Web Design

Working in academia throughout the 1990s gave me convenient access to a fast Internet connection long before the days of home broadband. Struck by the opportunities presented by the World Wide Web I created my first commercial web site in 1998 for Colin Appleyard Motorcycles, a year before I was approached to create the web site for the Bradford Film Festival and oversee the development of the web site for the National Media Museum.

I’m a great believer in hand coding web sites – I used a simple text editor prior to the advent of Adobe Dreamweaver – especially given that the full potential of cascading style sheets and programming languages only become apparent if you ‘go under the bonnet’.

Crucially, I also believe that web sites should primarily be focused on delivering a client’s message, with any underlying technologies only serving to reinforce that message. Perhaps this is best exemplified by the Sugden Audio web site (right), a hand-crafted web site that is deliberately minimalistic in appearance, quick to load and platform independent (try viewing the web site on your smartphone where screen size and download speed might otherwise affect usability).

Such attention to detail is also essential if individual web sites are to be optimised for search engines such as Google™ – I employ a mix of good practice and industry tricks to ensure web sites have the profile on the Internet that they deserve.

In contrast the minimal appearance of the Good Fundraising web site disguises a back-end ‘content management system’ that allows the site owner to update the site via a web browser anytime and anywhere.

The Illuminate Studios site was created within the blogging platform WordPress – although template driven, a working familiarity with programming languages allows the web site developer much greater flexibility in design and functionality whilst remaining faithful to the important concepts of web standards and accessibility.

Illuminate Studios has a proven record of effective web design that meets customer’s needs quickly and affordably – that’s why they keep coming back!

Please get in touch to discuss your requirements.