A blog by Dublin-based web design company, EdenWeb
I’m starting a new Personal category. “This Is Not a Personal Blog But….” will be useless trivia about my life as I endeavour to make it sound interesting and pretend I don’t actually spend 99% of my time sitting on front of my PC. Kinda like that saying - On the Internet, noone knows your’re a dog. I still find that funny. You see! That’s exactly why I need to get out more often.
Anywho. T.I.N.A.P.B.B part 1.
UK design organisation, D&AD are launching D&AD Northwest.
The organisation which aims to champion excellence in creativity globally will kick off the expansion with a lecture from President, Johnson Banks and culminate in a series of year-round events, workshops and exhibitions all aimed at a vibrant creative base in the NorthWest of England.
Speaking of Creativity and England, I’ll be in the Northest myself this weekend but the most creative thing I intend to do is rest and get plenty of fresh air.
There are some great Virtual Tours for The 360 Company lined up for the next few months including (hopefully) our first virtual tour in Switzerland. Unfortunately I won’t get to go personally as I leave all the travel and Virtual Tour photography to Derek. We’ve also lined up 2 Virtual Tours in Co. Clare - 1 confirmed and 1 pending approval - and a Virtual Tour for a well known Wicklow-based company which was just awarded yesterday.
We’re not delibertely being cryptic. We’ll post the 360 photographs onto the 360 web site as soon as it’s completed. In the meantime, our Virtual Tour for Harvey Nichols has been published to their UK site and our own virtual tour gallery.
Happy viewing.
I’m finding myself attending more and more meetings these days and need to ensure that this doesn’t affect our busy schedule which in turn affects our client’s projects. I’ve always prided myself on providing clients with great service and so it’s a priority that while I’m away from the office, that there is someone at EdenWeb covering for me, continuing the design work and able to respond to support questions.
Next month we’re officially starting to work with a talented young designer based in Scotland (more about him soon - big clue in post title!) who will be helping me out and adding some extra ‘bandwidth’ to EdenWeb. The most immediate issue was how best to share our design files without losing work or having multiple copies of files floating round between us (my number 1 pet-hate).
Originally I’d been searching for a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device which in theory could be left hooked up to the internet even when my PC is offline. Matt would then be able to access any files he needed and we could ping-pong files without having to use email.
I’ve since gone off this approach slightly as I’m finding such hugely varying reviews of all the major vendor’s offerings and am instead considering sharing and storing some files through an online backup service.
Tonight I stumbled upon Box.net who do just that.
I’m spending the weekend designing and coding a new homepage for a hi-tech client in Dublin.
The implementation uses a small amount of tables but the main structure will be CSS to make the whole site a lot (c)leaner and easier to update. I’ve also started using PHP includes which are a move away from Dreamweaver Library Items for me and i’ve found the benefits are huge. Some small issues with file paths but overall…
Three things occured to me this morning
It’s amazing the amount of work that goes into getting a design from looking just like the design you presented to a client to getting that design looking the exact same on the server.
When the finished site is live I’ll make a post.
Ok - looks like I can make it tomorrow to the Irish Blog Awards. Derek will be turning up with his fancy Nikon (It’s really a Fischer-price painted black and given some silver buttons) Minolta and Canon and we hope to have the photos online at the weekend on his new photography blog.
Designing an email newsletter for a client at the moment. The campaign is essentially an invite to come meet the client at a US conference and exhibition in Las Vegas. Readers click on the email and are brought to a registration page which collects their data into their CRM app.
I really wanted to brighten up the campaign and introduce a lot of colour as the messaging is quite technical. Originally we planned on having a Flash animated sequence which would fade through several network message clouds but since most email clients won’t support Flash we knew the majority of recipients would have recieved text-only news.
Blogging in Ireland is outta control. They say the Irish like to talk. Even my brother has launched his own blog and is slowly coming round to the idea of turning up at the Irish Blog Awards on Saturday and taking some ’snaps’. He hates it when I use that word (snaps).
I actually have no idea as to the exact date I started working for myself but right around around now it’s the beginning of my sixth year in business. So Happy Birthday EdenWeb. I work by myself with only one part-time employee so you’ll have to forgive the bloggy monologue (monoblog?) :O)
It all happened pretty quickly. From writing a few letters to local businesses one snowy December to getting my first clients in January and being taken on a whirlwind thats been amazing, a blur and always a leap of faith.
Initially I just wanted to leave my job as web designer in Ireland On-Line and take some time off and head to Falcon Ridge Folk Festival to see some of my favourite musicians play guitar in a field in upstate New York. It was sitting there on the side of a hill watching my sandals tatoo strappy patterns onto my feet in the 90° plus sunshine that it occoured to me to start my own business. Maybe it was the pioneering spirit of the singer songwriter - the thrill of everyday being an adventure, of trusting the universe and the man upstairs etc etc (yes, i am a closet hippy), of never knowing whats around the corner but being completeley responsible for your own ‘luck’ that attracted me to being a small design studio.
Anywho the point is it’s Oscar week and everyone should be a little more grateful in their lives so here’s my thanks-fest to everyone who has made this possible…
In order of appearance
Good night. Thank you. I love you all. I owe you all pints*.
*Actual pints illustrated may be different than pints received
It just went live just today. A relatively small site with a simple design for a company with a tight budget.
When we were initially approached by Skelly Opening Solutions it was difficult to visualise a colourful, clean site for a company that supplies industrial doors. We worked with the Marketing dept. to identify the most attractive, vibrant and colorful photographs to lift the site and help it appeal to Architects through the clean design and user-friendly navigation.
Introducing Skelly Opening Solutions
http://www.skellyopeningsolutions.ie/
Any thoughts?
