Position: Full time
Salary: Massively dependent on portfolio and experience!
Location: Nottingham City Centre
Recruitment Agencies: NO, None, Zero, Lets say this again shall we - recruitment agencies go away!!!
Closing Date: When we have found the right person - so hurry up people! 

Even though everyone is shrinking at the moment - we are growing and so yet again are having to further expand our already exceptional team  - but literally only the best will do.

Alight is a multi disciplined Creative Design Agency that cover many things but specialise in Branding, Graphic Design, Web Design and Web Software Development.

First and foremost we are a design agency, so exceptional design is at the core of everything we deliver, but we are also a very technically capable bunch who build everything from scratch including our own CMS and E-commerce platforms - open source is for saps!

We have a gifted team of web developers to help breathe life into the amazing designs you will be creating, be clear we are not after a techy here - you are pure design through and through with a love of the web and digital. If you know some coding that's great too and we're sure that will come in useful.

We take only the best so you will need a portfolio full of stunning and beautiful work that should shows you have an extensive knowledge of User Experience (UX) and are a GUI god this all on top of just making things look amazing.

A good knowledge of SEO would be preferable, not delivering it, but knowing what works within sites to get the best results within the search, if not - this will be trained.

We do a lot of web but we also do a lot of branding and graphic design, so if your branding jedi and print master, then that will certainly add some gold stars.

We require minimum 3 years design agency experience working on large and small brands alike.

Ok I like it, what do I do...

If you don't like fun and can't crack a joke this ain't the place for you. However, if you have design flowing through you and want to step up, then either call us on 0845 009 8020 or email us at jobs@WeAreAlight.com

Whichever way you contact us be prepared to show us your portfolio site or at the very least send us a design portfolio PDF with links to work you have done.

Be Happy!
Alight

The wonders of design blogs

The design community is a fantastically growing world to be part of, where creative directors, designers, illustrators, programmers and developers are engaged and motivated by a variety of mediums (graphics, print, digital, moving image, film, video, etc). Discovering new trends as part of our daily working hours keeps us on our toes to produce quality work. As a result, we love to share, and all creatives enjoy a debate in or outside the studio! Proud to say, I'm one of those designers who keeps a close eye on design blogs daily to see the latest creative talents, styles, design agencies, festivals, exhibitions, events, collating via bookmarks and recording in note books - never know when you’ll need a creative boost or a reel of inspirations to kick start a new design brief.  Therefore, it’s partly true to say that design recycles new ideas and concepts. It’s the nature of the game!

Engaging moment

Waste & Gringo Records presented 'Floodit', which took place on Saturday 26th September 2009 at The Art Organisation in Nottingham. This screen printing and live music event came about from a lovely find on one design blog. At first, this concept seemed too good to be true. I literally had one of those passing moments, when a comment runs through your mind. It went something like 'ooooooh nice'. With an on-going passion for mixed media arts, traditional print making, quirky illustrations, characters, typography, colours, textures, paper stocks and meeting new creatives, it wasn't to be missed.

It featured work by Partchimp, Souvaris, Bad Guys, Guilty Parents, Julie West, Stu Subism, Waste, N4T4, Philth, Chris Balwin, I Dress Myself. Excellent line up of the juiciest creative talents in and around the East Midlands.

Design is an exciting passion and full of adventures

To be welcomed by a ticket seller who was munching away on a sizable plate of food was interesting to say the least. Stepping into the venue my eyes instantly lit up; the smell of fresh inks, screens lined up in a row, squeegees in full swing, a growing crowd and the start up of various rock/indie bands (rather loud and caused a slight ringing sensation in my ears the next morning – some good tunes in between though. Unfortunately, didn’t catch names as I was too busy exploring the designers’ techniques). Particularly liked how music tracks reinforced the surrounding mood, as it complemented the traditional hands-on nature of screen printing well.

Happily walking around and checking out the screen printing action, I got talking to designers and enjoyed finding out more about their styles and influences. Brilliant! From screen printing on kitchen towels, paper, T-shirts and bags, the possibilities were endless with this bunch.

It was only when I got a bit of fresh air outside, I soon found myself talking to two young graphic design graduates. The conversation flowed nicely between drinks, sharing stories, experiences of new ventures, university and keeping in design mode through the recession. As they were waiting for their screen prints to dry on the floor, my eyes kept peering over as I recognised the illustration style - it was indeed Jon Burgerman (at this point, I didn't get to make the full rounds to see all the designers - volume of people - and unaware of Burgerman's presence). 'Yeah, Jon Burgerman's here, have you seen him?' said one of the graduates. I had to ask again to be totally sure. My expression and response was priceless, so I have been told. Finally plucked up the courage to speak to Burgerman. This was one of my highlights of the night, having followed his work since university. Great, down-to-earth guy, with lots of creative flair. Open to talk to about his new projects. Also, happy to buy one of his screen prints, get a hand-drawn illustration of myself and a friendly message. The smile on my face only got bigger.

Living and breathing visual eye candy everyday

In this case as well as previous experiences, it proves that the nature and functionality of design blogs strike the right chord in creating awareness, advertising and inspiration to all beady-eyed designers. For me, such websites have opened doors, introduced mediums that motivate me to explore different projects and encourage me to move out of comfort zones.

Always keeping eyes and ears open

We at Alight are definitely looking forward to Floodit four. Having heard events one and two were such a success, I am sure we will be in for another dose of quality designers working their magic, in the next couple of months. I will keep you posted.

Kellogg's Vs Post

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago during the depression of America in the late 1920’s there were two main brands of packaged cereal, Post and Kellogg’s.

When the depression hit no one had any idea what would happen, as the concept of ready to eat packaged cereals was still a relatively new market and perhaps more of a luxury item when placed next to the more traditional cereals of the day such as oatmeal and cream of wheat.

Post went ahead and did what most companies tend to do when things get tough and predictably reigned their expenses and slashed their advertising budget.

Interestingly Kellogg’s looked ahead and doubled their advertising spend, they came up with the Snap Crackle and Pop campaign for Rice Krispies and aggressively marketed all their brands across the country, by 1933 Kellogg’s became the industry’s leader, a position they have maintained to this very day.

How to stand out

When everyone is advertising at full throttle it can be very difficult and expensive to stand out from the crowd. When everyone has reigned in their advertising, you can get a huge return on investment, and if done properly with a full service design agency it could be the safest bet you ever made.

So are you a Post or a Kellogg’s?

Are you ready to rush out, start advertising and marketing your way out of the recession, well if not, you should be. A study of advertising during the recession of 1981-1982 revealed those companies who  maintained or increased their advertising budgets grew precipitously over the next 3 years compared to those companies who had slashed budgets and enjoyed only marginal improvements. 

It is true that recessions usually make the strong stronger and the weak weaker. The weak will focus on surviving, and while money in the bank certainly helps in these leaner times, its the bold ones who can establish themselves as market leaders even leap-frogging their way to the top!

So which are you, or should I say which will you be?

It’s the old adage, which has never been more true - you get what you pay for. Sure, you could probably get a friend of a friend to build your site, but would you really be happy with the result? Would you end up changing it again a few months later when you realise it simply isn’t up to the task in hand?  Most likely yes - is it therefore good value for money...NO!

The role of a High End Creative Design Agency is to be the expert. We do this day in day out and make a living out of it - yet there is still this one remaining hurdle to overcome with a lot of people.

We Are Angry…

that we have had another poor soul through our doors who has paid “someone” to build their site, and yet again the results are beyond pathetic they are destructive!

The reason is - there are a lot of (and it pains me to say it) cowboys out there - damaging the reputation of us credible, talented and effective Design Agencies.  Knocking something up from a template using code that is beyond archaic will do you and your business no favors whatsoever - not only will it look bad, but google will not be able to see it therefore achieving any web presence will be an almost impossible task.

A Professional Web Design Agency…

will be able to guide, support and direct you, offering a real valuable return on your investment. You spend £500 with a mate on a website which makes you absolutely no money, generates no business and actually frightens your potential customers away is a waste of £500. So, spend £3000+ on a site which will generate double, triple, quadruple that for you business...It’s a no brainer!

A professional creative agency will be able to show you a list satisfied customers. This history and track-record will re-assure you that you are investing your money in a safe bet!  True, a web design agency may charge you higher fees, but you are being offered high quality work which will prove its worth for years to come.

The list of reasons why you should invest your money carefully are endless, yet speak for themselves.  If you are serious about getting your business up and running on line, delivering business to you fast, you must speak to a professional agency. All too often we find ourselves picking up the pieces of someone who has been let down with their cheap web solution and they end up spending more than they would have done in the first place to get it right!
 
If want a web presence which will work, please have a look around the site and say hello or give us a call. We look forward to helping your business flourish!

After many years of dominance Adobe Flash (Formally Macromedia flash) is being challenged in the RIA (Rich Internet Application) space by a real challenger.  Microsoft is currently working on the third release of SilverLight, a rich media technology that has a lot of parallels with macromedia flash, and it’s starting to really get noticed by developers.
Flash was initially created by Macromedia, and it first surfaced around April 1996 and has been pioneering the RIA space since. More recently Adobe acquired Macromedia and as a result helped further the technologies development. There were some significant changes to Adobe Flash as it hit versions 9 and 10 that are worth mentioning, with the introduction of action script 3, which was ECMA Script 4 compliant, which was a huge leap forward for flash developers in standardising development.  In addition to that in version 10 there is 3D support, and inverse Kinematics and object animation, which has begun bringing a whole new wave of creative 3D websites into the RIA space.

SilverLight version 1 was released in December 2006, and version 2 was released in the last quarter of 2008 and is still a very young, but has some nice features that make it a real competitor for Adobe Flash.  Firstly silverlight can be authored with visual studio 2008 and Blend. The files that make the RIA could be easily digested by a search engine. Search engines have always been a problem for Flash websites. There is no 3D support but Microsoft has hinted there may be support in the next version, along with some other features like dynamic bit rate changing for video streaming.  Oh and one final thing, Silverlight can be authored in most common asp.net languages, that means that most asp.net developers already know how to develop Silverlight, and don’t have to learn another scripting language, that puts SilverLight in a very strong position to compete.

So in summery it looks like Adobe flash has the number one spot, with more time in the RIA development space, and over a decade of experience in delivering rich multimedia content.  Anyone who has been on the internet for over 10 minutes will get a request to install Flash. Silverlight does not have that penetration, and there for will have to be around a while to get installed on any significant percentage of browsers. Installation might work better if it would be installed as a windows update rather than a browser add-on.  

As a developer at the Alight Web Design Agency my hope is that both these seemingly competing technologies continue to push the boundary of the internet experience further for the user, and more people see the need for RIA’s and a better and more enjoyable internet experience.