1541 Marketing

My wife's new business has opened up a creative avenue for me.  Not only have I designed her website and her business cards but I've just done a banner ad for the Journal of the Law Society of Scotland (out in the May 2012 issue, hopefully).

Actually, it's not an entirely new idea (as it's based on one of the images we use on the website and on the business cards) but at least it did get me back into GIMP again and helped refresh a few of the skills I'd forgotten I had.

As noted before I'm not at all keen on the normal corporate approach or images and so have gone for something that I hope that you won't see very often in a sober and traditional Scots lawyers' publication.

The idea was to do something striking, intriguing and simple that would catch the attention and draw the reader in, even if only for a few seconds.  In other words:

1) "Hey, interesting image"
2) "Eh, 1541?  What's that supposed to be?"
3) "Ah, I get it."

Something like that anyway. As the Journal has a circulation of 20,000 lawyers we reckon that if we get one new client (or just two small jobs on the back of it) it will be worth it.  Ah, creativity!

Too poor, too wee and too stupid

I had never intended to post anything about Scottish politics on this blog as it was always meant to be a place for me to explore some of my eclectic (possibly esoteric) interests.  However, the front cover of the latest edition of the Economist has forced my hand.  Would ye look at this (click to enlarge):

For those of you who'd like some of the real information that the mainstream media (MSM) seem determined that the general public won't find out about then please look for the antidote here:

A to Z of Unionist myths

Wings over Scotland

If your bent is economic then I refer you to the McCrone report (note this links to a pdf) from 1975, which was an official report suppressed by successive UK governments, on how Scotland would have fared if it had had control over oil revenues (in summary - very well indeed).  They were particularly worried about favourable comparisons with Norway (population 4.7m, less than Scotland).

Also here is the latest official Government and Expenditure Report Scotland (GERS), which shows that Scotland raised more in taxes (yes, we do actually have jobs and industry here) last year (based on a conservative assessment of revenues) than it received from Westminster.  Which kind of indicates what a load of tripe the Economist's slant really is.