<blog / Archived entries

Ahh the smell of freshly laid pixels. The allure of a grid so tight you could use it to forge digital Shredded Wheat (this has become very daft, very quickly). What the hell am I talking about? Well look around dude; this pimp has new threads. Word!

It’s been a good twelve months since the MWP website had a make-over; and although it’s still wearing the same WordPress undies (rinsed out in the sink though – what do you take us for?) there’s an all new look and feel to celebrate my first successful year as a freelancer.

Things have been gone well this year even if I do say so myself, I’ve worked on over twenty projects. Websites for the pharmaceutical, healthcare, media and tourism industries as well as a number of touch-screen multimedia installations at various Museums and Visitor Centres up and down the country.

I suppose it’s been an odd year to start a business, what with t’old credit crunch and all that malarkey. Not that it’s seemed to effect us too much to be honest – it seems like our backgrounds, portfolios and contacts have stood us in good stead. Our clients have been reporting being pleasantly surprised when receiving our costs, certainly when compared to quotes received from other agencies. The fact that we’re small, agile and have little or no overheads except a world-class web host so that we can pass these savings on to our clients seems to be a concept that’s worked very well indeed. We’ve delivered some big projects, at a cost most agencies wouldn’t get out of bed for. Not only that, but we’ve done very nicely for ourselves and enjoyed the summer sun too. Result!

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Building on the successful launch of the ay-pe website. The guys in York requested an update recently. So we thought we’d have some fun!

Given the hand-drawn nature of ay-pe’s latest and greatest project; an animated flip-book telling the story of the cultural history at Clitheroe Castle. Ay-pe asked if we could reflect the look and feel of their AV production and bring some movement to the page.

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We love the concept of things coming ‘full circle’ here at madewithpixels. So when we were offered an opportunity to re-think, enhance and re-launch an award-winning website for a major visitor attraction that we’d been involved with more than a decade ago. We thought all our birthdays had come at once.

Creswell Crags on the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire borders is one of the most important archaeological sites in Europe and is currently working towards ‘World Heritage’ Status – a label that would see it ranked alongside historical luminaries such as Stonehenge and the Pyramids.

A Limestone Gorge, Cave System, Country Park, Wildlife Reserve, Museum and Visitor Attraction; Creswell Crags, it’s object collections, research, exhibitions and website are supported (most notably) by the British Museum, who’s curator of pre-history; Jill Cook had a large hand in conceiving and planning. In the early nineties I’d worked on the team that put the original site and its award winning content together. Now, more than ten years later – we’d get to improve upon the design, enhance the content and introduce some new ideas of our own.

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One school of thought when starting on your first project as a fledgling web agency might be: Start small – work your way up. Another might be – take the largest project you can manage; and ace it. We chose the latter.

Mednet Consult are a Healthcare communications agency based in Leeds. Working closely with pharmaceutical giant Janssen Cilag, Mednet organises and project manages meetings, events and integrated training packages for NHS Mental Health Professionals. They asked us to help take them online.

In January 2009, we designed and built a website that would provide a platform from which Mednet could publish and promote details of its product offerings and communicate its core values to the marketplace. Our bespoke content management system delivers Event Management; Assessed and Certified Case Study E-learning tests and Online Questionnaires; all wrapped up in a contemporary ‘light on dark’ design that was surprisingly well received by what might potentially be perceived as a stuffy industry.

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