Archive for September, 2010

Hurrah for Richard Gribbon!

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

If it were possible for me to celebrate an individual’s achievements by officially naming a day after them, the 14th September would be forever more ‘Richard Gribbon Day’.

It started out as a normal day in the office, that’s until I decided to tackle British Telecom again about a mix-up with our phone lines. We had moved out of our old office back in June and had just found out from the new tenants that one of our phone lines and our broadband (which were supposed to have been canceled by BT) were still live. So my mission was this… speak to BT, make sure that they were not going to charge us for the past three months, and get the relevant information from them so the new tenants could take over those services. Simple? You would think…

So I started by calling the main BT business number. An hour and a half later I had spoken to BT Business, BT Retail, BT Billings, the BT Movers team and was eventually put on hold for Customer Options for about 20 minutes listening to a lady repeatedly telling me how important my call was to her; before I finally lost the will to live and hung up.

Then on BT’s business support web page, I spotted a little graphic that said ‘Chat online to one of our support agents’. Desperation sometimes makes you do strange things, so I clicked on it and typed in my question. I had to admit, my expectations were a little ‘on the low side’ at this point.

BT online service chat

A slight pause and then a message appeared in the chat box…

James: Hi, my name is James. I am reviewing your question, please wait a moment
James: The complaint team cannot raise any orders to cancel any services for a customer. That has to be done by the sales team
James: I will transfer you to the online sales team regarding this matter.
James has disconnected. (Oh great, here we go again – wasn’t even aware I had contacted the complaint team!)
Richard Gribbon has joined the chat.
Richard Gribbon: Hi, my name is Richard Gribbon. I am reviewing your question, please wait a moment
Lisa Casson: OK – but the service should have been canceled by your movers team back in June. Have only just found out from a new tenant that has moved into our old building that the line is still in operation and so is the broadband service. The new company have requested that the line be transferred to them (they are going to use a different provider) but i need to make sure that 1. we will not be billed for any line rental or broadband charges since we moved out in June and 2. that I can get a MAC Code and pass this onto the new tenants. I have been passed through at least 5 people at BT this morning and I am still nowhere. Please HELP! Lisa
Lisa Casson: Hellooo? Anybody there…..
Lisa Casson: Richard? Have you lost the will to live? Join the club.
Communication with the RightNow Chat service has been lost. Please wait while attempts are made to restore the
connection. Disconnection in 240 seconds.
Connection resumed.
Lisa Casson: Richard – are you OK? If you can’t help with my query, just let me know that you are OK.
Lisa Casson: Please help…………………………………
Communication with the RightNow Chat service has been lost. Please wait while attempts are made to restore the
connection. Disconnection in 240 seconds.
Connection resumed.
Richard Gribbon: what is the line number you are talking about?
Lisa Casson: Richard you are alive! The number is 01892 614789. The BT reference given on the confirmation of
transfer letter is WLRSBv3.0p.
Richard Gribbon: 1 draper street tunbridge wells TN4 0PG
Lisa Casson: Yes that is our old business address. We moved from there in June and that line and the broadband were supposed to be canceled then. A company called Trophy Telecom have now moved in and want to take over the line and transfer it to another provider.
Communication with the RightNow Chat service has been lost. Please wait while attempts are made to restore the
connection. Disconnection in 240 seconds.
Connection resumed.
Lisa Casson: Richard? Richard? Oh god, I’ve lost you again.
Richard Gribbon: the mac code can be obtained from our customer options team, that deals with the broadband. if you place a stop order on the line that means that the new crowd can take it over and restart it, but this means that you are still liable for the calls and charges as the line is in your name, i will see how else i can help
Lisa Casson:I was on hold for 20 minutes to the customer options team this morning and gave up. I definitely want to make sure that Remedy Creative is not liable for any future charges on that line and also not for any since we moved out in June. I have an email to your Movers team that confirmed what we wanted to do with that line and it was clearly ignored. Want me to send it to you? The reference given to me by the Movers team was B41548ND. Please hang in there for me….
Richard Gribbon: on taking advice, the best thing to do is, leave everything as is, the new owner gets her company to apply to take over the line with their company from BT, that will take 10 days to go from BT to their supplier. alas you will have to go through to customer options team and get the migration code, they are the only department that can give you it. As for the billing issue i can raise a complaint issue for you, explaining that a move has been done and they did not cease of the original services and therefore you are not liable for the bills and charges since the move.
Lisa Casson: Ok so when they transfer the line to their new provider, our contract with BT for that line stops anyway?
Richard Gribbon: yes, because the line is no longer with BT
Richard Gribbon: what is your contact number?
Lisa Casson: OK got it. What about the broadband. Does this work in the same way? If i give them the MAC Code
presumably when they transfer the broadband, our contract will end anyway?
Richard Gribbon: yes they take over the broadband connection in 5 working days
Lisa Casson: Our contact number is 01892 614761. We like this number. Please do not cut this one off.
Richard Gribbon: now that will cost you….. joke
Richard Gribbon: calling you now
Lisa Casson: Oooh good. Look forward to it

And call he did. Not only did he call, but he was the only person I had spoken to at BT that day who was willing to try and get to the bottom of things. I appreciate that certain departments deal with certain things but when you are at the customer end, you often get the impression that as soon as the operator realises the complexity of the issue, they simply pass you on to someone else.

But not Mr Richard Gribbon. Oh no, he raised an investigation for me to explore why the services hadn’t been cancelled as requested. He put a note on the account to ensure that we will not be charged for the services and then he advised me to get myself “a cup of tea and a blanket” before putting me through to the Customer Options people to get the MAC code – apparently the queue can be quite long. Actually at that point in proceedings a bit of gentle humour and some honest management of my expectations was appreciated, as when they answered after a ‘mere’ ten minutes I felt that a small victory had been won.

Online chat as a support mechanism? I’ve never had all that much success with it before and to be honest BT’s system disconnecting a few times was a little irritating – but not as much as being on hold and repeatedly being told how much you are valued.

It’s the individuals behind the technology that make the difference to the consumer in the end and if you ever find yourself needing to contact BT about a problem, click on that little chat icon and pray that it’s Mr Richard Gribbon who responds.

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Posted by Lisa in business, online | Add a response

Extra-curricular creativity Pt. 3 – WIN A LIMITED EDITION POSTER

Thursday, September 16th, 2010

Ding Ding, it’s round 3 of ‘Extra-curricular creativity’.

The brief: to create a series of iconic posters inspired by the movies that would sell like… err, really popular posters.
This concept features a triple smack-down extravaganza of… in the blue corner, the Kazakh Killer – Borat; in the red corner, Napoleon ‘TNT’ Dynamite; and in the khaki corner, the undisputed Heavy Weight Champion of Kitsch Kool, Mr B.A. Baracus.

3 limited edition posters from Remedy Creative

Not sure what Obama would have to say about our lampooning his campaign poster…

but we love ‘em. In fact so much so, we’re getting a set of limited edition prints done.

VOTE NOW for your favourite for a chance to win a very limited edition, framed A2 poster.

All you have to do is leave a comment below to be entered into the draw. Tell us your name, your email address and which is your favourite poster. If your name is pulled out of the hat, we’ll send a framed print of the poster you voted for, now how lovely is that!

And just for fun, if you’ve got any great ideas for other screen icon / four-letter word poster combos, post them along with your vote in the response box below and we’ll have a crack at designing the best.

And one last thing, in case you’re catching up, check out Extra-curricular creativity Pt. 1 and Extra-curricular creativity Pt. 2

Terms & Conditions:
1. Entry to the prize draw is restricted to one entry per person.
2. Multiple entries, automated entries and bulk entries will be disqualified.
3. Entries must be received by midday on 30th September 2010.
4. A winner will be drawn randomly from all the entries received.
5. The winner will be contacted via email on 30th September 2010 and delivery of the prize will be arranged.
6. The winner consents for their name to be used for publicity purposes by Remedy Creative Ltd. in printed and/or online formats.
7. Remedy Creative will not pass on your details to any third party without your prior consent, but your name will be shown on our blog.

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Posted by Jonathan in competition, creativity, design | 26 Responses

Mind your Ps and Qs! The forgotten art of typography

Monday, September 6th, 2010

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

The above sentence took a few of seconds to type out, and wouldn’t take much longer to print. Control P; Return – easy.

Rewind a hundred years or so and it wouldn’t be such a care-free process. A visit to St Bride Printing Library in Fleet Street got me hooked on the old method of typesetting; composing layouts using metal type and printing them using a letterpress.

The skill and dexterity that was needed to produce the simplest of things was fascinating. By comparison, the art of printing as we know it today is such a straightforward and accessible process. Something that takes hours to produce using letterpress, can be done in a matter of seconds with a computer.

I was intrigued to find out how digital typesetting compares in technique to the handling of physical type as a way of composing text. So my curiosity got the better of me and led to the purchase of a 1960′s Adana press, along with a shed-load of hot metal type to go with it.

press

A few hours into my first printing attempt, it was clear I had no idea what I had gotten myself into. I suddenly found typesetting to be a truly painstaking process – having to compose each individual character upside down and back-to-front to form words, sentences and paragraphs – with mistakes so easily made.

pressmetal

Despite the fact that letterpress is an outdated medium; as an educational tool it gives designers the knowledge of the fundamental basics of good typography. It’s the so-called minor details of typesetting that can have a huge affect on the legibility of a sentence or paragraph. Details such as leading and tracking are (more often than not) forgotten, ignored, or simply unknown to many designers in the digital age. Whereas with letterpress, these details are so significant to the outcome of a piece of design.

pressprint

After a couple of weeks slaving over the press, I found the whole process became quite inspirational. It wasn’t just about handling the type, but how it informs the way in which you approach everything from type to layout. As letterpress is so laborious and time consuming, I found myself making conscious design decisions prompted by a concrete understanding that each minute decision affects the outcome.

There is no denying the fact that digital technology has revolutionised the way in which graphic designers produce their work – speed, creative freedom, and accurate print reproduction being the major advantages. But I believe there is a case for the letterpress process to continue to be practiced, especially in education. The (eventual) simplicity and technologically uncomplicated nature of the process means that it is a fantastic way to learn the basic rules of typography and design. And of course, once you master the rules, you are free to break them and produce some truly wonderful work. All hail the mighty letterpress!

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Posted by Sam in typography | Add a response