Australian Content Blog

July 31, 2010

How to Create a Style Guide

Filed under: Uncategorized — The Editor @ 5:36 pm

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

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 steer the reproduction of your logo - it will also help you extend 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 use in-house or is this for suppliers and contractors to refer to?

Step 2 : Define 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 : Make certain 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 : Make certain to take into account any contributing logos or logos of business that are associated with you. It’s also important that you deliver a copy of the layout to these companies to guarantee they approve the layout of their logo as they too may have their own Style Guide and hierarchy layout rules.

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

Step 7 : Make sure 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 affirmed as correct.

Have your Style Guide completed and as tight as possible. Then have it saved in an email friendly file format and have a couple printed. Once this is done we strongly advocate a training session – whereby your design studio comes in and trains your staff on how to work 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.

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July 19, 2010

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

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , — The Editor @ 11:35 pm

The most typical question that is asked when acquiring a new projector for the home, office, or classroom is: would I take an LCD projector or a DLP projector? LCD, which stands for ‘liquid crystal device’ and DLP, which stands for ‘digital light processing’ are the two top projector imaging technologies. With so many brands and different types available, it can be overwhelming for clients to make a choice between these technologies. The simple fact of the matter is that LCD projectors give far better image quality and colour accuracy. The following article tells you why DLP projectors struggle with reproducing the same grade of image quality.

It’s like a set of blinds in your room for your bedroom window. By pulling on a rod you can have the shutters open or closed, depending on if you want to let light in or not. And such is exactly how an LCD projector works. Each pixel operates like a unique shutter on a set of blinds to either send light through or to block it. DLP on the other hand is made up of millions of microscopic mirrors or ‘pixel elements’ as experts like to call them. Each pixel element operates to either reflect light or block it.

How the light source is processed from when the projector turns on to when the content reaches your screen is extremely significant with regard to image quality, brightness and colour accuracy. LCD projectors direct white light from the lamp by dividing it into red, blue and green components, by three mirrors which transfer the coloured light to 3 individual LCD panels. The 3 LCD panels form the elements of the image by turning each pixel on and off. The pixels are then combined in a glass prism to send the projector image. Something important to understad about LCD projectors is that all three colours are directed onto your screen at once. The way a DLP projector runs is totally different and even the produced image shows up is not the same. With DLP, white light from the lamp is processed through a turning colour wheel with transparent red, blue and green segments, at speeds up to 11,000 rpm/s. This way 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 create the image elements. The elements of the image are cast in sequence on the screen, one colour at a time. The viewer’s vision will then combine each coloured element of the image into the complete image. With LCD projectors, all colours are available all the time to form high brightness and spectacular colour accuracy. In DLP, only one colour is available at once, and so causing lower colour brightness and accuracy. Some manufacturers have put a white segment in the colour wheel to improve all over brightness, but this goes and detracts from colour accuracy.

I hear in forums all the time that DLP provides a higher contrast ratio and ergo must be better quality. For those who are uncertain, 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 able to produce. DLP projectors do have high contrast specifications in comparison to most LCD projectors. At a glance, this can seem to be an advantage, however, in truth, the true black level is determined by the ambient light in the room in which the projector is used. Do not be fooled by contrast specifications on websites and in brochures.

When the content you are trying to project requires moving images, DLP projection technology can also create image marks, or ‘artifacts’. The most typical artifact that a DLP projector creates with moving images is colour break up. Colour break up is inherent in DLP systems because moving images change between the time red, blue and green colours are shone. LCD projectors do not have this downside because all the colours are projected simultaneously. DLP manufacturers have come up with 3DLP solutions using 3 chips to fix the colour break up error, but the expense of these projectors make them impractical for most businesses and consumers.

Another variance between LCD and DLP is how they compensate for the refractive qualities of light. Think back to high school science, and recall when they taught you how different colours of light refract varied amounts when passing through the same lens. The problem with DLP projectors is that they take the one same panel with the same lens to project Red, Blue and Green. All 3 colours are different and refract light in different ways. Usually with a DLP projector, some extra yellow colour will come up above and a spill of blue will appear below an image of something as simple as a straight black line. In manufacturing LCD projectors can be fixed to minimize these effects on the projected image, as each colour is refracted on isolated LCD panels.

The one veritable advantage (excluding price) with taking a DLP projector is its smaller total size and weight. However, this is only relevant for portability and must be traded off against the image benefits of LCD projectors. If resulting picture quality is important to you, then the answer is a no-brainer. Choose an LCD projector! LCD projectors will consistently show bright, colourful images with fewer image errors. If you want to ask more about LCD technology in more detail, have a gander at this spectacular resource website: Explore 3LCD. If you have any more questions, jump onto Projector Central and send me an email.

Jonathan King is the sales and marketing manager with Projector Central, Australia’s premier online store for projectors. Based in Brisbane, Projector Central has been servicing Australia for 15 years. For data projectors in Brisbane and Interactive Whiteboards, contact Projector Central today.

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July 16, 2010

Yachting and Yacht Clubs

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , — The Editor @ 5:59 pm

As the Dutch rose to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht was a pleasure craft used first by royalty and secondly by the burghers in the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, arising as private challenges. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his return to the English monarchy in 1660, the city of Amsterdam gave him a 20-metre (66-foot) pleasure boat with a beam (maximum width) of 5.6 m (18 feet), which he called Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, ruled 1685–88), made more 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 wealthy and nobility, but after that time the fashion did not last.

The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, with great naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club persisted, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after merging with other clubs, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was seen in some stipulated manner on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to sovereignty in 1820, it was named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing argument, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht group had been formed at Cowes on the Isle of Wight in 1815, and royal patronage made the Solent - the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight - the perpetual site of British racing. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the rise of George IV. Each member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for great bets were held, and the social life was splendid. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to over 350 tons.

In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English had dominance. Sailing was mostly for leisure and reached its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and established a standard of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht group, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
The Early sailing yachts followed the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the second half of the 19th century. The design of large yachts was initially heavily put upon by the win of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a group led by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) was named after its victory at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and built in today’s sense, with only a model used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the use of the research of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what such study had done earlier for hulls.

Because most of all sailboats had to be individually custom-built, there came a need for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were made. Thus, a rating rule was decreed, which resulted in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and edited in 1919. In the present day, one of the fastest blossoming areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to standard dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing such boats can be held on an even par with no handicapping required. A great example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on board for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

For the time that yachting belonged primarily for the nobility and the wealthy, money was no problem, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and preference of smaller craft occurred in the later 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) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the hardiness of small yachts. Thereafter in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure yachts became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a favoured training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, boats of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, at which point steam began to emulate sail power in market craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed more and more in pleasure boats. Large power yachts were developed to a high element, and long-distance travel became a preferred occupation of the wealthy. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave way to yachts powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht archetype for many years. By the later half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were only power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.

From the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the construction of more sizeable steam yachts. Notably of these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, with triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was operated 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 was used in active service for World War II.

As bigger and more dependable internal-combustion engines were developed, many large craft started using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, was furthered from World War I. In the decade following that, large power-yacht manufacture blossomed, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that time the largest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The construction of larger power boats fell away from 1932, and the style thereafter was for smaller, less pricey craft. After World War II, a lot of small naval vessels were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting has become a globally beloved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually sailing and maintaining their own small recreational craft. The amount of boats and owners is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional areas by the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.

Looking for boat detailing Brisbane ? Talk to Elite Yacht Services. We do great work at competitive prices.

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July 8, 2010

Proportional, Progressive, and Regressive taxes

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , — The Editor @ 3:54 pm

Taxes can be distinguished by the effect they have on the placement of income and wealth. A proportional tax is a tax that impinges the same relative onus on all the taxpayers—i.e., when tax liability and income grow in relative proportion. A progressive tax is characterized by a larger than proportional growth in the tax burden in relation to the rise in income, and a regressive tax is characterized by a less than proportional growth in the relative burden. Hence, progressive taxes are seen as removing the lack of equality in income distribution, but regressive taxes are believed to result in an increase these inequalities.

The taxes that are normally considered progressive include individual income taxes and estate taxes. Income taxes that are declarably progressive, however, may become less so in the upper-income categories—especially if a taxpayer is allowed to lower his tax base by nominating deductions or by removing some certain income elements from his taxable income. Proportional tax rates which are applied to lower-income groups could also be more progressive if such personal exemptions are made.

Income measured over the course of a given period does not necessarily come up with the most suitable measure of taxpaying ability. For example, transitory increases in income could be saved, and in temporary declines in income a taxpayer may opt to provide for consumption by decreasing savings. Thus, if taxation is held in comparison along with “permanent income,” it should be less regressive (or more progressive) than if it is compared with annual income.

Sales taxes and excises (excepting luxuries) are generally regressive, because the share of personal income consumed or spent for specific goods lessens as the rate of personal income is raised. Poll taxes (also known as head taxes), calculated as a set amount per capita, clearly are regressive.

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

In regarding the economic effect of taxation, it is essential to differentiate between differing concepts of tax rates. The statutory rates are specified in the legislation; usually these are marginal rates, but for some cases they are average rates. Marginal income tax rates note the fraction of incremental income that is demanded by taxation when income rises by one dollar. So, if tax liability increases by 45 cents when income rises by one dollar, the marginal tax rate is 45 percent. Income tax regulations commonly contain graduated marginal rates—i.e., rates that grow as income rises. Careful analysis of marginal tax rates are required to take into account provisions other than the formal statutory rate structure. If, for example, a particular tax credit (reduction in tax) reduces by 20 cents for each one-dollar rise in income, the marginal rate is 20 percentage points more than nominated within the statutory rates. Since marginal rates indicate how after-tax income is changed 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 realise the marginal effective tax rate applicable to income from business and capital, because 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 grants that the marginal effective tax rate in income from capital is nil under a consumption-based tax.

Average income tax rates signify the part of total income that is taken in taxation. The pattern of average rates is the one that is relevant for judging the distributional equity of taxation. Under a progressive income tax the average income tax rate grows with income. Average income tax rates commonly rise with income, both because personal allowances are granted for the taxpayer and dependents and also due to that marginal tax rates are graduated; on the other hand, preferential treatment of income received for the most part by high-income households could swamp these effects, producing regressivity, as indicated by average tax rates that fall as income grows.

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

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July 1, 2010

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

Filed under: Uncategorized — The Editor @ 10:18 pm

beach-front-21-300x225Tangalooma Island Resort is a haven that can be found in Tangalooma, Queensland in Australia. It was originally a whaling station and was made into an island vacation hotspot because of its rare flora and fauna and its breathtaking views. Couples or families hunting down a great holiday destination will undoubtedly treasure a Tangalooma Island Resort holiday.

This earthly haven is found on the west side of Moreton Island, close 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 closed.

When going on a Tangalooma Island Resort vacation, you can expect to be greeted by friendly and understanding staff while being taken back by the beautiful white sand beaches. You should also take on a range of activities from wreck diving to feeding and playing with the dolphins. You are guaranteed to fully enjoy every minute of your vacation.

Tangalooma has a very tiny population of 300, but its tourist industry has allowed this small township to flourish and maintain the picturesque and stunning glory of the island. Above 3500 visitors enjoy the resort weekly, and even more during peak seasons. The local government has also developed a Centre for Marine Education and Conservation, to tell and train the local population along with travelers about the urgency of upkeeping the marine life in the area. The centre has employed marine biologists to lead information awareness drives and programs, which is included in the nature tour package for holidaymakers.

With a Tangalooma Island Resort holiday, everyone cannot help but cherish their getaway as they have over eighty activities to select from - but perchance the highlight of your getaway might be the opportunity to experience the beauty of nature. Visitors can go sight-seeing and enjoy the beautiful sunrise and sunset on the beach, or play with the dolphins that swim around the resort.

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

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