Monday 1 December 2008
Coventry Villagebuzz
Having moved to Coventry I have just started a new online community. Coventry Villagebuzz: http://coventry.villagebuzz.co.uk/index.php Obviously it uses Harbury Villagebuzz as a template. But with 300,000 people instead of 2,500 it will be interesting to see what happens.
Friday 19 September 2008
Harbury Villagebuzz logo.
From: http://www.bruceongames.com/2008/06/02/25-50-logo/
Logos are great, a small piece of visual shorthand that represents something much bigger. A brand, a product, a service. Our lives are full of them and we each have hundreds, maybe thousands that we instantly recognise and which have complex meanings for us. Ferrari’s prancing horse, Coca Cola, Apple, Google, Intel, Marlboro, McDonald’s, Dell, Kellogg’s, MTV, Shell and so many more are recognised by hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
You can pay a lot of money for a logo. Companies spend hundreds of thousands of pounds in branding exercises that sometimes end in failure. At a more normal, everyday, level an artist or marketing agency will basically charge what they can get away with. Sometimes, when you are buying print, web design or advertising, the logo comes for “free”.
But it is not the price that matters. It is the image. There are so many logos around that many now look like each other which destroys the whole point. Even very major organisations can end up with nondescript images to represent themselves. For this reason I have always preferred text based logos that spell out the brand name. You need to be a very big brand indeed, like say Mercedes Benz with their three pointed star, to get away with anything else.
And now, just like everything else, branding has met the internet. And like everything else it has driven down price and driven up convenience. So now we have services like 25 Pound Logo who I have just used to create a logo for the Harbury Villagebuzz website. There are similar services in America, but the geographical location is irrelevant.
Although these prices are cheap the service certainly isn’t. You create a brief and they very rapidly send you a selection of rough ideas. You can pick from these and/or revise an unlimited number of times. The logos are unique and original created by real artists and are not just clipart or templates. The service is just as good, or possibly better, as going to a fancy expensive branding company. For Villagebuzz I went through two sets of submissions to get what I wanted which was then made into finished artwork, all in just a few days.
At this price you can create useful logos for all sorts of things that you maybe wouldn’t have bothered with before: for a company department or studio, within a game, to represent a concept or idea, for a building or even a room within a building and so on. The possibilities are endless. You can certainly go and have some fun with this!
Logos are great, a small piece of visual shorthand that represents something much bigger. A brand, a product, a service. Our lives are full of them and we each have hundreds, maybe thousands that we instantly recognise and which have complex meanings for us. Ferrari’s prancing horse, Coca Cola, Apple, Google, Intel, Marlboro, McDonald’s, Dell, Kellogg’s, MTV, Shell and so many more are recognised by hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
You can pay a lot of money for a logo. Companies spend hundreds of thousands of pounds in branding exercises that sometimes end in failure. At a more normal, everyday, level an artist or marketing agency will basically charge what they can get away with. Sometimes, when you are buying print, web design or advertising, the logo comes for “free”.
But it is not the price that matters. It is the image. There are so many logos around that many now look like each other which destroys the whole point. Even very major organisations can end up with nondescript images to represent themselves. For this reason I have always preferred text based logos that spell out the brand name. You need to be a very big brand indeed, like say Mercedes Benz with their three pointed star, to get away with anything else.
And now, just like everything else, branding has met the internet. And like everything else it has driven down price and driven up convenience. So now we have services like 25 Pound Logo who I have just used to create a logo for the Harbury Villagebuzz website. There are similar services in America, but the geographical location is irrelevant.
Although these prices are cheap the service certainly isn’t. You create a brief and they very rapidly send you a selection of rough ideas. You can pick from these and/or revise an unlimited number of times. The logos are unique and original created by real artists and are not just clipart or templates. The service is just as good, or possibly better, as going to a fancy expensive branding company. For Villagebuzz I went through two sets of submissions to get what I wanted which was then made into finished artwork, all in just a few days.
At this price you can create useful logos for all sorts of things that you maybe wouldn’t have bothered with before: for a company department or studio, within a game, to represent a concept or idea, for a building or even a room within a building and so on. The possibilities are endless. You can certainly go and have some fun with this!
Friday 1 August 2008
Harbury.villagebuzz on Knol
Link: http://knol.google.com/k/bruce-everiss/harburyvillagebuzzcouk/2l81m4yln1pbt/34#
With the success of Artforums.co.uk I decided to create another forum, but this time for a community that already exists, the community I live in. Harbury and the nearby villages in Warwickshire, England.
Many villages already have successful forums so the precedent is there. Harbury already has an excellent Parish Council website which is entirely complimentary with Villagebuzz. The two sites each do different things and together bring a lot to the community and provide the outsider with a great insight.
Harbury has a population of over 2,500 and there are some similar sized villages nearby such as Kineton and Bishop's Itchington. So all together the potential catchment is probably about 20,000 people. More than enough to support an active forum.
The forum is divided into areas designed to represent the interests of the community. Welcome is for new menbers joining the community and Village Chat is potentially the most popular area as people discuss local issues. General chat is there to suck up all the off topic stuff and keep the other areas on topic and Local News is precisely that. Pubs are focal points of our communities so they have their own area along with restaurants whilst Local Businesses is there for people to advertise what they do and as an index for locals. Upcoming events is very important because there is a lot going on and Clubs and Associations gives an idea just how thriving the community is with a huge array of activities. Jobs are important as is Schools and Education. Accomodation is a valuable resource for visitors and Free Advertising is a very useful feature. Religion is there because it still has some resonance with the community whilst Useful Links is a storehouse of knowledge about the area.
The problem with forums is that to start them you have a chicken and egg situation. Nobody is going to post until the forum is active, but the forum won't be active until people post. To try and get round this I have seeded the forum with hundreds of posts on every subject possible. In doing the research for this I have learned an enormous amount and the resultant body of information is by far the biggest source of facts and information about the area available on the internet.
This is a fascinating area. It has a history going back thousands of years. Aston Martin cars are built in Gaydon, Jaguar Land Rover have major facilities there and it is the home of the Heritage Motor Museum. An amazing concentration of motor car related facilities. Codemasters is here, in Stoneythorpe, and we have an excellent art museum at Compton Verney. The DSDA at Kineton is the biggest arms depot in Europe.
A number of threads have proved popular:
Tombstoning at Bishop's Bowls is about young people jumping off cliffs into old flooded quarries. I posted links to some youtube videos and the story was picked up by the local and regional print and broadcast media.
DSDA Kineton, it took a lot of work to dig out any information about this highly secret place. So now this is the biggest online collated source of information about the it and as such is creating traffic from search engines.
House prices coming down is about the hot topic of the moment, but with added local relevancy.
Saint Wulfstan is about the patron saint of vegetarians who was born locally 1,000 years ago.
And Did you know these 12 things about Harbury? is a great challenge for local people and a handy look at some interesting facts about the area.
Some of the villages near Harbury:
Bishop's Itchington, Lighthorne, Gaydon, Kineton, Depper's Bridge, Ladbroke, Ufton, Offchurch, Napton on the Hill, Bascote, Long Itchington, Chesterton, Ashorne, Moreton Morrell, Stockton, Knightcote, Radford Semele, Bishops Tachbrook, Northend.
With the success of Artforums.co.uk I decided to create another forum, but this time for a community that already exists, the community I live in. Harbury and the nearby villages in Warwickshire, England.
Many villages already have successful forums so the precedent is there. Harbury already has an excellent Parish Council website which is entirely complimentary with Villagebuzz. The two sites each do different things and together bring a lot to the community and provide the outsider with a great insight.
Harbury has a population of over 2,500 and there are some similar sized villages nearby such as Kineton and Bishop's Itchington. So all together the potential catchment is probably about 20,000 people. More than enough to support an active forum.
The forum is divided into areas designed to represent the interests of the community. Welcome is for new menbers joining the community and Village Chat is potentially the most popular area as people discuss local issues. General chat is there to suck up all the off topic stuff and keep the other areas on topic and Local News is precisely that. Pubs are focal points of our communities so they have their own area along with restaurants whilst Local Businesses is there for people to advertise what they do and as an index for locals. Upcoming events is very important because there is a lot going on and Clubs and Associations gives an idea just how thriving the community is with a huge array of activities. Jobs are important as is Schools and Education. Accomodation is a valuable resource for visitors and Free Advertising is a very useful feature. Religion is there because it still has some resonance with the community whilst Useful Links is a storehouse of knowledge about the area.
The problem with forums is that to start them you have a chicken and egg situation. Nobody is going to post until the forum is active, but the forum won't be active until people post. To try and get round this I have seeded the forum with hundreds of posts on every subject possible. In doing the research for this I have learned an enormous amount and the resultant body of information is by far the biggest source of facts and information about the area available on the internet.
This is a fascinating area. It has a history going back thousands of years. Aston Martin cars are built in Gaydon, Jaguar Land Rover have major facilities there and it is the home of the Heritage Motor Museum. An amazing concentration of motor car related facilities. Codemasters is here, in Stoneythorpe, and we have an excellent art museum at Compton Verney. The DSDA at Kineton is the biggest arms depot in Europe.
A number of threads have proved popular:
Tombstoning at Bishop's Bowls is about young people jumping off cliffs into old flooded quarries. I posted links to some youtube videos and the story was picked up by the local and regional print and broadcast media.
DSDA Kineton, it took a lot of work to dig out any information about this highly secret place. So now this is the biggest online collated source of information about the it and as such is creating traffic from search engines.
House prices coming down is about the hot topic of the moment, but with added local relevancy.
Saint Wulfstan is about the patron saint of vegetarians who was born locally 1,000 years ago.
And Did you know these 12 things about Harbury? is a great challenge for local people and a handy look at some interesting facts about the area.
Some of the villages near Harbury:
Bishop's Itchington, Lighthorne, Gaydon, Kineton, Depper's Bridge, Ladbroke, Ufton, Offchurch, Napton on the Hill, Bascote, Long Itchington, Chesterton, Ashorne, Moreton Morrell, Stockton, Knightcote, Radford Semele, Bishops Tachbrook, Northend.
Harbury on Knol
Link: http://knol.google.com/k/bruce-everiss/harbury/2l81m4yln1pbt/2#
Harbury is an ancient, prehistoric village sitting on a hill which rises 100 feet (30 metres) above the surrounding countryside near the Fosse Way Roman road in Warwickshire. It is named after Hereburgh, a female tribal chieftan of about 500BC, but the immediate area was populated from 1,000 years earlier due to it's strategic position. The locality has a large number of old quarries that were used to extract lyas limestone used in the manufacture of cement. These are now used for recreational purposes or for landfill. When they were worked large numbers of Jurassic fossils were found including ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs remains which are now in the Warwickshire museum and the Natural History Museum in London.
In Roman times a town of 27 ha size was built straddling the Fosse Way near Harbury. Today the remains lie below fields and only small, explaratory, excavations have been attempted.
After the Norman conquest of England in 1066 the village of Harbury was given to Henry de Ferrers, an ancestor of Princess Diana.
The legends of Robin Hood may well be based on Robert Fitz Odo, a nobleman turned robber, who was living in Harbury in 1203.
A very well known poet from the mid 1700s, Richard Jago, was vicar of Harbury, living here for 8 years.
Harbury was known as Hungry Harbury for over 100 years in the 18th and 19th century because it was so poor. Residents of nearby villages sent charitable donations of food to keep the residents here fed in the winter.
In the late 1700s/early 1800s Harbury's 13th century church (All Saints) tower was leaning over so they built the large buttresses you see today to try and keep it up. This didn't work so they removed the stone top of the tower, planning to replace it with a stone steeple. You can still see the plan today in the bell ringing room at the church. However due to shortage of funds, in 1811-1815, they built a short brick top to the tower which was stepped in to keep it small.
The Chiltern Railway runs through Harbury in the deepest railway cutting in Europe (at over 100 feet) made purely by manual labour and opened in 1847. Some of the waste from this work is now an SSSI (site of special scientific interest) that is one of the top butterfly habitats in the UK.
Harbury has a current population of over 2,500 who are served by five vibrant village pubs, The Shakespeare, The Crown, The Dog Inn, The Old New Inn and The Gamecockand and by one club. There is a popular rugby club and the village hosts a large number of community events throughout the year as well as having a wide range of societies for hobby activities. The annual Harbury beer festival is well established and rightly popular.
Local employers include Codemasters, the video games company, and Aston Martin, the sports car manufacturer.
Harbury man Philip Bushill-Matthews is leader of the Conservatives in the European parliament and teenager, Jordan King, is a karting ace, following in the footsteps of Lewis Hamilton, his father Justin is the CEO of Sainsbury's. Harbury singing duo Danansooz recorded an album "At Last".
Links:
Harbury community forum and information.
Local Government. Parish Council website.
Hereburgh Morris, traditional dancing.
Harbury is an ancient, prehistoric village sitting on a hill which rises 100 feet (30 metres) above the surrounding countryside near the Fosse Way Roman road in Warwickshire. It is named after Hereburgh, a female tribal chieftan of about 500BC, but the immediate area was populated from 1,000 years earlier due to it's strategic position. The locality has a large number of old quarries that were used to extract lyas limestone used in the manufacture of cement. These are now used for recreational purposes or for landfill. When they were worked large numbers of Jurassic fossils were found including ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs remains which are now in the Warwickshire museum and the Natural History Museum in London.
In Roman times a town of 27 ha size was built straddling the Fosse Way near Harbury. Today the remains lie below fields and only small, explaratory, excavations have been attempted.
After the Norman conquest of England in 1066 the village of Harbury was given to Henry de Ferrers, an ancestor of Princess Diana.
The legends of Robin Hood may well be based on Robert Fitz Odo, a nobleman turned robber, who was living in Harbury in 1203.
A very well known poet from the mid 1700s, Richard Jago, was vicar of Harbury, living here for 8 years.
Harbury was known as Hungry Harbury for over 100 years in the 18th and 19th century because it was so poor. Residents of nearby villages sent charitable donations of food to keep the residents here fed in the winter.
In the late 1700s/early 1800s Harbury's 13th century church (All Saints) tower was leaning over so they built the large buttresses you see today to try and keep it up. This didn't work so they removed the stone top of the tower, planning to replace it with a stone steeple. You can still see the plan today in the bell ringing room at the church. However due to shortage of funds, in 1811-1815, they built a short brick top to the tower which was stepped in to keep it small.
The Chiltern Railway runs through Harbury in the deepest railway cutting in Europe (at over 100 feet) made purely by manual labour and opened in 1847. Some of the waste from this work is now an SSSI (site of special scientific interest) that is one of the top butterfly habitats in the UK.
Harbury has a current population of over 2,500 who are served by five vibrant village pubs, The Shakespeare, The Crown, The Dog Inn, The Old New Inn and The Gamecockand and by one club. There is a popular rugby club and the village hosts a large number of community events throughout the year as well as having a wide range of societies for hobby activities. The annual Harbury beer festival is well established and rightly popular.
Local employers include Codemasters, the video games company, and Aston Martin, the sports car manufacturer.
Harbury man Philip Bushill-Matthews is leader of the Conservatives in the European parliament and teenager, Jordan King, is a karting ace, following in the footsteps of Lewis Hamilton, his father Justin is the CEO of Sainsbury's. Harbury singing duo Danansooz recorded an album "At Last".
Links:
Harbury community forum and information.
Local Government. Parish Council website.
Hereburgh Morris, traditional dancing.
Wednesday 23 July 2008
Did you know these 12 things about Harbury?
1) 200 million years ago Harbury was at the bottom of a shallow ocean. The wierd and wonderful Jurassic creatures from that time are preserved in the large numbers of fossils in the limestone beneath our feet. viewtopic.php?f=16&t=297
2) One of Princess Diana's ancestors, Henry de Ferrers, owned Harbury. viewtopic.php?f=16&t=271
3) The arms depot in Kineton contains enough explosives to remove the area from the map. As the largest arms dump in Europe it houses a high percentage of the 1.5 million tons of high explosives stored by the British military. viewtopic.php?f=16&t=56
4) Harbury singing duo Danansooz recorded an album "At Last". viewtopic.php?f=16&t=126
5) 1,000 years ago a saint was born locally. Saint Wulfstan is now the patron saint of vegetarians. viewtopic.php?f=16&t=93
6) Harbury teenager, Jordan King, is a karting ace, following in the footsteps of Lewis Hamilton. viewtopic.php?f=17&t=98
7) A very well known poet from the mid 1700s, Richard Jago, was vicar of Harbury, living here for 8 years. viewtopic.php?f=16&t=276
8) Harbury man Philip Bushill-Matthews is leader of the Conservatives in the European parliament. viewtopic.php?f=16&t=202
9) The legends of Robin Hood may well be based on Robert Fitz Odo, who was living in Harbury in 1203. viewtopic.php?f=7&t=204
10) A Roman town of 27 ha size lies buried under the fields just outside Harbury. viewtopic.php?f=16&t=81
11) Harbury was known as Hungry Harbury for over 100 years because it was so poor. Residents of nearby villages sent charitable donations of food to keep the residents here fed in the winter. viewtopic.php?f=16&t=274
12) In the late 1700s/early 1800s Harbury church tower was leaning over so they built the large buttresses you see today to try and keep it up. This didn't work so they removed the stone top of the tower, planning to replace it with a stone steeple. You can still see the plan today in the bell ringing room at the church. However due to shortage of funds in 1811-1815 they built a short brick top to the tower which was stepped in to keep it small. viewtopic.php?f=16&t=262
2) One of Princess Diana's ancestors, Henry de Ferrers, owned Harbury. viewtopic.php?f=16&t=271
3) The arms depot in Kineton contains enough explosives to remove the area from the map. As the largest arms dump in Europe it houses a high percentage of the 1.5 million tons of high explosives stored by the British military. viewtopic.php?f=16&t=56
4) Harbury singing duo Danansooz recorded an album "At Last". viewtopic.php?f=16&t=126
5) 1,000 years ago a saint was born locally. Saint Wulfstan is now the patron saint of vegetarians. viewtopic.php?f=16&t=93
6) Harbury teenager, Jordan King, is a karting ace, following in the footsteps of Lewis Hamilton. viewtopic.php?f=17&t=98
7) A very well known poet from the mid 1700s, Richard Jago, was vicar of Harbury, living here for 8 years. viewtopic.php?f=16&t=276
8) Harbury man Philip Bushill-Matthews is leader of the Conservatives in the European parliament. viewtopic.php?f=16&t=202
9) The legends of Robin Hood may well be based on Robert Fitz Odo, who was living in Harbury in 1203. viewtopic.php?f=7&t=204
10) A Roman town of 27 ha size lies buried under the fields just outside Harbury. viewtopic.php?f=16&t=81
11) Harbury was known as Hungry Harbury for over 100 years because it was so poor. Residents of nearby villages sent charitable donations of food to keep the residents here fed in the winter. viewtopic.php?f=16&t=274
12) In the late 1700s/early 1800s Harbury church tower was leaning over so they built the large buttresses you see today to try and keep it up. This didn't work so they removed the stone top of the tower, planning to replace it with a stone steeple. You can still see the plan today in the bell ringing room at the church. However due to shortage of funds in 1811-1815 they built a short brick top to the tower which was stepped in to keep it small. viewtopic.php?f=16&t=262
Monday 12 May 2008
Harbury on Wikipedia
Link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarburyHarbury is a large village and civil parish in the Stratford-on-Avon district of Warwickshire, England. In the 2001 census it had a population of 2,485.The village is located around 3 miles (5 km) south west of Southam, and around 5 miles (8 km) south east of Leamington Spa, just south of the A425 road. The Chiltern Main Line runs just to the north of Harbury. The cutting in which the line runs was said to be the deepest hand-dug cutting in the world, at the time of its construction in 1852. The village used to have a station called Southam Road & Harbury but this closed long ago.Harbury has ancient origins. Bronze Age cooking pots have been found in the area, and the name of the village is said to be derived from Hereburgh a woman tribal chief of around 500 BC. The Domesday Book recorded the name as Edburberie where it is listed amongst the lands given to Henry de Ferrers [1] by the King. The land consisted of work for over 5 ploughs and was valued at four pounds.Harbury has a former windmill which still stands but has no sails. It also contains All Saint's Church which dates partly from the 13th century although with a Victorian brick top. Within the parish of Harbury lies the hamlet of Deppers Bridge. The parish borders with the parishes of Ladbroke, Bishop's Itchington, Bishops Tachbrook, Chesterton and Southam.The parish has recently seen proposals for development of the land known as the Harbury Estate by the owners, Follett Property Holdings Ltd, who envisage a development of houses and a business estate. There have also been proposals put forward for a new Harbury Station; however it is believed that the current infrastructure of the railway is incapable of facilitating this. The Parish Council and Stratford District Council are reviewing the proposals bit by bit.Harbury is home to the Chief Executive of J Sainsbury's, Justin King.Harbury has a Primary School, with around 200 students attending.Harbury has a small number of shops, including 2 newsagents, a chemist, a grocery shop (Mugleston's Country Fayre) and an estate agent, as well as the Library.Harbury has five pubs (The Shakespeare, The Crown, The Dog Inn, The Old New Inn and The Gamecock), originally established for local workers.Population 2,485 (2001) OS grid reference SP3760 Parish Harbury District Stratford-on-Avon Shire county Warwickshire Region West Midlands Constituent country England Sovereign state United Kingdom Post town SOUTHAM Postcode district CV33 Dialling code 01926 Police Warwickshire Fire Warwickshire Ambulance West Midlands European Parliament West Midlands UK Parliament Stratford-on-Avon
http://harbury.villagebuzz.co.uk/
http://harbury.villagebuzz.co.uk/
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