NEO Magazine

mayamada May 12, 2014 No Comments

Last year we released Samurai Chef Origins, a digital prologue  comic featuring a young Samurai Chef on his journey to becoming the food slicing critic he is today.

We’ve been working on recreating that comic in colour which you will be able to see in a future issue of NEO Magazine!

In the mean time you can check out the current issue  #123

From NEO:

Go on an epic journey with Naruto author Masashi Kishimoto, as he discusses his postponed honeymoon, looming deadlines, and the prospect of ending possibly the greatest shonen series the world has ever seen. Also, Akira director Katsuhiro Otomo’s latest multimedia creation, Short Peace, is put under the microscope. Discover Hayao Miyazaki’s controversial, career ending movie, The Wind Rises, and get the latest previews on Japanese titles The Pilot’s Love Song and Noragami. All that, plus news, reviews, features, tutorials, cosplay, manga and more!

The magazine can be found in WHSmiths and all good newsagents, or they can purchase direct from our site – www.neomag.co.uk

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Samurai Chef Colouring Competition

mayamada April 2, 2014 No Comments

The first mayamada colouring competition is now up and running!  We’re calling on you to submit your own coloured page from the Samurai Chef Origins comic.

Enter our Samurai Chef artwork competition and you will be in with a chance of winning some fantastic prizes including t-shirts and a copy of Samurai Chef Volume 1.

The deadline for entries is May 31st 2014.  You can send us as many coloured pages as you like so get started.

Don’t forget to share your work on Twitter or Instagram with the tag #AddSomeFlavour.

We can’t wait to see what you come up with.

New mayamada Tees and Sweatshirts

With summer done, we’re turning our attention to the run up to Christmas with some new mayamada designs.

From October, you’ll be able to preorder products from our new line of designs and colour ways across t-shirts and sweatshirts.

Stay tuned for more details on upcoming preorders and an in-store event. Until then enjoy a glance at the new line.

 

new mayamada line 2013/14

 

Websites and Brand Perception

If you’ve been following us on Facebook and Twitter (you are following us right?) you’ll have seen we updated the our website.  We’ve been getting plenty of good reactions from fans and it made me realise how important a website is to the perception of a brand.  So for people in a similar position to us here a few tips from my experience …

Get the colours right

Colours are so important to perception in ways that I don’t even fully understand yet!  What I do know is that even I get a different and better feel looking at our new site than the old.
Think about how you want people to feel when they look at your site.  This isn’t just about you favourite colours but about what each one represents and how that relates to your brand.
I’m not even going to get into colour theory because I’d be way out of my depth.  However, you might want to take a look at helpful article from Smashing Magazine we used to get us to think about this.

Show, don’t tell

If you’re selling something, visitors should be able to go on the website and immediately see what you sell.  Don’t make people work for it, because you usually only have a few second before they go back to Facebook so don’t waste time!
If you didn’t know about us, it wasn’t easy to tell what we did looking at our old site.  There’s no question now: T-Shirts (OK, we do hoodies to but stick with me here I’m trying to make a point).
Pictures help in a major way as they let people see your product in action and let people get a better idea of what you are about.  Hopefully they like it and look deeper.i.e. start browsing your shop.

Let the world know!

Don’t just keep it to yourself, tell the world.  There’s always a danger of being blind to your creation’s faults,  but your site can always be improved so be on the look out for opportunities to do just that.  It is so important to get feedback from people who have had nothing to do with the development.
It never ceases to amaze me how someone can point out something that I had been staring at for ages, but never even noticed.  Plus,  getting people involved engages your audience and makes them feel part of the process, which is a good thing.

And on that note…What do you think of the new site?  How important is the website to a brand?  Let us know your thoughts here or on our Facebook page.
Don’t forget we also have to new tees ninjastar and superstar, available now in male and female.  Check them out!