Round about this time last year, Google shifted out A LOT of updates, panda’s penguins, link warnings, spam warnings. A LOT of people got hurt with these…A LOT (a lot of people got hurt) Websites that werent really playing by the rules where punished and sometimes even removed from the search results. Business after business went jelly up, SEO companies’s phones went mental.

Rather than clear the mess up, a lot of companies just started again from scratch.

This next update is the next penguin update. Which targets over spammy seo behaviour. If you’ve been buying links, cramming your site with keywords or being a spammy monkey in anyway, Id really really REALLY look at cleaning it before the summer storm comes!

Let us know if you’d like a hand…good sailing brave web business folk.

Get the lowdown from the man himself:

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I now officially present the full compliment of curlykale kittens. Mummy cat (Ducky)  and ‘Fat Tim’ the dad are very proud of their ugly kittens and so are we. Just another week and they will be learning CSS.

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Brace yourself cat fans…coming soon to a computer screen near you…

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Any week at Curlykale is a wonderful week.

This week was wonderful (as previously explained, all weeks are wonderful) So many people through the purple gates of Curlytowers ™ Old friends, majestic new friends, and wonderful fellow barefoot warriors, salemen of the chip and pin world, so impressed with their barefoot attitude to business, we signed up there and then. (Not all people barefoot are good – eg Bigfoot (possibly) )

I have nothing really to say.

I’m looking forward to waking up tomorrow and going to work.

I’m looking forward to working tomorrow alongside people I love.

I’m looking forward to helping everybody, no matter what their budget is, who happens to ring us tomorrow.

Maybe that’s the best and most worthy thing to say of all?

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I wasn’t good at PE.

My excuse is that I took the music route through life, when everybody else was learning the ways of the sport, I enjoyed the A Minor scale on the Yamaha Electone HS4.

(This does eventually relate to design, do bare with me, if you are DESPERATE for some design, here is a link to some fonts) You really shouldn’t be reading our blog for design news.

I found myself in the middle of a muddy field in the cleanest sport shoes known to mankind. My dad had always told me to make myself muddy or everybody else would. I rubbed a bit of mud on my face. I stood there like a terrible drag Pocahontas.

Due to either a really cruel trick or some form of sportmanship, I ended with the ball of rugby. Unsure of the rules and rather determined to prove my masculinity, I just ran into some people.

Despite what I thought, this was inappropriate sport behaviour and I was sent off. I sat with the kids with PE excuse letters.

This was the end of doctor Adam (I briefly wanted to be a doctor)

The kids with excuse letters were all chaps doing GCSE art, they were fiddling away in sketch books, they had messy hair and smelt interesting, based on this alone, later I ticked the box saying GCSE GRAPHICS.

I adored GCSE graphics, my teacher came from planet ace. She pretty much didn’t give too much of a crap about anything else. Graphics was the way, she’d been in the industry, she showed me how to stretch paper, bought me a hardback sketchbook and most importantly got me out of PE class.

For those truly interested in graphics, who really worked hard, she would write notes to Gym master to excuse us from his class due to urgent design needs. I became one of those ‘cool’ arty chaps and began my voyage to bizarre.

So much was I inspired by her that later on, I briefly joined a teaching course to inspire others and get them into the path of design (and get them out of PE) – Alas teaching was not for me (another boring blog, for another day)

And here we are. Curlykale, powered by P.E. Gosh.

We’re not your typical designers. Our houses aren’t full of design books, we dont follow font weekly or attend colour conferences. Design runs deeper. As pretentious as it sounds, it’s actually our way of life, distilled in us all from a very early age, its our physiology, a way of thinking and behaving (that sounded terrible didn’t it!)

I’d love to hear your stories of PE. I briefly considered setting up some form of charity, we’d put banners up on school sport fields saying ‘I was crap at PE but have a really good job now’ – Possibly a bad / illegal idea

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We name this day as Tornando Tuesday.

For some reason all hell breaks loose on Tuesdays, they exist in this old little world. One moment we are rather happily enjoying a disappointing coffee when the phone will ring, an urgent advert, deadline…30 minutes, then a new chap pops in off the street with a fantastic new business idea, the phone again (we have three lines – aren’t we techy) A question about accessing email on the iphone…a change to the deadline, its now 12 minutes nearer…coffee going cold…the phone rings again…the other phone rings, the email goes ding, the computer goes bong, the blinds fall down due to the wind, somebody pops in with some dead ducks (im serious)…the deadline even nearer…

I love it.

I love our Tuesdays, but Im fascinated. Why Tuesdays? What causes this tornado of wonderful confusion? Suggestions most welcome, the best wins a cuddle.

PS. I just had a flashback to every Tuesday at secondary school. First Class of the day: Rugby. It rained. Every Tuesday. I wasnt cut out for this, this started my journey into design. I will ramble of this in the next blog post. Possibly tonight. Arent you lucky

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It’s a joy to see this in action and even more of a joy to be part of, and even inside of…

You guessed it, we are once again venturing to Disneyworld.

Disney pays attention to the details that no other company can afford to, they believe those details matter, and sometimes they do.

A few years back we found an unbelievably cheap holiday online. It was going to one of the premium disneyworld hotels, and didn’t cost very much at all. I wish we hadn’t gone on that holiday to that hotel. It changed my mind.

I ramble of Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge (I’ll spare you the details of onsite facilities) This is beyond Disney, beyond architecture and becomes something else completely. I’m sure nobody else cares, but there is something about this place that took root in my soul and just wont leave, I dream of this place weekly, it has become the home of my happy…(its going to get hippy-er, bare with me)

The level of detail brings me to tears. Everything has been researched, thought about and built with perfection. From the guy who says ‘Welcome Home’ when you pull in to the carpark, to the subtle music, the authentic planting, the african Art and the oaky woody smells they pump around the building.

Joe Rhode I believe was responsible for this fusion of wonders, he hasn’t created a hotel, it’s an experience, some form of ultimate design or art that you live inside and take with you everywhere.

As usual there is no summary or ending to this blog posting, as usual its a rant. I just thought it was worth exploring the ultimate end of what design can get you.

Of course nobody can afford such majestic wonders, but imagine if you could, and the beautiful things you could create…

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