as signified by average tax rates that decrease as income increases.

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

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July 8th, 2010UncategorizedRead More >No Comments


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

beach-front-21-300x225Tangalooma Island Resort is an earthly haven that can be found in Tangalooma, Queensland in Australia. Originally, it was a whaling station and was turned into an island resort because of its rare flora and fauna and its spectacular views. Couples or families seeking a choice getaway destination can expect to certainly cherish a Tangalooma Island Resort holiday.

This paradise lies on the west side of Moreton Island, right by Moreton Bay. It is reknowned for its rare white beaches and it has been a whale reserve since the year 1962, when the whaling station was closed down.

When experiencing a Tangalooma Island Resort vacation, you can expect to be attended to by friendly and understanding staff whilst being carried away by the glorious white sand beaches. You should also participate in a lot of activities from wreck diving to feeding and playing with the dolphins. You cannot help but definitely enjoy every second of your break.

Tangalooma has a tiny population of 300, but tourists has ensured this small township to grow and ensure the visual and spectacular glory of the island. Above 3500 holidaymakers enjoy the resort every week, and even more in peak seasons. The local government has also formed a Centre for Marine Education and Conservation, to tell and train the local population and tourists about the necessity of keeping up the marine life in the area. The centre has employed marine biologists to offer information awareness drives and programs, which is part of the nature tour package for holidaymakers.

Throughout a Tangalooma Island Resort holiday, everyone cannot help but cherish their stay as they have more than eighty activities to pick from - but maybe the highlight of your getaway could be the chance to experience the beauty of nature. Visitors can go sight-seeing and feel the stunning sunrise and sunset by the beach, or play with the dolphins that live around the resort.

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

July 1st, 2010UncategorizedRead More >No Comments