The IT Fundamentals course exists to help users acquire awareness, understanding and practical skills in the building blocks of information technology. This digital literacy will give them essential transferable skills to progress their careers, enhance their prospects or start something completely different as they discover the possibilities open to them and their own potentials.
The making of Coffee Nubia logo was one of the most exciting enterprises we had been given. The idea was to reflect the essence of this café. This is not just a coffee place, it is a hub that welcomes the African Caribbean community regardless of tribe but also any other races for one of the best coffees but also African, Caribbean and European delicacies. It puts the city of Manchester in the diaspora’s map.
Many coffee places, although serving other products, use coffee as the centre of their symbolism. This is an aspect that the quality of the coffee served urged to reflect, without getting its aroma and strength lost in the one-dimension of such superficial symbolism. Coffee, it was going to include but not just coffee, exactly like the place itself.
The foundation of the place resounds in its name, Nubia, which refers to a region of Eastern Africa. The first thing we thought about therefore is to go to the other side of Africa to look into the symbols that characterise the other aspect of the hub. So, unavoidably, we looked into and browse through Adinkra symbols looking for a representation of what it is that Coffee Nubia represents for its community of customers. The Adinkra signs contain many attractive and adequate signs in terms of their meaning and impact.
The community aspect resounds in the BOA ME NA ME MMOA WO1 symbol meaning “help me and let me help you” and represent the cooperation and interdependence which distributed diasporas are reminded of in such few places as the café. FUNTUNFUNEFU DENKYEMFUNEFU, the “siamese crocodiles” is democracy but ore importantly in our context, unity in diversity.
NKONSONKONSON, the “chain links” means unity, human relations and mainly confirmed that there could be quite a number of options for this project. Together with the ESE NE TEKREMA, they were a favourite because they looked like a bean, which would allow me to include the coffee. The latter symbol has the the literal meaning “the teeth and the tongue”, and represents friendship, interdependence but also, But I was not satisfied.
Then I came across the ‘chief of all Adinkra King, the ‘chief of all Adinkra designs’, the Adinkrahene. In everything it was, it appealed to us and represented the project. Its strength and shape was coffee. Its responsibility and leadership. Its inspiring character is reminiscent of those moments when great authors are typing their opus in coffee places, businesses are being set up at the corner of such places, people are getting together ideas to lead the future. That was the symbol we were going to go with. Not at once apparent yet clearly unveiled.
It is one thing to find the symbol to design, it is another to design it. The Adinkra hene is perfectly formed in most of its designs but when you look into it for too long, it is like getting lost in a cup of coffee. In effect, it looks like the circles of any liquid into which a drop of liquid is falling. We explored this, the designer and myself for a while. I felt we were near the final idea, but I still felt it was missing the essence of the coffee, the after-taste, the impact.
This is where it occurs to me. Just like we take for granted the origin of our inspiration, such as how the comforting homeliness and hospitality of a coffee shop favours our ability to reconnect with our inner muse, there is a part of sitting at a coffee place that most of us completely ignore or even try to wipe out, the coffee stain. Those circles, in which I once saw liquid dropping into liquid suddenly became the stain that a cup leaves behind, similar to the trail of its presence that is the aroma in the air. There it was, the idea I sought, I found it. Certainly some will still see it as just-poured coffee and we did our best to allow for that because it is different perspectives that make a hub. But the coffee stain , the leftover after all is drank and said, is that little surplus that this business offers.
We weren’t out of the water yet. Branding is an identity that had its shape but begged for the remaining elements of its look and feel. The colours, the font, the size, they all had to be determined, played with, evaluated, eliminated or selected. The final colours chosen were not just there to say Coffee and Nubia, they were also selected as a canvas to showcase the multiple colours and vibrances that each individual and group brings to Coffee Nubia.
1. http://www.adinkra.org/htmls/adinkra_index.htm
Find out more about the café on The Coffee Nubia website
Find out more about 3E web media logo design on the Multimedia content creation page
Mimoto is a Federated Identity Management Consultancy. The team offers consultancy services and bespoke software development related to identity management, identity assurance, authentication and authorisation services.
3E Web Media was called in to help with managing the digital branding of the company. This consisted in the design and development of the logo and static website. The latter uses Jekyll and Github. With a static website, the owners ensure that maintenance will be minimal and that the team can concentrate on doing their work and adding website content which corresponds to their experience and expertise.
Mimoto is the Japanese for identity and the company already had their name, purpose, direction and expertise sorted out. In effect, the team knows how to use Github and Jekyll so the work really boiled down to fitting in and designing a style around the ideas they had, creating the web structure and the web template and arranging content within that structure.
The style of the website follows the simplicity of their approach and the Japanese inspiration to choose the font face and size, the colours and the shape and produce an effective to the point branding guidelines, website and logo design.
Sometimes, it takes a more incremental approach though to properly see where one is going. This is how the company chose to release their website. With a minimal content in early release, the website is cleverly managed to only deploy new elements as they are fully developed.
Silence Movie Translation from French to English. Although the film has no dialogues, a number of written parts required translation which we were privileged to assist with.
$ILENC€ is an independent short film from multiple award-winning director Glad Amog Lemra and lasts 16 minutes. The film is self-produced by both Glad Amog Lemra and Florence Elomo Akoa. Glad Amog deliberately chose the non-dialogue to express his loss for words towards a situation that continues after independence as well as to give viewers the freedom to analyze for themselves. The African director of Congolese origin wanted to stage the massacre in Africa during the various presidential elections in recent months. Because, beyond the killings of thousands, it is the despair of many generations of Africans who, since the independence of the 1960s, continue to be the victims of coups, killings and civil wars.
You can find out more about the film here.
3E Web Media was called upon for the translation from French to English of the film text including quotations from celebrated freedom fighters Franklin Boukaka and Lumumba.
The film also include music from a music album on which we work, Out of the Black by Tiki Black.
Fiverr is a digital marketplace for freelancers to offer services (called gigs) to customers worldwide at a starting cost of $5 hence the name.
Our high expertise was recognise by the giant tradeplace and we were called in to work with other freelancers on a project to expertly translate the Fiverr framework into the French language.
Translation is always a serious project that is about converting more than words and a lexicon but meaning and culture. For us, it was about making a French speaking person coming into the Fiverr environment feel as if the place was just made for them. We are grateful to such a leading brand to have acknowledged and have requested our knowledge in this area. We carried out the work with a sense of privilege and duty.
The Out Of the Black project is the production, release and promotion of the debut album by Tiki Black, Manchester-based performing songwriter by way of Paris and Cameroon. 3E Web Media created the website, designed the media for and distributed the release for promotion.
The release has received an Akademia award for best Folk/Singer-Songwriter album Nov 2013, the website has been highly praised and the music has been played and reviewed worldwide including in France, the UK, Spain, Germany, Italy, Russia, Mauritius, the USA, Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands and Poland.
The Music was prepared in CD and WAV/MP3 formats (including radio-ready tags) and distributed to all music databases, major music retailers and some independent ones, It also has been sent to over 20000 blogs, ezines, magazines, radios, with a press release written specifically for it.
The deliverables included a written and distributed press release, a designed CD cover and booklet, distribution to radios / magazines / blogs for feature request / airplay with analytics, a website design that reflects the music release. Today, the release has been played worldwide over 50,000 airplays worldwide. Out of the Black is available on Amazon, iTunes, Deezer, Spotify, Bandcamp, on Tiki Black’s store and many more.
The African Counter Project is the delivery of a rich database-driven online resource for various categories of African contributions, the people, cultures, and structures behind these accomplishments and a lot more.
Core Team and Working Group members are talented volunteer researchers, editors, digital artists, administrators and managers from all over the world who work together to present the depth and richness that Africa and the African diaspora offers to the world. The team comes from and is spread across the world, Europe, Africa, America and Asia (sorry no one in Oceanie yet) and originate from different African and Caribbean countries including Barbados, Cameroon, DRC Congo, Gabon, Egypt, Nigeria and Seychelles.
3E Web Media is involved in a series of exciting and innovative projects involving the development of the main website hosting riches from Africa or created by the African diaspora worldwide, the commissioning of media, the branding, and the mobile strategy for The African Counter.