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It’s been a busy few months for the Ech team. We’ve been working on amongst other things:
2012 has been a really exciting year. We’ve been really lucky to have had such a variety of really exciting projects and to get the chance to work with some great people. Our plans for 2013 are even bigger: A new website just around the corner, a big new application we can’t say too much about yet and… if we’re lucky, some more great website and design briefs. Merry Christmas everyone, let’s all get a decent rest, 2013 is going to be a year worth staying awake for!
We’re chuffed to bits to announce that Wenzel’s won the Retail Innovation Award at the Baking Industry Awards on 12th September. This award recognised the work Wenzel’s and Ech have done in partnership in the last year to completely rebrand all of their shops and online presence and the impact this has had on their commercial success. Wenzel’s have refitted the majority of their stores (the stragglers will be picked up shortly) with the newer, more appealing look we have developed with them. Funds spent on design needs to achieve results for clients, so were particularly pleased to win this award as it recognised the increased online and offline takings that can be generated from design and marketing innovation.
We’ve been busy for the last few months developing a web based application for measuring the impact of incoming policy changes for landlords and managers of supported housing and social housing. This tool has been developed in partnership with experts in the housing field and will enable users to pinpoint the financial impact on their provision of support and on the individuals they serve. To facilitate easy access we’ve developed the application to be fully smartphone compatible. More info to follow!
2012 will be known as the year when usage of tablets and smartphones for browsing became a mainstream pursuit. It’s not about the geeks and the trailblazers any more, we’re all doing it.
As a result, it’s no surprise to find that we’re spending a lot of our training time keeping up to date on best practices in designing and building websites which are functional across various mediums and screen sizes and the recent crop of sites are all embracing responsive design principles (resizing and changing to fit the device) to ensure however you are looking at an Ech site, it looks great. (more…)
It’s that time of year when we’re busy ensuring our paperwork is all up to date for the end of the financial year, finishing up a few rapid-fire and longer-term projects ready for the start of the new business year. It’s a great time to take stock in a year that saw us grow our technical capability to provide even more interactive websites in a tough UK business environment.
In the last couple of weeks we’ve been working closely with a marketing and design agency and launching websites for a gardening supplies company and an investment firm. More details and links to those soon. We’re ramping up efforts to support the RSPCA North West Middlesex with their shop-refit programme and dipping a toe into the Facebook App world with our first competition App.
A new wave of websites are currently being booked in and looking forward to getting cracking on those going into April.
The web team is keeping pretty busy at the moment working on the user interface design for a major investment application. It’s easy to get caught up in bigger projects and you can get so focussed you don’t step back and see the detail. To help with this we like to maintain the variety by mixing longer projects with rapid projects. With this in mind, two smaller sites we’ve just launched are a site for an Eleven Plus Tutor and a conversion of an existing design and website from flash to content managed HTML for a Market Research Space. Check them out….
Ech wish a successful year in business to all of our clients, partners, associates and friends. You get us fired up about the year to come.
The year has launched with a bang. We’re busy working on an interface design project for a major piece of financial software, finishing an educational game, finalising some event marketing materials and getting going on a series of new websites. Phew!
Well, they say that variety is the spice of life and if that is the case then we’re reaching chicken jalfrezi levels here at Ech.
Over the last two months we’ve launched 10 websites, many of which will be gracing this website shortly. We’ve also been crafiting some fine print work for the RSPCA, Balance Verbier, and Stream Communications. Moving into the world of packaging and shop design we’re delighted to have been involved in some packaging design work for great local chain Wenzel’s the bakers and to be playing our part in their fantastic shop re-fitting programme.
It’s been great in between all that to hear from some existing clients and to be involved in site updates for City Year London, Apteligen and Technical One. Can’t wait for Christmas and a bit of creative rest before we hit the next year running!
Ech have been keeping out of the limited sun on offer this summer. The reason: we’ve had some really exciting projects on the go which have been keeping us glued to the office and screens. More on this to follow, but amongst other things we’re really chuffed to be on the verge of launching a cutting edge wordpress site for a local chain well known in the north London area. We’re topping up our supply of vitamin D by also working on a gardening equipment website and hitting the piste with a Swiss based lifestyle guru. Fun times and look forward to posting some screenshots soon.
With savings to be made from the public purse, public sector organisations are facing tough decisions to be able to deliver effective services with less resources. The scale of change required calls for redesign to services. Access Redesign work to help organisations achieve these kind of changes and Ech were delighted to be asked to support them with a new website to get their message out there.
Ech have moved to a new office, giving us a bit more room to stretch our legs and more importantly providing some more desk space for the talented individuals who are joining the Ech team on a permanent and project basis.
We’ve got a whole range of websites launching in the next month, so I’ll be posting more details on those as soon as I get the green light. In the meantime, what with the approach of the English summer (hopefully), it feels like it’s time to lose a few pounds. A website we’ve just launched can help with that.
We’ve just launched a website for a Hatch End Tuition company. Visitors can visit the site to find out about courses, tuition venues and fees. We had a lot of fun using WordPress to build this site. The recent versions have made provided a host of powerful new features for content managing sites and over the last 5 years of using the system we have most valued the fact that WordPress allows us to use any layout and configuration without restriction or compromise.
Sometimes you don’t need a new website, just a lick of paint on your existing.
We’ve been working with Achill Management for the last few years and produced their original website as a simple WordPress site in 2006. This year, they asked us if we could refresh the look of the site and add some more functionality to make it easier for them to flag recent news, case studies and quotes from happy customers.
Because the existing site was in WordPress it was easier (and a little more affordable) for us to roll up our sleeves and apply a new theme and a couple more post loops. We’re pleased with the result.
We’ve just launched a small site for the Hunnypot Day Nursery in Huddersfield. It’s a fun site making use of child themed imagery and a flying bee!
We’re also building another small site for an 11 Plus Tuition centre in Hatch End. We’re working on a full design right now, but in the meantime we’ve put up a set of simple pages to commence their web presence.
Wow how time flies! Been busy working on so many exciting client projects recently we haven’t been putting up as much news as I would have liked. This will be remedied shortly, but in the meantime please to announce that the third issue of Hornblend has just launched packed full of great articles.
In the midst of delivering some larger ecommerce and extranet sites, its nice to throw in a smaller project or two to get a quick change of scene. With this in mind we would like to present the Absolute Drainage and Plumbing website, which we had great fun building. Best of luck to the Absolute team!
Ech are pleased to announce that Issue 2 of Hornblend Magazine has just launched. We helped out with refining the layout and functionality for issue 2 and also supported with sourcing images. It’s a good read, so why not check it out!
Ech were pleased flicking on the TV recently to see a logo we had designed for CTM Fire and Security turning up in the convenience store in Eastenders. We were even more pleased to spot that a series of charts we designed for a report by the Matrix Knowledge Group have been reproduced in a recent BBC blog article about predicted levels of reoffending. Informatics design is an interesting area of design because the focus is on maximising the clarity and impact of the figures presented and it’s great to see the report getting the exposure it deserves.
Ech are currently knee-deep in developing interface designs for a series of applications developed by partner companies. As web designers who like to get our hands dirty with the coding as much as the photo-shopping it’s an interesting experience to stand back from the application and say ‘how should this look to the user and how should it work’. We’ll be installing some heat-maps on some of these applications to see where people are clicking so it will be interesting to see first-hand how people interact with the design.
Since the close of last year Ech have been supporting on the design and development of a new online magazine known as Hornblend. I’m going to write a full description of the project in the coming weeks, but for the meantime just wanted to say that we’re really proud that it’s made it out into the wild and look forward to building it up into a really popular resource.
Ech are proud to support the launch of new music and lifestyle magazine Juke. We have just put up a video page showcasing their style.
Ech recently installed a countdown timer on the Hearing Aid Council’s website. Its a small feature and one that has been seen on websites since the early days of web design, but if used for the right reasons we think it can be a really eye catching and useful feature. Can you think of an application for a countdown timer? Could count down to your birthday, pay day or even that holiday you’ve been saving up for…
Ech are currently putting the finishing touches to a few websites and looking forward to adding some new screenshots and links in the coming weeks. The last couple of weeks of developing a website can be the most important – in design the devil is nearly always in the detail! (more…)
Ech have just launched a small website to support the Marr Munning Trust in coordinating bids on a property in Ealing, 29argyleroad.co.uk. The website allows interested parties to register their interest through a registration form which triggers the delivery of an email with a password enabling them to view the full property details arrange a viewing.
Wow, it doesn’t seem like five minutes since we were all listening to Prince’s Party Like It’s 1999 and getting ready for the millennium, but here we are 2010.
Of course planning a whole decade is difficult, so I’m going to focus on the immediate future. January 2010 sees us booked up with website projects. We’re well on the way to launching the full website for new UK charity City Year London, we’re working on an exciting new online magazine, producing a website for a local school and ramping up development on a couple of soon to be launched ecommerce sites.
Something tells me it’s going to be a busy year!
Much as the scrooge in me hates to admit it, it seems that Christmas is well and truly here again…
On the plus side for Ech, this means we’re busy putting together Christmas Cards and Christmas HTML emails for several of our clients. A personalised greeting that touches gently on your business as well as sending out best wishes and season greetings can be a good way to remind your clients and contacts that you’re around and ready for work. Its nice to say thanks for another year of good business with the best clients in the world – yours!
Reminds me, we had better get our Ech xmas cards finished too!
Ech are currently working on three E-commerce sites. We’re putting the finishing touches to an updated website for MyPureRush – screenshots of that to appear shortly – diving into the world of Actinic shopping carts for Awards of London and just starting off a website for Luke Jakobs ties and accessories.
With all this online shopping activity it’s a sure sign that Christmas is coming. Besides the general tidings of good will, there’s money to be made and a recession to beat!
At the moment we’re working on a few massive projects which are keeping us busy in so many ways. It’s really exciting to be undertaking these, but the frustration can be that you want to tell the world about it and preview some pages, but you can’t until it’s all polished and ready to go.
Fortunately then, we have also taken on some quicker engagements allowing us to keep busy as the larger projects change pace. A couple to mention: We’ve produced a small portfolio site for up and coming furniture maker Oliver Haddon and have added a content management system to a site designed and built by someone else a few years previously for Solo Fitness. The new WordPress driven version should make it a lot easier to keep the site up to date and moves the code forward from old style HTML tables to the much nicer semantic XHTML / CSS.
Ech are delighted to announce the launch of a new website to support the launch and recruitment efforts of the UK division of the young people’s charity City Year. You can view the initial one page version of the site at www.cityyear.org.uk. This website will be expanding over the coming months as the charity recruits its first wave of volunteers and commences work in Shoreditch. Check back soon!
Ech are currently finishing work on a new website for designer furniture maker Oliver Haddon and have just launched a website for House Consulting – portfolio item to appear on this site shortly. We’ve also launched a micro site for Face Painter Donata’s Art.
On the print side we’ve been carrying out some brochure work for the Caledonian Hilton Edinburgh and designing a report for the Department of Health.
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Ech Design Ltd, based in London, UK, specialises in web based design and development, graphic design, and print work. The company is three years old and employs a small dedicated team with expertise in graphic design, illustration, branding and consultation, web design, web development and search engine optimisation (SEO). Additionally, we work with a large network of associates and can provide other services such as PR, marketing, proof reading and animation / motion work.
Check out our portfolio of web and print work and feel free to drop us a line if you are keen to discuss a project, a collaboration or just want to shoot the breeze.
Phone: 020 8429 5264
email: info@echdesign.co.uk
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