Substrakt

Smiles all round here at Substrakt as we are pleased to announce our involvement in some pretty exciting projects that we will be busy with over the next couple of months:

Light House

We were successful in winning the pitch to re develop the Light House website. We were really keen to work with the Light House on this project as it looked like an ideal project for the Substrakt team. The Light House is at the impressive Chubb’s Lock Works building in Wolverhampton, definitely worth a visit if you haven’t been…

Light House aims to increase the enjoyment and understanding of technologically – based media, in particular film, video, photography and creative media and to emphasise their importance to the cultural, social and economic life of Wolverhampton, the West Midlands and further afield.

We’re extremely pleased to be working on this project with the Light House team and aim to have the website launched early next year.

Punch Records

We have been working with Punch Records on a new web presence, the website will be launching early November and aims to effectively communicate Punch’s work and allow the team to successfully integrate their growing social media presence.

Punch specialise in a range of music events and touring productions including spoken word, theatre, dance, film and visual arts.  Punch is also an official Arts Award centre.

Producers Forum

We are delighted to be working with Producers Forum after winning the pitch to re develop their website.

The aim of the Producers’ Forum is to push the West Midlands forward as a vibrant centre for film production by supporting the region’s film professionals, whilst providing them with networking opportunities and high quality training from leading industry experts. Our aim is to put the West Midlands on the map by utilising the region’s talent and facilities to create a sustainable film industry.

A main part of the web development is to implement a members section which will enable user to join and build up their own profile pages as well as effectively communicating with other members. We’re looking forward to getting stuck into this.

Website due to launch in November.

Selco Builders Warehouse

We’ve just had confirmation that we’ve won a great new contract and will be working closely with Selco Builders Warehouse. We’re re developing their web presence in order for them to effectively display their vast product range online.

(I’m in the process of doing up my house so am well into the old DIY at the mo… hoping i can sort a cheeky membership)

Last, but by no means least… NHS

We’re obviously very pleased to add the NHS to our client list. We are working on some web development with NHS Birmingham East and North. Not too many details to dish at the moment, but we’ll update when the 1st stage of the project is complete.

Oh, and finally…

We are super chuffed to have an awesome new web developer, Mark Steadman, who will be introducing himself on the blog shortly.

We uploaded a website for The Social Investment Business on Wednesday. This project was led by Futurebuilders, a great client whose website redesign was completed by us a few weeks ago. The Social Investment Business website needed turning around in less than a month, including design, content development, site build and testing ready for the launch event yesterday.

This site has more features to come including the expansion of a blog / resource section and the integration of social media including image feeds from Flickr and video feeds from Vimeo.

We have just had news that we won the international design competition for the design of Golden Square, in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, as part of a team led by Capita Lovejoy’s Birmingham office, beating over 100 international practices in the process.

Golden Square is being created as one of the first new projects in Birmingham City Council’s ‘Big City Plan’, which will see the city centre transformed over the coming years. The proposals for this new public square seek to create an exciting, iconic and inspiring space, which would act as the focal point to the Jewellery Quarter.

Our part of the proposal was to implement digital media technology, providing visitor information facilities as an integral component of the scheme – connecting users of the square to the facilities and businesses within the Jewellery Quarter. This is a great opportunity for Substrakt to work closely with sister company Subcom to provide innovative touch screen display solutions.

We are delighted to have the opportunity to be involved in such a significant project and are excited to work closely with Capita Lovejoy and the wider design team, which include David Patten, Bryant Priest Newman, Ramboll Whitby Bird, Light Bureau, and Ocmis.

We have just launched a website for the Hare & Hounds in Kings Heath. This is a great venue and has been transformed since Adam Regan took over and started bringing some great live acts and opening it up to some fab promoters. This pub also happens to be my local, so it was really cool to be able to help with a new website and some ideas for online marketing and promotion.

The new website has a blog which aims to provide insight into the venue, its history and some extra information on some of the artists and local community. Chris Unitt will be helping to kick this off with a few guest posts.

The gallery section feeds images directly from Flickr, allowing the host of talented photographers who take photos at the venue to easily get their pics on the website. These photographers include a Substrakt HQ resident Kate Beatty, who took some great photos of legendary reggae singer Horace Andy on Sunday night.

You can also follow hareandhounds on Twitter.

We have just relaunched Kate Beatty’s website. Kate is a good friend of ours and works with us here at Substrakt HQ. She is working with some exciting clients as well as working on various personal projects that sound very intriguing, so watch this space.

Kate is also now on the blogosphere, so keep a track on her photographic musings.
http://blog.kate-beatty.co.uk/

We are extremely pleased to announce our involvement in a new project. Walkit.com is a fantastic concept and a web site that already has a huge following. We will be working closely with the walkit.com team to develop their current web site with a new style and the addition of many exciting new features.

We are due for beta launch by the end of November.

While i’m on the subject of Wordpress… here is one of our latest sites, built with the help of our friend WP…

Ankerside Shopping Centre (Tamworth) needed a web upgrade. The new site offers them full content management, including the ability to easily add content to the ‘what’s on’ section. The site also features an interactive store guide.

www.ankerside.co.uk

A few pictures of the yearbook we recently produced for Birmingham’s School of Architecture

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.

Artmarkt is a web site that profiles artists including graphic designers, illustrators and photographers. The web site showcases artwork and invites users to purchase this work in various sizes as prints or canvases. The site aims to help promote emerging artists as well as offering an outlet for established artists.

Take a look… www.artmarkt.net

by Chris Keenan

by Carlie Ness

by Kate Beatty

by Max Barrett

by Patrick Lawrence

by Daniel Cullen

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)

We have recently uploaded a web site called ‘first site‘ for MADE. This site will be a grower, and aims to represent young people’s views and voices on architecture and the projects they have engaged in. It is being launched officially tomorrow, along with other projects, at MADE’s symposium titled ‘Under the Influence – The power of young people to inform public space’. I’ll let Julia Ellis (Chief Executive of MADE) do the explaining…

‘Creative Communities is directed to increasing the voices of young people and helping to ensure their opinions are heard and acted upon. It started with Youth Space, a Government Office West Midlands Commission, where young people worked collaboratively with architects and artists to create their own spaces in 6 different parts of the region. Leading on from this, Creative Communities is strengthening the strategic regional context for young people’s sustainable and self-directed engagement with the designed environment, particularly within the planning and regeneration contexts. Creative Communities comprises three live projects and First Site, a virtual architecture centre for young people.’

The ‘First Site’ logo we created:

and the web site:

www.firstsite.org.uk

Birmingham was host to CABEs (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment) Urban Design Summer School in 2007.

We produced the yearbook… (more pics/info here)

We have been very busy on the run up to Christmas so haven’t had time to develop any festive techy bits for your enjoyment, so sorry about that! We do wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy new year though.

We are closing down now, and will be reopening on the 3rd Jan. I am off to Australia for New Year, woohoo! then back in the office on the 18th January. Substrakt will be running as normal in the capable hands of Jim, Carlie, and Chris.

We launched a new flash web site last week for MADE. This web site was for a successful project they’ve been running titled ‘Making Sense of Places’. Check it out

We have just managed to add a few updates to our site detailing a few other projects that we have completed and are in the middle of. We also added an alternative CSS style sheet for those who couldn’t handle all the brownness!

We are pleased to announce the launch of Kate Beatty’s web site. Kate is an award winning Birmingham based photographer who has developed some outstanding personal projects as well as working on impressive commercial commissions.

She is also a great friend! see her new web site www.kate-beatty.co.uk

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.

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

The Birmingham Institute of Art and Design at Gosta Green had the private view for their end of year show last Wednesday. The particular faculty that was of most interest to us was the School of Architecture. We developed their yearbook, which was a great pleasure, and while developing content gave us a chance to look closely at the high standard of work that came out of the School this year.