We have been itching to tell you about this, but it’s been under wraps.
The Audit Commission will give delegates at this week’s Local Government Association (LGA) conference their first look at the new ‘oneplace’ website we have been working on. To be launched in December this year, Oneplace replaces the working title of Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA), giving independent information on the performance of local public services throughout England.
Visitors to the site will be able to access jargon-free, easy-to-read summaries of how local public services are doing in their area and around the country. There will also be links to detailed information from the independent inspectorates behind CAA – the Audit Commission, Ofsted, Care Quality Commission and Her Majesty’s Inspectorates of Constabulary, Prisons and Probation.
You can read more here and try out the prototype of the site. We’ll be able to show you more once the site is live.
We have just launched a brand new kiddies website for Lee Valley Regional Park – the largest open space within the M25 stretching 26 miles from the East End to Hertfordshire.
The new site features a bunch of little guys called The LeeVs…
LeeVs love nothing better than playing in the wind, chasing each other, racing each other and generally running around having fun together. They enjoy floating down the river, paddling in puddles or cycling around their Regional Park.
The accessible site features extensive use of Flash for interactive games and character animation that really brings the LeeVs to life.
Lucy Hose, the Regional Park’s Marketing Manager, said “The new site has been designed to encourage children to learn through having fun and to find out more about the Regional Park and the environment. We’ll continue to update the pages and youngsters need to keep a look out for competitions which we’ll be running on the pages. My favourite game is Rob the Ranger!”
We pulled out all of the stops to get the site looking fantastic for the youngsters – our illustrators worked
very closely with our Flash team and created a whole virtual word for the LeeVs to inhabit. The site features lots of little surprises that delight youngsters.
For example, you’ll be reading about birthday parties in the park and all of a sudden, a little bright blue bug will wander around the screen, or a LeeV will ride his bike right past you and even pop a wheelie for you.
More kid’s sites in the pipeline
We are just about to launch another two sites for young people, a bit closer to home, but we can’t say too much about that yet.
Matt Howard, our Technical Director and Information Architecture guru said “There are a whole different set of usability rules to apply to sites for younger audiences. We have lots of experience designing for children of all ages for clients like Careers Wales, Welsh Assembly Government, DTI and the Mid and South Wales Safety Camera Partnership, so we have learnt a lot along the way”.
“Our illustration team have even been commissioned to design and produce a whole visual language for youngsters with special educational needs (SEN) and this has been so successful it looks like it will be rolled out across Wales and hopefully nationally”.
From a design perspective, designing for kids is just very good fun. Why just have a ‘help’ link when you can have an animated wriggly worm pointing the way!
Our creative team have been working on a series of Flash designs that have been commissioned for Adobe’s Acrobat 9 release.
The model in the designs above is our very own eMarketing project manager, Sali. The guys have also just completed a double page spread for Men’s Fitness magazine and just about the whole team appear in it (in various states of undress!) – you’ll have to wait to see that one.
You can take a sneak peek at the Adobe work here.
This weekend we launched Welsh Space Invaders for one of our clients. I won’t tell you who, you’ll have to give it a go to find out – it has a sting in its tail!
Our illustration team worked very closely with our Flash guys to make this classic arcade clone look fantastic. If you are Welsh or love Wales – this will make you grin, I guarantee it.
Dig in behind a pit head, Conwy Castle and the Millennium Centre and let the battle commence.
Working with COI, S8080 have just launched a website for the DECC, headed up by Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change was created in October 2008, bringing together energy policy (previously with BERR – the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform) with climate change mitigation policy (previously with Defra – the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs).
We face unprecedented challenges to our environment, our economy, and the future security of our energy supplies – and the decisions we make now will affect the planet and our way of life for generations to come.
DECC exists to tackle these challenges. Our creation reflects the fact that climate change and energy policies are inextricably linked – two thirds of our emissions come from the energy we use. Decisions in one field cannot be made without considering the impacts in the other.
The short turnaround project was completed using S8080’s content management system. Matt Howard, S8080’s Technical Director said “The project had a short lead time, but working with COI and a very reactive client meant the project ran very smoothly”.
Happy St David’s Day
To celebrate the feast day of our very own St David, we have devised a ‘How Welsh are you?’ interactive quiz for our good friends over at www.wales.com.
Even if you are born and bred in Caerphilly, it may still hold a few surprises for you. You don’t need to be Welsh to have a go and you even get a certificate celebrating your honorary Welshness at the end of it.
We have worked with Welsh schoolchildren to create a game, allowing pupils to create their ‘perfect school councillor’.
The game was designed an built by our illustration and Flash teams, based on sketches and ideas from pupils at Ysgol Niwbwrch, Anglesey, after the Schools Councils Wales ran a competition to win prizes of up to £1000 for their school.
The youngsters’ ideas were amazing – and the presentation of their game was first class. We have heard that they are very happy with the end results. Tough customers indeed!
S8080 recently launched the Holidays Unpackaged website for Visit Wales. The site is the destination for traffic sent via the TV commercial and DM, fronted by the brilliant Welsh comedian, Rhod Gilbert.
The campaign, which broke in mid January, was created by Wieden + Kennedy and Partners Andrews Aldridge and features the TVC and four ‘web films’, produced especially for online delivery.
The campaign focuses on a key step change in the way people approach their holidays these days. Visit Wales believes that people want a much richer experience – they want to immerse themselves in local culture and the environment, they want to get involved and learn new skills. Gone are the days where a holiday is about being a spectator or where your 5 star hotel is the same the world over. Wales believes that they embody and offer this seismic shift in what people want out of holidays. The integrated campaign is designed to create debate and start a new holiday movement, which Wales have coined ‘holidays unpackaged’.
The website was designed around the four films – Food, Made in Wales, Learn and do and Active – each having its own section in the site and providing links to relevant TV programmes, blogs, articles and events.
S8080’s Technical Director, Matt Howard said the hosting had to be considered very carefully. “We looked at lots of specialist video streaming partners, but one, Astream, came out head and shoulders above the rest, giving us the confidence we needed to deliver the massive bandwidth”.
S8080 Creative Director, Chris Cowell said “We have masses of experience working with the Wales brand and are continually working with the Visit Wales digital team, pushing the envelope on what can be achieved online”.
The IA, creative, implementation and technical teams at S8080 were tasked with the website information architecture, design and build and the construction of the email executions. Many creative treatments were considered, but a subtle hand drawn style was easily the best fit.
“We experimented with hand drawn illustrations and type – these add to the informal and friendly nature of the site. It was fun for our illustrators to loosen up a little as they are usually working on much tighter projects”, said Chris.
We’ll let the website have the last word…
Talking. Learning. Doing. All at your own pace.
No tick boxes, no itineraries.
Just you, and everything Wales has to offer.
Wind. Caution. Throw.
Go on unpackage your holiday
Wales 1000 Things
S8080’s Wales 1000 Things website picked up an award at the recent CIM Wales Marketing Awards, Canmol (Welsh for ‘praise’).
The best of Welsh marketing was celebrated at the awards dinner with 60 entries being whittled down to five winners. We are obviously chuffed to bits and so is the 1000 Things team.
You can read all about it here.
Chris Corcoran, Detective Chief Superintendent of North Wales police and Chair of e-Crime Wales recently commented on the S8080 designed e-Crime website in his welcome speech at the e-Crime Wales Summit, 2008.
Mr Corcoran said “It’s having 1000’s of hits and we are having extremely positive feedback about how user-friendly it is”.
S8080’s extensive Information Architecture and Usability expertise came into play well before their designers even started thinking about how the site would look. “Usability is No.1 priority for us and our clients – without it, any investment in a website is a complete waste of time and money” said Matt Howard, S8080’s Technical Director.
“We were delighted when Chris Corcoran said the website was a ‘fabulous, easy to use, user friendly website’. A lot of work went into making it that way!” said Matt.
You can see Mr Corcoran’s speech at the e-Crime Wales website.
