Home for me

Hate

So, not blogged for two weeks, start writing it all down here than Firefox (yup, Firefox!) crashes on me. I had written everything down, the soloution to all mankind's problems and stuff and then *konk*! I hate/love/hate computers. I am going to have a pint with Russell and Debs to make up for this. I will blog later and it'll probably be bigger and better with a few pints of Stella and some laughs down me. Bams. S x

Pretentious, moi?

Had a very good meeting today with a potential client. Very early to tell if it's going anywhere but I really enjoyed the energy and possibilities that the project holds. It made me think of how I got into this business and how past experiences shape my current views on web design and the process that goes into that. Bit of background: when I left school at 16 I went on a Youth Training Scheme in the Village Theatre in East Kilbride. I was an apprentice technician and had a great 18 months or so learning the ropes. I applied and was accepted for the RSAMD. The RSAMD. 2 years of drinking, laughing and meeting some of the best people in the world. Oh yes, and learning bits about theatre too. After receiving my diploma (something that still baffles me considering) I then was fortunate to get a job at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow as junior kack shifter to the senior kack shifter. I progressed quickly becoming senior kack shifter to the Technical Manager, a sour faced swine by the name of McCall, Nick McCall. Nick taught me so much about theatre and lighting design and laughing. He is by far the best LD that I have seen and worked for, his design for Good by CP Taylor was inspired and I was proud to be his deputy on all the productions we worked on. It's a great feeling to know that you are creating art. And I saved his life too! Nick left the Tron to become an international play boy or localised lady boy or something and I became the Tron's lighting designer and technical manager. My artistic boss was Michael Boyd, now artistic director at the RSC. The work that I am most proud of at the Tron was the adaptation of 'The Trick is to keep Breathing' by Janice Galloway. I loved 'The trick...' it was as liberating an artistic experience that I ever had in theatre. Michael was always a great director to work with as he knew what he wanted and he also trusted me to do my own thing without having to check with him. While that is very freeing it was also incredibly terrifying. Michael is great man manger and knows what buttons to push to get the best out of his people. I can't find any of the reviews of the production but was a great production to work on and with a great cast and crew. Even now Dave, who became my deputy, and I will get all pathetically sentimental about it. Even though he never got to go to Toronto. Heh. Michael left the Tron, another director came in then I left the Tron in '97 to become a freelance lighting designer working mostly at the Brunton Theatre with Mark Thomson. He had silly hair back then but in spite of that we did do some great work and I really enjoyed chin rubbing with Mark to create some great theatre. In 1999 I had had enough. I had started doing web design at the Tron around 1995 and by 1999 I was getting more enjoyment doing websites for clients than running up and down ladders for people. Also out with the sweet, creative incubator that was the Tron I just wasn't good enough to cut the mustard in the Big Bad World. So why the shift from LD to WD? Well the process is remarkably similar. As a web developer you are asking the same questions to a client that you would if you were a lighting designer to a director. Questions like, What are you trying to achieve, who are you trying to talk to, how will your text flow, what is the end result. All the time working collaboratively with each other to create the best possible experience, the right experience that the director/client is looking for. It was a simple shift. Instead of actors, scripts and sets you’re dealing with companies, mission statements and site design. You are trying to create an emotional response using a technical medium. The client/director tend not to care about the guts behind the website/production, they just want it to produce the end result that they want. They are both hugely collaborative process. In theatre you need to talk to the director, designer, actors, stage managers, etc to make sure that the whole production comes together. It's identical in web development. If there isn't a common goal, an end result and if no one shares ideas and inspirations then it'll all fall apart. At biscuitmedia we aim to create great Internet experiences. At the Tron our job was to create great theatrical experiences. Experiences are emotional responses to what you are seeing or doing. Every new project is essentially a new production with new challenges to deal with. So that's why I feel that the leap from theatre to web isn't really a huge one. I think it’s a logical progression and I'm grateful to have worked with so many great people in both my careers. I get a bit passionate about this and that tends to get to sound a bit pretentious. It just that it’s what we try to create here at biscuitmedia and I like to share this information with client. Ususally doesn’t take 800 words though. What’s the best Internet experience you’ve had? I’d like to see your examples. I’m going to lie down after spewing my mentalness. Dimitri, you calm down at the back!

New Work

Got the nod today for a redesign for one of our current clients, Langs. Going to be very interesting as we like the current design so how do we improve on work that we like? Usually we're brought in to sort out dreadful designs. This is going to be a great one to do again. This is all part of the strategy that we put in place with Langs two years ago and we're delighted that they've stuck with us on the strategy and that the forward thinking nature of Langs has proved to increase the bottom line of their business. We're also going to use video in this website. That too is going to be interesting. Video on websites is going to be the next big thing but is also going to be the most difficult thing to get right. We're used to professional standards and if the tone of the video isn't right it's going to be the biggest turn off. Esp. as we're using the video as a selling tool rather than a way to easily explain difficult concepts. It's going to be a challenge. That's what Team Biscuitmedia are up for. Ta, S

New Website Update

Well, we're live and running. Within 1 minute of launching the website we had a call from the Flash guru himself, Mr Hoss Gifford, who came with us for a celebratory pint to say well done on our work. He interrupted the vital research that he was doing all afternoon to come out and see us, tell us well done and, yes, actually salute us. I was humbled and delighted I was sitting down. Hoss and I had a cryptic chat about Lost and it was frustrating as we were very aware and considerate that others hadn't seen the series. It was funny. We both agreed that the business with Charlie and the diary was just brilliant. We also promised to have another meeting to go into the details of it and I want to know more on his project about 'Lucky People'. Any other comments on our new site are warmly welcomed, love it, hate it, just tell us why.

Sexy Flexy

Allan and Jamie have both mentioned the Flex application that we created for our client, Glasgow Film Office. It's was our first delve into the world of Rich Internet Applications and Allan did an outstanding job getting to grips with it. It was a very interesting process for both designers and developers to get their heads around, mostly due to the amazing flexibility within the Flex framework. But wait! What the hell is a Rich Internet thingie? Flex? You promised no jargon Steelso. Ok, ok... Rich Internet Applications (RIA's) is a method of making complex things simple. The web was designed initially to retrieve documents so as time has run on the demands on what can be done within a basic webpage have been pushed. Complex interactions are not best suited to the web. Imagine that you needed to use Excel and you could only use it on the web. Imagine that every time that you entered a number or a calculation that the page had to refresh before you got the result of your query. Imagine doing that 10, 20, 100times. It would turn you to drink! What RIA's do is try to make complicated interaction with a webpage easier. Imagine, if you will that you're booking your flight with Easyjet. Imagine now that rather than clicking from page to page that you could do it all on one page, no click to the next page, no waiting, it feels like software in your browser. That's a RIA. Have a look at this shopping cart example. The shopping cart example is cool, it lets you change the view of the page, choose your price bracket, drag and drop items into the checkout area. And not once does it appear to go to page to page to page. So what? Well the less you have to click and wait for the impact of your click to have effect the more likely that you are going to stay on the website and achieve a goal. The experience becomes better, richer. There are a number of ways to produce RIA's. This is the presentation layer of the RIA. We've decided to jump in with Flex but other RIA's are created using other technologies. Each have their merits, each have their nippy bits. We like Flex. The application that we created for the GFO was a locations database. It was a big old beast of an app when we originally built it, the HTML process was about 10-12 pages. However it worked but it was difficult and tricky to try and work out just what was going on when and where. When the GFO website was being redesigned it was agreed that we wanted to make the locations open to the public but it couldn't work the way it was now, it was just to complicated. So how did we start? Tune in next time as I go into the challenge of shifting mindsets and explaining how things work to people who don't know how things work. Cheers, Stewart

The Finishing Line

Thanks to the soft launchers for the input they gave us, it's been really useful and we certainly did implement some of your ideas. Thanks for helping us out. For first timers, welcome to our new website, we really hope you like it and find it useful in getting an understanding about us here at biscuitmedia. Please feel to add your comments, nothing here is set in stone. Get comfy. It's been a tough old week trying to get this all sorted out but I'm really happy. Thanks to Allan for adding in the functions, Jamie for his Flash wizardry and to Ricky for the designs and working through the content and ideas with me. A better team couldn't be asked for, let me tell you. I'll write more later, I've a busy weekend of fun and work. We are going to push some e-mils out then going to have a well deserved and celebratory pint. Take it easy, Stewart

feart

Hello soft launchers!!!! Thanks for having a look around our website. This website has been the hardest one that I've ever had to produce because it's ours. The idea behind it is that biscuitmedia as a team are friendly, creative approachable, professional and fun. We want the website to reflect that and hopefully we have. I'm feart of letting my baby go, I'm really proud of the work that's been involved in this and we have ideas for the website to make it grow and change as time goes on. I am really looking forward to getting your feedback and know that we're going to take it and use it to improve our presence online. Thanks. S

dipping the toes

The first entry in a new blog. I've been blogging for a while all over the place but this is the first blog in the new biscuitmedia website. I'm writing this after working on the text for the new biscuitmedia website. By the time that you read this it'll be up and running. We've been working on this website for ages, other work has always got in the way but now we're live. Nothing is more scary than creating a website for yourself. It's easier looking in from the outside, being objective rather than having to look at yourself and trying to create something special, something ideal. Please let us know what you think. So, what is this blog going to be about then? Well I am hoping to share my thoughts on web design, how I approach web strategy and what is good, bad and indifferent in what we do here at biscuitmedia. I'll occasionally pop some questions to you, I look forward to feeding back on your comments to my comments. One of the big thoughts at biscuitmedia is that sharing is good, the more we share the better we can create. Dip.

Flash Killer?

Microsoft released a public beta of their interesting graphical tool for creating rich applications. The new suite of tools is called Expression, previously known as Sparkle. Some of the demos are very, very cool, it seem that you'll be able to have TV quality effects in your average Window's application.  So, yup, it'll be cool but who'll be able to see it? To be able to view the apps on my PC it took a 30-40mb download. That's quite  download for some eye candy. The technology to view Sparkle apps will be integrated in Vista,

Cut

Marc, our senior developer, is very good at what he does but a little odd in the things he comes out with. From chat about how he wishes he was an alien but didn't know he was an alien until he went to a fortune teller and she told him to wondering what cheers badgers up he is interesting to say the least. In honour of this we've had a wee Tumblr going for some time with Marc-isms. Some true, other made up. We started it today as I've moved back in with the team while we develop the GCSS website and we're at the twenty question stage of the process and Marc is coming out with some belters. Marc has nothing to do with this. He hates it. We find it hilarious. It's not for those with a It is indeed the simple things....