News – Reliance Yacht Charters

17 Aug 2018

Business, Featured, News, Rest of the World userNick 0 comment

How Did That Boat Get There?

You’ve decided to buy your first boat. That’s great – well done. Two thirds of the earth’s surface is covered by water, You are now able to see more of the planet than ever before and much more than walking, or by car, or even flying. There are many reasons why people buy yachts, to cruise, to race, to explore, to relax, to live aboard and a good broker will advise what is best for you. Along with yacht ownership comes certain responsibilities and requisite services such as insurance, finance and moorings. These are obvious and will come as no surprise, and many will already have at least a minimum understanding of them. The one service that is often overlooked, mis-understood and often forgotten about, almost until the sale is made, is the delivery.

Seeing the latest 45ft production catamaran at Annapolis in its pristine boat show condition, one can be forgiven for not giving any thought as to how it got there. Walk around any boat show, marina or boat yard in the world and you will see vessels built in France, South Africa, Poland, China, Brazil and many other places. There is no restriction geographically on the yachts available to purchase because of specialist delivery services.

A yacht may undertake one or more mode of transport on its way to market. The first being is to get the yacht from the factory to it natural environment – water. No problem if the manufacturer is right there on the water and no more than a crane and slings are needed. But more often than not yachts are built away from the coast and need to negotiate the public highway.

With the average size of pleasure yachts increasing every year, this becomes an ever increasing challenge to the trucking companies. Specialised trucks have the ability to manoeuvre under, around and over obstacles. It is a regular sight for some residents in the Vendee, France to see 45 ft Catamarans going past, inches from their bedroom windows on their way to Les Sables d’Olonne.

Commissioning completes the building process and launches the boat. So now the boat is in the water and with access to the sea that connects to the rest of the world. A properly designed, built and commissioned yacht can, in the right hands go anywhere in the world.

Professional and specialist delivery captains sail many thousands of miles every year moving yachts to boat shows, dealers, charter fleets and private owners around the world. Commuting to work can be sailing from France to the Caribbean or Cape Town to Florida. It takes a special kind or captain to do this work. A special mind-set is needed for sailing deliveries that is neither cruising nor racing. Every aspect of the job is to get the yacht to the destination safely, efficiently and in perfect condition. Time taken before departure is spent identifying potential areas that need protection.

Stove tops are covered in foil, cushions are removed and stowed or covered in plastic, mattresses covered and yards of pipe insulation are used to protect vulnerable edges. With interiors stripped and protected it will look nothing like the boat you saw at the boat show. There is a good video that we produced a few years ago that shows the whole process.

09 Sep 2015

News userNick 0 comment

What make a brand successful?

Branding is a way to distinguish your product or service from the rest of market and create a perceived value in the mind of potential customers. For example, in the car world, the Mercedes brand creates different expectations than the Kia brand. However, branding is also important for small businesses that want to stand out in the market, and the keys to successful branding include knowing your target customers and making all your decisions with a focus on what’s important to them.

Define your customers

The first key to successful branding is to define the types of customers you want to attract. Moms with toddlers or women without children? Men who like drag racing or those who prefer quiet afternoons in nature? Health-conscious individuals or those who don’t know a carrot from a turnip? Make a list of all the types of customers you want your business to attract. Volvo built its brand on attracting people concerned with auto safety.

Study Your Customers

Find out what is important to the customers you want to attract. If you already have some customers, you can survey them. Otherwise, look at demographic information and other studies done that provide information about your target customers. Once you know what’s important to your target customers, choose the three or four outcomes that are the most important to your ideal customer.

Be Consistent with Your Brand Position

Using the three or four outcomes you defined, create a brand position that describes what your business does and for whom, the unique value your business offers and how this value is different from the competition, and the benefits the customer gets from your product or service. Also, decide on the one most important thing that your business always promises to deliver to customers. Consistently make all your decisions based on this brand promise and your brand position.

Create the Elements of Your Brand

Create a brand personality — traits you want your business known for — and, if you have an established business, a brand story that shows how your business’ history adds value and credibility to the brand. Also, create the physical elements that make up the brand, including your logo, business tagline, colors, fonts, imagery and other physical elements used in marketing and presenting your brand. These physical brand associations should reflect your brand promise and all your brand traits, and also support your brand position.

Market Your Brand

According to Dan Coughin, president of the Coughlin Co., “The key to branding is reminding the customer of what you want them to remember about your brand,” and he says every contact (including marketing efforts) you have with current or potential customers must reinforce your brand.

09 Sep 2015

News userNick 0 comment

New design trends

Looking for a website refresh and don’t know where to start? Some of the trendiest elements in web design right now are fun aesthetically and pretty easy to use.

Adding a trendy feature to your current design, or new build, can help create a modern vibe that can help drive visitors to your site. And what’s particularly nice about this tri of trends is that you can use them with existing elements, color and typography palettes and branding.

Here’s what’s trending in design this month:

1. Duotone color schemes

Duotone color palettes have been around for a long time, but the recent take adds a color wash effect to a duotone gradient for a full-screen, high impact effect. It’s something that trended out in a major way with flat design, but thanks to stunning usage by Spotify duotone is back.

So what exactly is duotone?

It is the use of two colors to form a palette. In the most basic form, duotone is a complementary combination from the color wheel. In more complex uses, designers are using all kinds of color combinations and breaking the rules with pairings.

Most of the duotone effects feature a brightly-colored overlay on top of an image. The duotone effect highlights darks and lights and creates visual impact with stunning color. Spotify uses it in a great way to make standard artist photos that you’ve likely seen dozens of times look just different enough to be attention grabbing.

It’s a technique that you can use in a variety of ways. It works with almost any design concept and can be used as a full-screen element, such as many of the examples above, to create dominant art. It can also be used to create an interesting background, to accent user interface elements or to help add emphasis to a specific part of the design. Duotone works best when used for a single design element. The technique can be overpowering and should be used in moderation.

2. Spilt-screen design

Websites featuring a split-screen design are growing exponentially. The design technique features two panels of content side-by-side. Most of these concepts use a symmetrical outline so that each side of the screen has the same size and shape.

The result is a cool, dual content experience on desktop computers and (when coded properly) a great screen-by-screen experience on smaller devices, where the panels collapse and are stacked scrolling elements.

The design opportunities with the split-screen trend are limitless—half and half splits, splits with cards or grid-style elements, a subtle split and the list goes on. Each side of the design can also drive users to different types of content and help you glean valuable user analytics about the type of content that people want to see and click on.

Split-screen designs are user-friendly, work well in responsive frameworks and don’t overpower other design techniques that you might want to use.

Here are a few ways to split the screen effectively:

Pair color and typography when you don’t have strong visuals.
Focus the attention of the user with left to right movement that results in an action.
Use color blocking to split the screen and give your message plenty of room while increasing readability.
Think of a split-screen as oversized cards. Stack container elements in a mosaic or masonry style pattern to showcase different pieces of content.
Keep each “screen” simple. The trick to this design concept is the split screen. A minimal style can help add emphasis to the content therein.

3. Typography in a shared space

This is one of those trends you almost have to see, to understand: typography is extending into shared spaces in the design. Look at most websites and there are images and backgrounds and type. Elements are either made together, such as type on an image, or they are completely separated.

More designers are breaking out of that format and creating projects where type extends into the spaces of other elements. It’s interesting and fun to look at.

It can also be a challenge to create, because of concerns about readability.

The technique works best with simple typography, such as a medium-stroke sans serif. Text should have plenty of contrast to stand out from the background and any elements it crosses into or across. For this reason, most of the designs using this technique use white or black lettering.

Text also needs to have some size for this to work. Almost as important as color contrast, is contrast in size and space. You also have to take special care in how the text moves with different screen sizes or breakpoints so that letters do not cover areas of the image that are vital to your message.

Conclusion

While a lot of design trends come and go almost as fast as you start to recognize them, the ones that stick around often work well with other time-tested techniques. That’s what stands out the most about this trio of modern styles. Each can be worked into a layout for a touch of newness. These techniques are fairly easy to implement (and remove later) without destroying your entire aesthetic.

Try one of these techniques for a visual refresh. Think about getting out of your comfort zone a bit with bold color choices or a change just to your homepage. Or go a little more bold and try a combination of trendy techniques for a design that really stands out.

[From http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/]