I took a long weekend off this week to visit the Squid himself, Stephen and his girlfriend Vicky in Withernsea. We had four days of sunshine, sea fret and homemade cheesecake, it was absolute bliss.

The next couple of weeks I’m off work, I’m taking my little girl to Butlins in Skegness which I’m really looking forward too, followed by a few days in london with my girlfriend and when we get back, we’ll be hitting the beach in Scarborough for the annual H20:Beached music festival.

I’ll take the camera!

As a designer I’m sometimes asked to design speculative concepts to accompany quotes and tenders. This is work we are simply pitching for so the design has to impress the potential client or else we simply won’t get the job. These jobs can be quite tricky because not only do they have to look good, you have to balance this with how much time you can spend on it, after all it’s unpaid work.

The client?

St Annes Community Services

St Anne’s was formed originally to work with people who were homeless and excluded. Our first service was shaped around what these people said they needed. This focus on service users being central to what we do and how we develop is core to what we do today.

We now provide a range of services for people who have experienced homelessness, mental health problems, problems with substance misuse or who have a learning disability throughout Yorkshire and the North East of England.

From our small beginning in 1971, the organisation has grown and developed to become a major provider with a turnover of some £30m and employing approximately 1200 staff.

Well it ok really. Sure it’s seen better days but all in all it’s not doing the charity any harm. They already have a logo which has to remain, their color scheme is blue and yellow which also can’t be changed and they have alot of copy and images I can play around with. Not bad to start with at all.

The design

I think this is one of the best looking ecommerce websites I’ve ever seen. It’s clean, modern, feels fresh and makes you want to buy Alfresia’s products because the user interface is so intuitive and easy to navigate. Each section is colour coded to help with ease of navigation and location within the website and the layout is structured in such a way that you hardly need to use the search tool to find what your looking for. The simple design and colour scheme simply compliments the products, allowing them to be prominent in the design and not the design itself.

A creative and strategic mix of ‘warehouse’ style and ‘up-market John Lewis esk’, this site ticks all the boxes and targets a wide spectrum of the market.

Alfresia have complete control over the website, illustrating that not all websites will be bastardised by the client, with the right control measures, a dedicated marketing team and a visionary client that knows their business, and customers, a successful website can be achieved, both visually and financially. With this new website, sales have rocketed, leaving this client requiring more hands on staff to handle the extra work load.

Alfresia, in my opinion, is the best website 9xb has ever produced. Don’t believe me! Well the sales tell me another story, lets hope their success continues…

Oh forgot to mentioned, this was my project, I designed and templated the whole website, with database help from the developers at 9xb. Sweet!

CWI (Cohen and Wilks) design, manufacture and supply clothing garments to some of the highstreets biggest retailers. They wanted a new website to replace their current one which is starting to show it’s age. I got to visit their headquarters in the heart of Leeds and got given a guided tour of their entire manufacturing process, from the initial designers studios (predominently young female designers for some reason), to the warehouse and the clothes inspection and sorting lines.

My first impressions of CWI were that they were a major player in the clothes retail market, with operations in the UK, Asia and Europe. They are also part of the Mutsui & Co., Ltd group whom own a large percentage of the company.

We were joined by the same photographer who we comissioned to photograph the Thackray Museum whom will be helping to capture some great shots for the new website.

Taking all these factors into account, this is what I came up with:

This week saw a few new clients websites enter our studio at 9xb. One in particular, Gmund cars was worth a mention I thought.

Gmund cars is a specialist Porsche dealership based in knaresborough, selling such cars as the 911, Carrera and the beautiful 996 GT3R. It’s also worth mentioning that they have a Koenigsegg CCR for sale at £350,000 if anyone fancies it.

The name Gmund is taken from the name of the town in Austria where Doctor Porsche and his family began to build cars after the Second World War, hence explaining where the name derives from.

Gmund came to us for a simple, professional looking website to showcase a new, limited edition car they were about to manufacture. This new car, named the Tygan Speedster, is based on the 1959 Porsche 356 and is reported to be limited to a run of just 20. The account manager Dan Martin even got to drive one which I’m most envious about because I think this is a stunning looking car plus with this new version, not only do you get the hot looks, you also get the luxury of driving a new car, with a new engine and all the other mod-conditions.

This is what I came up with:

Lets hope the client likes it, and I get to drive one of these beauty’s!