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.  

Well we are a creative design agency and we love fun advertising, especially when Cadbury's returned to our TV's last week with their latest Glass and a Half Full Production. Continuing with their now trademark randomness, the new Cadburys TV ad replaces Gorillas and Trucks with two spooky kids exercising some freaky eyebrow gymnastics. But you knew that, right?

But what you might not have known, (before hunting on YouTube at least), was the piece of music which accompanies said advert. For me, (and speaking as an ageing B-Boy of a certain age, here) what's really remarkable about this new spot is the music itself. Sounding instantly fresh and oddly of-the-moment, Freestyle's "Dont Stop The Rock" is in fact an obscure electro gem, released some 24 years ago in 1985 (Whoa! Has it been that long?!)

The Freestyle track is an underground anthem from the earlier Electro sub-genre of Hip Hop, a time before Hip Hop went household, a time when local producers would press up only limited quantities of vinyl and sell them from the trunk of their car. Miami-based producer Tony 'Pretty Tony' Butler released a string of club tracks including "Dont Stop The Rock" on his own Music Specialist label in the mid-80's. He helped build the electro legacy that would give birth to Miami bass music. In the UK, unless you grabbed one of the few imports that made it to these shores, the track otherwise only featured on Electro 10 of the cult StreetSounds Electro compilation series - a soundtrack for many B-Boys growing up in the mid-80's.

So what's the point I'm making here? Well apart from some shameless reminiscing, none really. Other than to say, I'm guessing there's a tried-and-tested protocol when buying the rights to a Phil Collins or Queen tune for use in your TV ad - expensive, sure; but fairly routine nevertheless. But to track down and buy the rights to a provincial Miami club tune from the mid eighties must have been an interesting journey. And for me, thats the random and totally off-the-wall bit that freaks me out most about this ad.

Whilst many of you try to recreate the ‘eyebrow thing’ in the privacy of your own home, this advert gets me in a whole other way - it makes me want to push back the furniture and roll out the lino. And that would raise some eyebrows!

There are moments throughout my day at work where I will think “Oh, I need to check last minute flights when I get home”, “Oh, I’ll have a look at what play.com have to offer this week” “I wonder what’s new on Money Saving Expert” and so on. But what happens when I get home and switch on my notebook is a little phenomenon I like to call ‘Facebook default’.

Without even thinking about it, my pointer goes straight to the Facebook shortcut in my menu bar and before I know it I’m logging and looking at my Mum’s photos. The funny thing is, I created my Mum’s profile and uploaded the photos for her from MY own personal photo collection!

So what is it that Facebook has got which means it has this automatic pull to so many of us when all we really wanted to do was look at holidays, clothes and ways to save a bit of cash?

I was never a MySpace user and have only visited MySpace on a handful of occasions and my overall impression has been that it appears jumbled, messy and far too disorganised for my tidy designer mind to deal with.

Perhaps it is this which has captured the masses so well?  Facebook took elements of MySpace and FriendsReunited and simply did it better. Facebook’s interface design is clean, effective, self explanatory and doesn’t allow users to meddle with its look and feel, which, to us fastidious creative designers – is always a good thing and has become one of its strongest assets.  From a critical eye, the ability of the site's creators to cram so many features and so much information into a somewhat simple and clean interface is quite a triumph.

But I’m still not sure though if this neither explains Facebook’s ‘stickiness’ nor provides any justification to its habitual draw for so many of us.  

I would not even say Facebook is particularly cool, (especially when your Mum starts using it) sometimes I even feel a little ashamed of myself for having spent so long having a nosey at other people’s profiles.  However, I can quite shamelessly admit (and maybe I speak for others here) that as a naturally competitive and curious person it’s normal to judge ourselves against those we know, so there is an additional motivating factor creating this pull - the desire to see how others are doing and to judge our own achievement and/or happiness against them.

West Nottinghamshire College is one of the largest colleges in the East Midlands delivering courses from basic skills through to full degrees.

After a comprehensive tendering process, Alight were selected to complete some conceptual design work for the West Nott's College website.  

West Nott's have the ambitious aim of making their website the most innovate and creative in the sector. The visual design of the site is a key element to achieving this.  Due to the wide age range and experience of the prospective students at West Nott's College the site needs to be structured accordingly.

The request was to prepare some conceptual designs for a new look and feel to the College website that specifically targets their individual markets.  The designs needed to reflect a highly visual and creative site that's engaging dynamic and full of energy.

The creative team here at Alight completed a suite of conceptual designs which have been handed over to the internal design team at West Nottinghamshire College.