As a web / flash designer it’s not often that I venture into the real physical world to make things … mostly because I have no patience and largely because I inevitably cock it up.

Sure we at Martian can and do provide a range of print services but, to be honest, these don’t normally involve much more than a great design translated into ink onto some flat surface … usually a business card or a promotional piece. Just what your typical design house does really.

That’s why Tony and I love Ponoko.

We can use the same tools that we would for digital design and make real world physical products.

Now the great part here is that we don’t need to know how to use power tools, we don’t have to worry about ruling straight lines or cutting things just so. We don’t have to go to the hardware shop and be told “I’m sorry, you can’t buy a sheet of translucent green plastic here”. Ponoko takes away all of these barriers.

Ponoko gives me, a web designer that has never made anything other than a money box at wood work class when I was about 12 and a wonky shelf for my stereo about 3 years ago, the ability to make physical real world objects with the press of a button. It’s absolutely fantastic!

So how does Ponoko work for a graphic designer or web designer?

It’s pretty simple really.

1. As a designer you already know how to use Adobe Illustrator.

2. As a designer you can’t help but get excited about new technology and new ways to make cool stuff from your mac (or pc).

3. As a designer you already have the perfect client base. People that need creative solutions.

Here’s an example.

We had a client that came to us to put together a series of illustrations for a workbook they were creating. The client’s logo had a certain tear drop shape and along with the workbook the client wanted to distribute a tear dropped shaped whiteboard as part of the package.

Now, we weren’t in the mood to take a set of french curves and hacksaw to a set of whiteboards from warehouse stationery … and we really didn’t want to get some white cardboard laminated (how cheap is that). This would have been something that most designers would have put into the “too hard” basket.

But not for us. Lets custom make a whiteboard for our client with Ponoko! … and while we’re at it, lets etch their logo into the whiteboard for that added “Wow I can’t believe you did that” factor.

The process was so simple.

Just download the starter kit from ponoko,
set up artwork in Adobe Illustrator,
export from Illustrator as an EPS,
upload EPS to Ponoko,
choose the material (whiteboard),
press ‘Make’.

A few days late a perfectly cut and etched custom built tear dropped shaped whiteboard arrived on our doorstep. It was just so easy. Later that week a nice cheque arrived from our very happy client.

I truly believe that Ponoko has brought a revolutionary capability to designers in much the same way that Apple did in 1985 with the introduction of the Laserwriter. Instead of settling for our real word products as printed peices of paper we can now make them quicky and painlessly out of stainless steel or bamboo or acrylics or aluminium or pretty much anything else that we can imagine.

To learn more about Ponoko check out this video from TV3 News, New Zealand or just visit www.ponoko.com

We’ve always been a little different from your average web design or graphic design agency. We have an unusual name for a start and we’re very much into making cool stuff.

2008 saw us working with an Auckland company, Mintshot, that was also into making cool stuff. We were fortunate enough to be offered the job of redesigning their web site as well as being offered the opportunity to develop a range of interactive games for them.

The first few games were variants of a popular “Find the prize and win it” theme. While the last two involved guessing a boarding pass number to win a flight to the gold coast and disarming a bomb to stop your prize from being blown to kingdom come (we really enjoyed this one ;)

All of these games were integrated into a live scoring system managed by a remote service that monitored to see if a user had won the prize. Basically, every time a user had an attempt, that attempt was checked to see if it was the lucky one … and a success or try again signal was returned (no cheeky random number generation stuff here).

Martian made all the graphics, the flash components, the animation, the visual effects, the 3d imagery and even the odd sound effect here and there … great fun indeed and truly a great way for us to push our boundaries.

I’ve updated our portfolio to include some of the flash interactive work that we’ve created and you can get to it right here.

Martian Design & Interactive now offer a fantastic system for running email marketing campaigns!

it’s really simple to use. We just design you an email template, integrate it into our email marketing platform. You provide us names and email addresses of your customers and we deliver your marketing messages via email to them.

After the campaign has run you can log in to our system and and see stats for how many people opened your email, how many of those clicked on a link, how many unsubscribed etc etc. Its a HUGELY powerful and cost effective form of marketing with truly trackable results.

If you have a web site already then we can supply you with some code so that you can add a “subscribe to our newsletter” form directly onto your site … or if you don’t have a web site as yet then we can certainly build a brilliant one for you.

Next time you are thinking about a marketing campaign then get in touch and we’ll work some email marketing magic for you.

Things are always growing here in the Martian lab, sometimes its the green goo in the corner but mostly it’s the the amount of work we have to do.  So we’re on the look out for freelancers interested in working on cool projects that can help us out.

We’re mostly after someone with really good HTML/CSS abilities and some good web experience. Experience is essential because we want to be able to hand over design files to you and get back a working website secure in the knowledge that we don’t have to redo it all ourselves.

All the usual extras will be expected like cross browser testing etc etc.  You’ll need to be a good communicator and a hitter of deadlines.  If we like your work we’ll be happy to throw more and more stuff your way.

Rates and payment plans are negotiable, per page, per hour, per project - what ever will work.

We’re based in Tauranga, New Zealand so ideally we’d love it if you were local but if you’re not then don’t despair, we have Skype and Tony has been working on a top secret transporter system in the garage .. just like the one from ‘The Fly’.  It’s not perfected yet but it’s a great way of shedding some extra winter weight… who needs two legs anyway??

If you reckon you have the chops for this then give us a call or send us a link to some of your sites.  Then we can get the ball (and the dollars) rolling.

Right, time to feed the green goo in the corner before it eats another armchair…..

What better way to spend a rainy Friday afternoon than to update the good-old Martian portfolio? Martian has had a massive increase in the amount of illustration work requested over the past few months so it was about time to toss them up into the site.

It seems people are starting to realise the value of illustrations as a marketing tool. Incorporated into your logo or marketing material illustrations make your business stand out in a crowd. They are an attractive and practical way to convey concepts and emotions to your clients. And of course they are fun to draw so bring them on!! :)

We have been tackling everything from halloween masks to mascots, even a happy laundry bag!

All the illustrations have been drawn in Adobe Illustrator, a great way to create clean vector graphics that are easy to reproduce. The illustrations are all suitable for the web, print, sign writing and screen printing - making them versatile and hassle free for our clients.

Check out our illustration portfolio or contact Martian about getting an illustrative solution for your own business.