Since January we have been working closely with Cardiff Business School and Cardiff University's Web Services Team to design and implement a content managed website for the school.
Cardiff Business School is ranked second in the United Kingdom for its leading research. With over 150 faculty members, the school educates over 2500 students each year from over 120 countries, so it was imperative that the website was produced to be as flexible as possible, but with simple navigation and a clear design.
Before we began working with the Business School, their exiting website was managed by a select few, through a large number of Dreamweaver templates. Which is great for smaller websites, but with a website of this size it could only be described as madness, giving us a headache just thinking of the complications.
With well over 5,000 pages of content we proposed to simplify the management of content using our old favourite: Drupal (an open source content management). After a comprehensive planning stage we were then able to produce a robust multilingual website that can be updated by multiple members of staff, allowing for the website to updated instantly and securely. The site has slowly launched over the last week and its already receiving great feedback from the school faculty.
Its going to be great to see the website develop overtime as the Business School staff take control. Visit their new website at http://business.cardiff.ac.uk
The first two weeks of October have gone by and with it, so has Cardiff Design Festival 2011. I managed to miss most of last years festival as I was busy working on a project. So this year I was determined to go to as many events as possible. Firstly I think from the year break it has really shown me that the festival feels a lot more solid and a great two weeks of events. I think there are levels of events now, within the festival. Events for designers and business, to social events for designers, right through to events that were put on by designers that attracted a public audience. Definitely from the 2009 event there seems to be a big progression. So I am going to give you a quick over view of some of the events I attended and give you an idea of what I thought.
I think I might go in reverse order. So the last event I attended was Design Wales' Service Design seminars at the Pierhead building. speakers were Ben Reason from Live|Work and Nick March from Sidekick Studio's. Both companies practice service design at different levels. Live|Work are a huge established service design company working with large clients from all over the world. Where as sidekick studio's are, (as the name implies) a much smaller studio working on smaller digital service design projects.
So what did I think?
For me the work Live|Work showed and how Ben described the way they felt design was going was bang on. But I don't think it gave me much insight into them as a company. I think for people just getting into this arena then I could see it being really interesting, but it didn't really hold the attention. Second up was Nick. Who discussed the transition sidekick studio's are going through right now. Instead of just doing client based work. They are now developing projects internally and then trying to sell them. The projects he discussed such as Buddy and the Amazings were really interesting and it will be interesting to see if they do manage to get this going long term. I think Designers have for a long time made off shoot businesses. It is nothing new. Elmwood for example have for many years had their own tea brand and more recently launched a boutique beer. Traditionally designers have often sold one off designs within the shop section of their websites.
What I felt was slightly different about Nick's viewpoint were the requirements of the project in the first place. A mini value set, or mini brief if you like. This helped them decide on whether the project should go forward. In a nutshell all the projects had to be "digital products that make money, change lives and put a smile on people's faces" with the aim to "make our society better". So for me with general interest in this subject it was interesting to see this type of model within a commercial company. Granted they do get a lot of their initial start up funds from research pots and other funding schemes, but long term it left me questioning is this the way we should look at developing projects and companies for the future?
This thought brings me nicely to another event I helped out in at the Old Library. EDC had for a few months now been talking to Llamau – a Welsh based charity that do great work with young people. For many years they have worked with them to develop social enterprises. So we worked them to try and develop their projects in a one day design workshop. Working through the business generation workshop diagram, we developed a number of small exercises that allowed people to explore their initial business ideas and hopefully get them to think about their potential customers, and also who would be needed to make the business a success. I guess looking back on both these two events. Design has a real opportunity to make a difference within lives for good and also generally across society in general. I think regardless of the client. We should be looking to advise about how to make things 'better'.
I will write another post about other events soon.
Over the last few months we have been putting together a new website ready for today's public announcement of Wales' top 50 fastest growing companies. The Fastgrowth 50 recognises and awards those companies that show exceptional growth sustained over a period of time and after thirteen years of identifying the fastest growing firms in Wales, the unique initiative is firmly established as the list of business success that entrepreneurs across Wales aspire to.
Organiser Professor Dylan Jones Evans explains: "Every year, it is a constant remainder of the vast entrepreneurial potential that exists within the Welsh business sector, with growth performance by businesses that is as good as any to be found across the regions of the UK."
Hoffi's role was to inject life into the online presence of the Fastgrowth 50. Working closely with Dylan we developed a prominent chart based focus to the site, which showcases this years winners and features Avonwen Landry as Wales' number one fastest growing company for 2011. Additional features such as news publishing and profile management will come on board (for those on the list) over the coming weeks, allowing this year's fifty to take ownership of their listings, whilst being able to use the website for promotion throughout the year.
This years event was supported by Capita Law, Santander, Media Wales, Logicalis, Venture Wales, University of Wales, Sinclair Group and University of Wales, Newport.
Posted by Julian Sykes
So the show is up and you are thinking about the summer, maybe some of you are thinking about going travelling. Others are thinking about looking for a job and some just a bit of work experience / internship. So for the ones out there looking for a place in a creative studio what do you need to do to get some experience?
Firstly let's say there are around 30 odd students in your uni class, there are probably about 5-6 courses each with students who might consider themselves capable or getting a design job, then say there are around 100 or so uni's who do creative courses. That is already about 18,000 people. Then you have people who havn't got a job yet from last year and others generally looking for a career change. So that is a lot of people.
So here are a few things to be thinking about:
Hope this helps...!
Its in Design Week, so I guess that makes it official: for the last few months we've been enrolled on the Design Wales service design programme. Its been a great experience lead by Design Wales' Paul Thurston, who has spent a time at our studio talking and running some quick workshop activities about the principles of service design, and how to apply the design knowledge we have to services. For us its an opportunity to reflect and develop on the existing services we provide in the areas that convey brand, by providing a more rounded service to our clients in order for them to give a true brand experience to their customers.
