Great so it seems W3.org (World Wide Web Consortium or W3C) have finally redesigned their website. Now for those that have never heard of the W3C they are basically an international community that work together to sustain and develop web standards. It’s fitting then that this redesign hasn’t deviated too far away from their old design, adopting instead for an evolution of the old design rather than a complete redesign.

W3C describes their new site as follows:

The new site features a harmonized design, simplified information architecture, new style for technical reports, and new content, including calendars and aggregated blogs.

Using their own markup validation tool it seems the developers have done a good job, no errors were found and the site passed XHTML 1.0 Strict! as you’d expect. Design wise I like it, a simple update to the design and architecture has brought it up-to-date. Nothing fancy but I think it’s ticked all the right boxes.

One feature i do like is the ‘views’, where you can switch between desktop, mobile and print view.

So a quick post about the W3C and their sympathetic evolution of their site, let us know what you think.

Frog (me) and Piggynap have created another pointless website to help us waste as much of our free time as possible. It’s called Google Suggest of the Day. We post a daily Google Suggest that we have stumbled across. Why? Why not!

Suggestoftheday.com just loves to mock! We find the strangest questions asked on Google (via the suggest feature) and plaster it here for your amusement. If you find any strange suggests yourself and feel we should be notified of it then please let us know.

There is a Suggest feature so if you stumble across a funny or shocking Google Suggest, let us know.

This week saw a new website launch at 9xb, a website I was very lucky enough to design, and for a client that was an absolute pleasure to work with.

Herriots for Leisure is an independent boutique hotel and restaurant based in the small town of Skipton, in the beautiful North Yorkshire Moors. After previously designing their original website, under the beady eye of a Business Link representative, 9xb was commissioned to relaunch the website with a new look, an online presence to match their new hotel refit.

May I add, if you are ever in Ripon and need a roof for the night this would be a wise choice for a luxury stay.

Anatomy

Visit Herriots for Leisure to see it in action.

Hire me

Like what you see? The Floating Frog is currently considering freelance work, get agency quality work and a personal service, contact us today. Alternatively work with 9xb, an award-winning digital agency based in Harrogate.

Bethemiddleman.com is a project we’re currently working on to provide the housing market a FREE option when selling and buying. Read more about it here.

Currently the project is in full flow and it looking fantastic. Whilst we wait patiently for it’s arrival, we have launched a new holding page to enable users to pre-register and get FREE access to the site and all it’s features.

The new page gives an immediate look and feel as to how bethemiddleman.com will look like. Features on the page include:

Member signup

I simple signup form that will alert users once the site goes live.

Beta users signup

To enable a bug free, feature rich website we want beta users to signup and help us make bethemiddleman.com to best it can be.

Press signup

We are encouraging any press interest to contact us directly about the project with this signup.

Information

Simple targeted ‘thickbox style’ popups details what the service offers to the different user groups.

Twitter feed

Bethemiddleman.com is twittering updates on the project and related news with the latest twitter featured on the page.
Simple targeted ‘thickbox style’ popups details what the service offers to the different user groups.

Commission saving calculator

A simple calculator that shows you roughly how much commission you’ll save with bethemiddleman.com by not paying estate agent fees.

Screenshot

Archive44.com is a fun little project I decided to do on the spur of the moment. It’s basically an archive of over 900 front pages of newspapers from all over the world on the day Barack Obama, the first black African American, became President of the United States of America. When you put over 900 front pages together you really get a sense of scale and importance this day was.

Piggynap.com is the blog of my girlfriend Zoe who works in online marketing and SEO. A few months ago I set her up a quick WordPress blog to start blogging on, with a simple design and limited features. I felt that I was getting more proficient at building and tweak WordPress themes so I decided to get my knees dirty and have another crack at creating another theme.

The first thing Piggynap.com said was:

Does it have Avatars on comments???

Yes of course it does, I said… a beaming smile and an overly tight hug later, Piggynap.com left most satisfied while grasping a bar of chocolate. Heaven.

Let me know what you think. If you like it I may attempt a Free WordPress Theme for anyone to download… maybe, so be nice.

New design

Old Design

A few months ago I got approached by a contact of mine to see if I was interested in getting involved in a project they were starting. After a very productive meeting, a certain FROG leaped away extremely excited by the prospect of spear heading the complete brand design of this new venture.

The aim of the project is to deliver a revolutionary global website aimed at taking the housing market by storm. The website will be aimed specifically at private home sellers, offering them an opportunity to miss out the middleman (the dreaded estate agent) and potentially save themselves thousands in agents commission fees. We aim to offer the service completely FREE to help direct the housing market in a new direction.

The unique selling point of the website is that it’s targeting the complete housing chain, from those searching for a room to rent, to those wanting to sell their English Country Estate. Buyers, Sellers, Landlords, Renters, Room searchers and those offering a spare room, www.bethemiddleman.com is for you.

Www.bethemiddleman.com currently has a holding page up detailing, in summary, the new service they are offering and inviting people to signup and be first in line to use the new website when it’s launched.

Anyway, enough selling of it, it’s exciting times not just for me, but for the housing market. It’s was only a couple of weeks or so before this started that we were talking about how bad the current websites were out there and how a lot of people still don’t know about the options they have for selling privately. I’ve been lucky enough to experience first hand the complete property chain cycle, I’ve bought, renovated, and sold a few houses in the past, I have rented a number of times, I’ve been a landlord (still am come to think of it), rented a room and even let a room. I know first hand that there isn’t a single website out there that offers me a complete service, a one stop shop for everything housing. Well now there is!

The site will be fun, light and easy to use, and as I’m feeling ecstatic at the moment I’m even going to show you a few screenshots (Rough draft versions but a taster none the less).

Homepage design for bethemiddleman.com

Homepage, allowing users to search for homes to buy, rent or rooms up for rent. three call to actions for advertisers follow below with further information lower down.

Property listings

Search results feature an interactive map so users can see visually the location of homes for sale, with the option to see nearby schools and train stations.

To end…

Unfortunately that’s all I’m allowed to show at this point in time. To stay up to date with progress you can on Twitter at http://twitter.com/bethemiddleman.

Please signup at www.bethemiddleman.com.

This evening I finally got round to implementing a new WordPress theme for piggynap.com. It wasn’t a full theme build this time but it still took up the best part of my evening. I’ll be interviewing the owner of piggynap.com over the next few days so watch this space.

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!