blog.strakt

We have just uploaded a new web site for St George’s School in Edgbaston. It was a great pleasure to work with the school and both parties are very pleased with the final result. The site runs a full content management system and has brought the school into the digital age with the likes of RSS feeds and an online calendar that allows the school staff to input and organise all events within the school calendar.

We are looking forward to seeing how the site is received and developing the site in the future with possible additions such as the implementation of more social/community features.

Visit the site at www.sgse.co.uk

Thanks to Stef Lewandowski, who is on the School’s Council of Trustees and Marketing Group, for preparing a clear and comprehensive brief as well as helping us to communicate the more technical elements of the web site to the staff and board members.

The Birmingham School of Architecture are celebrating their 100 year anniversary this year, and needed a logo and a web site.

For the logo we worked with the head of department and tutors. They wanted something that would represent the school’s various locations over the past years and for the future. The school began at Margaret street, then moved to Gosta Green, to Perry Barr, back to Gosta Green, and then will move down to Eastside in the next few years. Hence the curve, which references the points of the geographical locations. This logo will be used to represent the school after the centenary has passed.

The web site’s main function is to advertise the centenary ball and allow students and alumni to purchase tickets. Once registered the alumni are given the opportunity to add a profile and search for other alumni and view their profiles (a sort of ‘friends reunited’ come ‘facebook’, only a tad simpler!). This web site will be reviewed after the ball and developed to use as the school’s main web site.
www.bsa-alumni.org.uk (won’t be able to view many pages without being a registered student or alumni of the school i’m afraid)

check this out
(ps get the sound on!)

The working draft of the HTML 5 standard was released a few days ago. HTML 4, the current standard, hasn’t really been reworked in 10 years - a long time in the relatively short lifespan of the modern web.

Much has changed since the early dot-com days of December 1997 when HTML 4 was published, as developers, designers and users have unlocked the web’s potential. Web sites have moved from being a collection of static pages to media-rich communities leveraging participation.

HTML 5 is designed to reflect this, with APIs for drawing two-dimensional graphics, embedding and controlling multimedia, managing client-side data storage and editing parts of documents. Turning to more bread-and-butter stuff, HTML 5 will also make it easier to represent familiar page elements. A full list of changes can be found here.

“Ajax and related innovations have propelled demands for a new standard that allows people to create web applications that interoperate across desktop and mobile,” the group said.

A drawing API? It will be interesting to see sites that use no graphics at all, just typography and browser-rendered graphics. Speedy. Though would this be regarded as presentational markup? - something we’ve been told to separate from our content? Either way, I don’t think we need to start making flashcards for the array of new tags just yet.

Read more here: Reg Developer

Selly Sausage was Substrakt’s very first client, we developed a web site for them 2 years ago. We have just updated Selly Sausage’s web site with a new style and a content management system, as they are now hosting events so needed the ability to keep a what’s on page regularly updated.

www.sellysausage.co.uk

Here’s a bit of an update on life at Substrakt (well overdue I must add, definitely going to make more effort on the blog).

Updated site and brand

For those have visited our blog before you will notice the re-vamp, this is to match our newly styled web site and slightly tweaked brand. We felt that we had developed considerably since the last site and branding, so wanted to have a bit of an overhaul.

www.substrakt.co.uk

Our new strap line is ‘creative communication’, we felt this portrayed our services and the way we work with clients more effectively. Previously, ‘web – print – ident’, although our main services, was too specific. We have recently been involved in projects where we provide full marketing and advertising packages and want to move forward with this type of service, so just marketing our core skills as separate entities didn’t really cut the mustard.

New addition to the Substrakt team

We welcomed Carlie in late September, a talented graphic designer, who recently graduated from Bath Spa.

Architecture

We have been working on several architecture and urban design projects:

MA Urban Design

We completed a prospectus for the MA in Urban Design at Birmingham School of Architecture.

School of Architecture Centenary

The school are due to celebrate their 100-year anniversary next year. We are currently working with the school to develop a brand identity to mark this special occasion. Alongside marketing the Centenary and the commemorative ball, we are creating a web site that will offer the alumni a chance to reunite.

Lovejoy

This successful land planning company with offices in Birmingham and London have been working with Substrakt to develop numerous pieces of design work. We have produced documents that have helped them present development plans.

CUDOS (Centre for Urban Design Outreach and Skills)

The centre advances excellence in urban design skills by developing community-centred solutions in housing, neighbourhoods, and the wider built environment. Substrakt have branded and are in the process of developing marketing material for CUDOS, and the development of a web site in the near future.

MADE

MADE web update

We are giving MADE’s web site a bit of an overhaul with a new style and some technical developments. This will be finished and uploaded at the end of next week.

‘First Site’

Based on a previous project, ‘Youth Space’, MADE (Midlands Architecture & the Designed Environment) are running a creative communities project titled ‘First Site’. This project develops models of practice for young people’s creative participation in the built environment. We are creating a brand, followed up by a web site, which allows project participants to display project work and discuss issues.

Other projects:

Jibbering

The new site is up, promoting Jibbering’s spectrum of activity as well as hosting their online record shop.
www.jibbering.co.uk

Advertising

We have recently been working on an ‘advertising’ job, creating Christmas promotional material for the Old Square shopping centre in Walsall. Liaising with the Express and Star to take advert space and distribute leaflets.

The Regent Arcade is Cheltenham’s largest shopping centre. We have given them a brand new web site, which includes a full content management system and an interactive store guide. The project also included developing a virtual tour of the shopping centre, which gave us the chance to show off some 3d skills. We also developed print work including store guides and roll up banners advertising the launch of the web site.

The site was launched last friday, and all this week there has been a spot in the arcade where our 3d creation, along with clips of the web site, is being displayed on a big plasma screen alongside the print collateral.

It was a great honor to be working on this project as Cheltenham is my home town, and i spent many a penny of my pocket money in the regent arcade.

3D Tour

www.regentarcade.co.uk

Joe is an Architect and Urban Designer with a practice on Fazeley Street, Digbeth. He is very active in the political and practical arenas of architecture, conservation and urban planning, particularly in Birmingham.

We have just uploaded his web site, with a news/blog section enabling him to share his interesting views, ideas, and projects.

www.joeholyoak.co.uk

I’ve just been checking out the BBC’s new on demand TV service, iPlayer, due for launch later on this year, whilst reading I discovered iPlayer would not be available for the Mac. After being informed of this I went to have a little look at Channel 4’s similar service, 4od, this has been running since December 2006, and is not available on the Mac.

Quite ironically on the homepage for 4od, is a large advert for the Peep show, with Mitchell and Webb who have just appeared in the latest Mac adverts!

I’m also pretty sure Apple can’t be too happy with the BBC calling their new service iPlayer!

After further investigation I found that this unavailability is due to copyright issues, as Apple refuse to license their FairPlay DRM (Digital Rights Management) copy rights protection to third parties, meaning broadcasters will be open to copyright abuse if they allow Mac users access. For more info go to vnunet.

You can now purchase items from the Ikea website.
Stock up on your cheap n’ cheerful office furniture now!