I apologise for misleading you, the title of this blog does not embrace the magnitude of this award; it should really say Most Excellent People!

Of course, the whole CJ team is excellent but there were two who stood head and shoulders above the rest this week and they were:

Nathan Burn

Martyn Dyer 

Second time winner Martyn said; "I am honoured to have been given the award again, having the team's respect means a lot to me - I am now going to try and make it a hat-trick." 

Nathan is equally as determined, he is rooting for the tech team to become over all winners of the Most Excellent Person board.

Now that is a challenge and no doubt the CJ office will step up to it!

How would you describe yourself?

Professional, approachable, dedicated, Awesome?

Our offices in Twyford need another awesome person to add to the exceptional client services team.

We need a Project Manager, but not just any Project Manager, one that will blow our socks off.

The CJ team is bubbling with energy and excitement, and their summer BBQ’s are county-wide renowned.

If you think you are ready to show off your project management skills and work in an office that isn’t run-of-the-mill drudgery then get in touch

NOW!!

Sunday will be the longest day of the year and it is sad to think that the nights will be getting shorter.

So, make the most of it while you can!!

We had two winners this week, which sure did give everyone something to smile about. Tim Hustler, who was our first ever winner, received the award for person of note.

But the trophy went to a great team leader and hard-worker; who puts in the extra hours and always goes above and beyond the call of duty.

The winner is:

Nat Coxall

IKEA has long been an innovator of contemporary clean lines and had close associations with highly regarded designers (mostly Swedish). They have made the flat pack industry their own with peers either folding or falling by the wayside (MFI to name one). They are the epitome of Scandinavian design.

So the question is what possessed the powers that be to rebrand such a recognised identity and in the process replace Futura with Verdana as the corporate font? Sure Verdana is an extremely popular font that is used on millions of websites worldwide. But that is the point, aren't IKEA innovators rather than followers? Or is the choice of Verdana further enhancing that quirky reputation? There is another question, how many times have you seen one font used solely across all communication models? The majority of brands use complimentary fonts for use inappropriate instances.

The change of typeface has angered many IKEA fans, with online petitions and forums being set-up to give IKEA-ites a platform to vent their anger.

But they need to remember, this is IKEA! The brand often surprises and can produce random spots of advertising that often leave the viewer perplexed. It is what fascinates and draws people towards their products and brand.

Believe it or not my issue is not with the printed materials but the website. There is just no creative flair or inventive usage of the typestyles, no considerations have been made, it could almost be a direct CSS amend. Of course the site is extremely efficient, clean and functional, but I just can't help think that something is missing; something different and exciting. On certain pages within the site the use of the font overlaying an image renders the copy almost unreadable– again it's about the consideration and isn't what we expect from IKEA.

In the design world we are all aware of what to do and what not to do with Verdana. It is awful above 11px and even more grating in caps or bold. It is also a very wide font, that doesn't give you much room for manoeuvre. The champion site for using Verdana is the BBC, but even they introduce an alternative font on blog posts. That said IKEA handles the font weights and sizes very well across the majority of the site, there are just a few too many styles which makes certain pages look a little out of place.

As for the printed materials, on the whole I wasn't expecting too much, but the usage of Verdana doesn't actually jar too much. It has been sensitively applied at a readable, but not too large, point size. On the odd occasion I have seen pretty awful applications on recent IKEA deliverables, which are most probably outsourced for quick turnaround as they bear none of the careful considerations witnessed in the primary corporate communications.

The 2010 catalogue isn't a perfect example of how Verdana can work as a print font either,there are a number of pretty awful spreads – let's face it Futura is a much more flexible and accessible font that works in large, small, bold, caps or lowercase. In certain instances it would appear the fonts have just been switched and it just doesn't work like that when dealing with these two fonts.

At the end of the day IKEA have made a statement on the inside of their 2010 catalogue that reads, "We're constantly striving to cut costs without compromising quality." But surely the font switch has compromised quality to a certain degree. In effect it looks like a 'cheaper' font, but doesn't possess the quality that Futura offers. Verdana is a love/hate font and unfortunately the IKEA brand may now be looked at in the same light.

Although it is Friday (woo) it is unfortunately cloudy (boo); so no pub visit for the team today!

To make us all smile, and thanks to an office birthday, we have been cheered up with cake.  

The week has seen everyone get their heads down and work hard, but there was one person who stood out more than others thanks to his impressive creative turnaround, therefore it really was no surprise that this person received the most votes for Most Excellent Person of the week.

Congrats Simon Sturgess: 

Simon turned around awesome graphics super quick, really helping the team, and with no hint of a whinge!

Now the creative lot have had three wins the tech team are seething, and are ready to prove that they can win next week - so, who will pull it out the bag? Only a week until you can find out! 

Finally, we have had a gorgeous weekend, and who care's if it does rain all week, as long as the weekends are nice! right!?

If you agree then I suggest you don't look at the weather report via the BBC! Positive thinking will keep the rain clouds away...altogether now; 1,2,3 (think of sunshine!)

With the kids back at school, the roads have become heavier again, but it does mean that Waitrose is no longer full of bored kids following their parents round in the mid-week shop!

 But, Waitrose was not the choice du jour on Friday for THE award ceremony of the week. 

The sun was shining, and everyone piled into the garden as the most excellent person was announced.

This week, for his winning creative ideas, for the time and effort he put in and for not complaining once, the winner was 

Rob Cornish.

Before the whole team went to the pub for a beverage, there was another winner on the day. Of course, all the team work extremely hard, but we recognise when one stands out, so we would like to honour person of note:

Frankie Lowe 

Frankie had looked after a major project while the account manager's were away. She was constantly on hand to answer the clients calls, never flustering, and then handed the work back when the managers returned.

So, with drink tokens in hand, Frankie and Rob led us all to the pub garden. And a lovely time was had by all.

Or one can hope.

With the beginning of any new month comes the release of new statistics, and on Tuesday, StatCounter released the new set of results for the browser market share war in May 2010 with quite surprising results.

As rightly Mashable pointed out, and was music to many people's ears, the market share for Internet Explorer 6 in the UK and United States was at an all time low, roughly 6%. Great news considering in 2003, IE6 held a 90% market share!

You may have noticed that the 6% market share is for the UK and US, what about the rest of the world? According to StatCounter, the worldwide market share for IE6 is still at 13.74%, which doesn't seem a lot in the scheme of things. However when compared to other popular browsers such as Firefox 3.5, which still only has a 12.42% market share, we come to the realisation that the end isn't here, yet.

Why do we want to see the end of Internet Explorer 6? What was great at the time of its release, is now old news and holding us back.

IE6 is not only full of security holes, but as a digital agency who strives for cross-browser compatibility, the browser definitely has its fair share of bugs in terms of code interpretation and lack of transparent PNG support.

Moving forward, we can use the statistics to say that supporting Internet Explorer 6 isn't as important as it was back in 2003. Support for this out-dated browser should be decided upon the audience of the website you are building.

If the website is lucky enough to have tracking statistics such as Google Analytics, you can begin to look at what browsers its users tend to use. Is only less than 1% of your users using Internet Explorer 6 to view your website? Great, consider not supporting it then.

So for us designers and developers who are too often pulling their hair out because of a bug with the design in IE6, dropping support is not quite here, but soon. Patience, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

After weeks of nice weather, the bank holiday hits and not surprisingly there is rain!

Oh well, who needs a four day weekend filled to the brim with bbq's and flipflops?

Looking out the window the sun is poking through and there are rumours that this weekend will get to at least 24 degrees - pretty darn exciting!!

The office has been attacked by iPads, three Creative Jar'zens have been playing with their new toys since the weekend. They seem so common place now that no one even notices them - ha, if only this were true, the whole office is buzzing with what apps can be used, what accessories can be bought and it seems that when the new stock is out a whole load more iPads will appear on desks!

Although there is no four day weekend this week, at least we can take off the waterproofs and enjoy the sun (responsibly!)