RSS FeedNew Job Site for Designers in Wales
Posted: February 23rd, 2010
After six months of searching I’ve finally found a new job but was very frustrated that there was no where to find design jobs in wales. The usual design job boards rarely have anything in wales and the generic job sites don’t seem to have many design related jobs.
This week I decided to do something about it and set up designjobswales.co.uk
Posting and applying for jobs is completely free. I’ll also be tweeting when new jobs are posted on twitter so please follow me and retweet.
In Defense of Eye Candy
Posted: April 22nd, 2009Via A List Apart: Articles: In Defense of Eye Candy.
“We’ve all seen arguments in the design community that dismiss the role of beauty in visual interfaces, insisting that good designers base their choices strictly on matters of branding or basic design principles. Lost in these discussions is an understanding of the powerful role aesthetics play in shaping how we come to know, feel, and respond.”
Wine 2 Dine 4 e-commerce website
Posted: July 11th, 2008
The second new site launch this week was a big project for us. It is an e-commerce site specialising in organic wine and it involved extensive coding to fulfill the various requirements of the brief.
The initial design for this project was produced by Phillip Close at closeupmedia.co.uk and we then began the task of turning the design into a full featured shopping cart system. The client also requested additional functionality for the site and after meeting with the client to discuss their requirements we set about designing a solution.
The first solution was the “what goes with what” utility on the site – the client wanted the visitors to the site to be able to find the perfect wine to match a certain food. The solution we came up with provided a user friendly interface to the food/wine matching database which returned a selection of wines to provide a perfect compliment to their meal.
The client also wanted to offer customised wine labels, perfect for a gift or a special occasion. Inknpixel provided Wine 2 Dine 4 with a solution that allowed their potential customers to input a message, choose a label style and actually see a representation of how the label would look.
The client was more than happy with the solutions provided by us and has kindly submitted a testimonial.
Visit wine2dine.co.uk
Launch of Pure-Finish.com
Posted: July 9th, 2008
Today sees the launch of the website for Pure-Finish.com, designed and built by us at inknpixel.
The brief included the initial design of the companies logo and identity and then to carry that through to a website aimed at their existing and potential window cleaning customers. Inknpixel came up with a clean, uncluttered, modern design which also portrayed their business is a run by a friendly, husband and wife team who provide a personal service to its clients.
The site was produced using clean, hand-coded CSS and HTML with elements of Javascript and PHP for the form submission and is designed with accessibility and web standards in mind.
Our New Website
Posted: June 20th, 2008We have recently updated the design of the inknpixel website and have added a showcase of some of the print, logo, large format and website design work that we have produced recently.
While you are there, you may also like to take a look at our Services page as you may not be aware of the wide range of services that we can offer your business. If you, or any of your business contacts are looking for the services we offer please give us a call or send us an email.
Testimonials
One thing that is missing from the site at the moment is customer feedback, so if we’ve previously worked with you and you are happy with the standard of service that we have provided we would be very grateful if you could email us with a brief paragraph detailing your thoughts on our service. Please be nice 
We are also looking to provide our clients with additional services to help promote their business and we have a number of ideas in the pipeline such as email marketing and website content writing services, so be on the lookout for announcements in the near future.
5 Examples of Bad Website Design
Posted: January 9th, 2008Its not easy to describe what good design is. Opinion’s differ wildly, one person’s masterpiece is another’s eyesore.
However, by comparison, describing what constitutes a bad design is easy. Its so easy, sometimes, words are not needed, a picture or a link will suffice.
Below are some of the worst examples I’ve come across.
wayfarersgolf.co.uk
This one really doesn’t need any explanation, just click the image and see for yourself. Notice how the designer has not included the usual link to his website at the bottom of the website, no for this masterpiece he deserves more – there are two whole pages on his clients website just to advertise his services.
wesellcoffee.com
First thing your presented with is a very large picture of their factory – not terribly interesting. But it gets worse, the entire website is set in uppercase, in Times and the paragraphs are centered. Any one of these three ‘design’ elements would have been bad enough, but all three together are unforgiveable.
mjmjoinerycardiff.co.uk
Flash for the sake of flash, things don’t line up and what is the blue to black gradient with a circle in it supposed to signify?
mangohouse.co.uk
Note the scrolling flash gallery that takes about two minutes to load and there’s music! Thankfully, a redesign is in progress.
freemap.com
Animated spinning globes and background textures that wowed people back in 1995 don’t have the same impact now.
Do you know of any websites that surpass these for crappiness? Leave a comment.