From I believe in advertising.

St David’s Day has taken over at www.wales.com. Fun, recipes and activities… you can even learn the Welsh national anthem phonetically.

Then test your Welshness with this multilingual interactive quiz.

Via noquedanblogs.com

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!

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.

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.

I’m a big fan, I grew up with Dr Seuss books and my three sons have a pretty vast collection.

Nothing like filling kids heads with a bit of lunacy during a bedtime story. Makes for interesting dreaming.

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.

By Patrick Moberg

For Simply Music.