DeckchairTechnical manoeuvres and exciting new work
Over the last few years Deckchair has started to focus almost solely on website design (although we still offer and enjoy branding and graphic design) and within the last year we have brought our web development in-house. Deckchair has always concerned itself with the functionality of websites – we’ve never believed that a website should just “look good”, it has to work, and work well. Having our own development team in-house has allowed us to concentrate and expand on our technical and functional offerings, and given us the opportunity to research and experiment with many different methods of application.
The web is an entirely different ‘beast’ to say 10 years ago, and it is vital to keep up with the flow, assessing the value of current trends, and not get washed away with the tide. The potential for interaction between a user and a website is huge, and very exciting and it’s clear to us that a website should be centered around the user and what they need to obtain from the website, as well as the business the website belongs to, and what the business needs.
We’re really excited about the websites we’ve been producing recently; we’ve really enjoyed the design process and have been able to implement some nice technical features. As part of this, we’ve been refining our processes, working towards achieving the most effective methods of working internally, and externally with our clients.
We’ve adopted Expression Engine as one of our primary content management platforms, owing to its extensive customisation features, ease of use and powerful modules. We’ve also officially elected jQuery as our Javascript library of choice – enabling us to quickly implement some choice usability enhancements as seen in the Money Saints site below. Our developers have been hard at work in the background improving our tool chains, tightening up security features, introducing Object Oriented programming principles into our code base and working on some Enterprise level systems for use in future applications/projects.
Have a look at some of our most recent work…
Yet to reach the masses, this website is ultimately aimed at lead generation but hopes to provide an experience that is useful, easy and helpful for the user. Employing JQuery helped us create a neat tool for the home page – an easy, and slightly fun way of drawing the user in. The overall design seeks to move away from the typical doom and gloom of most debt-related websites and inspire the user to take action.
This website gives Wesley Conference Centre a strong online presence. A clean and easily accessible design, useful content and enquiry forms help the user find the information they need. The content management system behind this gives our client full control over the images and text on the website, as well as allowing them to add/remove PDFs, special offers and news stories.
A presentation website to showcase Stuart & Frank Training, introducing their services and way of working, through textual information and a video introduction (provided by the client). Typical of the majority of our client relationships, we are currently producing an entire range of work for this client; branding, website, presentations, advertisements and character illustrations. Case study to follow soon!
The first online presence for H Sweet & Sons, displaying their services, as well as former projects through image lightbox galleries. Similar to Wesley Conference Centre, this website employs Expression Engine and gives the client full control over their website.
Feel free to let us know your thoughts on the above websites.