Birthplace of Tube Map designer is awarded the English Heritage Blue Plaque.

Harry Beck (1902 – 1974), an English engineering draftsman, designed the original world famous and iconic London Underground map in 1931.

The idea was to make the vast network a simple and easy way to navigate through the different lines on the London Underground, this revolutionised and defined the design for all underground maps around the world.

Today, 80 years later, Harry Beck’s birthplace in Wesley Road, Leyton, east London has been awarded an English Heritage Blue Plaque in his honour.

His original design has been developed and extended to adjust for today’s vast Underground and Overground Network.

For most of the last year we have been working vigorously behind the scenes to develop The Underscore Digital Suite 2013.

Our innovative new modular products are designed to drive your marketing efforts and make your life easier.  Following recent shifts, digital marketing trends and best practice, the amount of time an industry leader is expected to spend on content creation and digital efforts has increased dramatically. For this reason our bespoke suite makes the most of your time whilst driving traffic and building online content.

Our various products now include the following:

Sector News Publisher – Allows you to update you News / Blog with relavant industry or brand news with the click of a button, benefitting both your SEO efforts and adding value for your readers.

Social Hub – Makes the most of your Social Media efforts by automatically aggregating them all in one stylishly branded location, contributing to SEO and increasing engagement with your customers

Facebook event integration – Synchronising your website events page and Facebook page, automatically updating the Facebook events to enliven the account, build social media traffic and drive event awareness and footfall.

Time-line – Dynamically populated interactive display tool to drive engagement, presenting a large amount of visual or dated content in an easily digestible and space-efficient format.

Mobile Site – Responsive builds are the future of web design, optimising your website for use across desktop, smart phones and tablets

Social Reporting – Social Media monitoring and reporting services to help you keep a track of  your customers’ needs and gain a better insight into brand sentiment.

Location App – Our property app can drive interest in a location, increase customer engagement through augmented reality or drive an increase in sales through its GPS based and intuitive programming.

Search Optimisation – Our on-page audit and on-going SEO strategy can increase the volume of targeted traffic reaching your website and give you a better return on your efforts.

Data Hub – An easy to use online system, which allows for the secure hand-over of documents to clients and employees.

E-commerce Platform – An attractive and transactional e-commerce platform to maximise conversion rates and increase overall sales revenue.

For further information on our digital suite please contact Samuel Biss at sam@underscore.co.uk

Traditional SEO thinking suggests subdomains are treated as separate websites from their root domain.

This would suggests that ‘link juice‘ is not passed between them. Practically speaking, this means that placing your blog in a sub-domain does not contribute to your SEO efforts, as would fresh and relavent content added to a sub-folder.

Example of a sub-folder:        underscore.co.uk/blog

Example of a sub-domain:     blog.underscore.co.uk

This point is reinforced in this Moz guide:

Since search engines keep different metrics for domains than they do subdomains, it is recommended that webmasters place link worthy content like blogs in subfolders rather than subdomains. (i.e. www.example.com/blog/ rather than blog.example.com) The notable exception to this is language specific websites. (i.e. en.example.com for english)

However, there has been research both past and recentt, backed up by Google and Matt Cutts, which suggests that they are treated no differently from each other. There’s also this post which concludes:

Since it’s the value that matters and not the topographical structure I submit that there is absolutely no negative aspect to using subdomains for search engine optimization. The value can flow to them and from them and between them just as easily as to, from, and between subdirectories.

So to conclude, should we be using sub-folders or sub-domains for our content? underscore has done some research of our own and we’ve concluded that for relevant content the best position for a blog for SEO purposes is a sub-folder.

The use of sub-domains should be reserved, not only for the experienced webmaster, but for those who need clearly defined segregations between sections of their website.

To discuss an SEO campaign for your website, say hello!

And not a bus pass in sight…

As underscore evolves and grows to meet the challenges of an ever-changing commercial landscape, our team has undergone a similar evolution to ensure we maintain our class leading service. Samuel Biss comes in to head up the client services team, with our very own property diva Nina French joining alongside him. New digital guru Rachel Well’s top notch technical expertise will underpin the delivery of the underscore Digital Suite. Here’s a quick introduction to our newest team members:

Samuel Biss – Senior Account Manager

Having spent the last four years managing accounts of all shapes and sizes across a range of sectors and budgets, Samuel brings a wealth of marketing experience and innovation to the underscore table. From consumer campaigns for commercial property to corporate CSR initiatives to digital retail strategies, Samuel has a deep and wide ranging knowledge of the MarComms industry. Combined with a passion for client service, this ensures provision of intelligently targeted solutions that deliver tangible results.       Contact Sam

Nina French – Senior Account Manager 

A paid-up member of the ‘Life Is Short Club’, Nina is a highly-motivated and enthused member of the underscore team. Coming from a background of account management, architecture, commercial property, place-making and photography, she has a great appreciation of design and marketing of all things property. Her engaging ideas & imagination and dedication to client support and communication brings about the clear understanding of clients’ needs, project briefs, and those all-important deadlines and budgets.       Contact  Nina

Rachel Wells – Senior Digital Designer

Rachel specialises in concepting and designing for digital and has most recently worked for clients including Conran, Unilever, Procter and Gamble and Nissan Infiniti. From iOS and Android apps through to web design and online gaming, Rachel has a wealth of experience in leading and delivering multi-platform campaigns for a wide range of brands and broadcasters. Also adept in user interface and user experience design, Rachel will be bringing her expertise in working across project stages to lead underscore’s digital design from conception through to execution.

The announcement of the next generation of consoles has brought with it the realisation that both Sony and Microsoft may begin to change completely the way in which we experience video games.

“Always-online” technology means that a user must have an internet connection to play a game. The manufacturers tout this as an innovative new gameplay feature, allowing unparalleled connectivity, online play and social interaction. However, many see it solely as a means of stopping games piracy through more complex digital rights management. This move would also effectively end the second-hand games market, preventing gamers from selling on out of date or completed games in order to fund the purchase of new ones.

Only time will tell the effect these potential measures may have on the videogame market, but certain groups have already created a huge backlash to certain online-only titles. Users have the power to vote with their wallets, but with the industry as large and lucrative as it is, it may take nothing short of a mass exodus of gamers to prevent it.

From a mini Japanese Village to Balloon races to horse racing to the Olympic torch relay  – The People’s Park has seen it all over the past 150 years.

We don’t often post individual pieces from our weekly work but we felt this one was nice to share. The concept revolves around the vast and varied types of events that have been seen and held in Alexandra Park at Alexandra Palace, and our designs use Sepia imagery and etching to tell the story of the ‘old’, full colour pictures for the ‘new’.

They have all now been used in posters and large format signage to celebrate and share the The Park’s Victorian heritage to the modern day with visitors to this iconic North London destination.

Why not pay a visit to see it for yourselves?