Elastic Media Freelance Web Design Leeds

Client: Green-tech.co.uk

I needed a new phone. My long serving SPV C550 had degraded to such a point that it had really started to annoy me, so I was on the lookout for a replacement.

Initially, I was dead set on HTC’s Touch HD. Side by side the specs looked comparable to the iPhone, which I was also considering …and it ran Windows Mobile.

Now, Windows Mobile isn’t a great OS by any stretch of the imagination, in fact its pretty much awful, but that’s what worked with my outlook/exchange setup, and I was looking for the path of least resistance.

Unfortunately in their wisdom, Orange decided not to offer me the HD on upgrade. I’m unsure why it wasn’t made an option, but I gave up trying for it and my attention wandered back over into Apple territory.

The iPhone is obviously a great phone, but the 3GS had just been launched on O2, prices were raised across the board(!), and the 24 month contract that was on offer started to seem like an awfully long time. Then the HTC Hero was launched.

Promotional website

www.wbwhitefoundry.co.uk

Elastic has completed a new standards compliant website for WB White Foundry Ltd, a leading manufacturing and engineering company based in Brighouse, West Yorkshire.

As the sister company of Architectural Street Furnishings, the website shares the group’s design aesthetic, while retaining it’s own brand identity.

Recently the social networking site Facebook introduced what people have begun to call Vanity URLs. Instead of your profile page having a long and difficult to remember URL such as http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=123456789, you can now choose a username that will get tacked on to the end of the URL such as facebook.com/johnsmith.

This doesn't mean a huge amount to most Facebook users. Most people leave their profile page fully viewable only by people they've become 'friends' with (this is the default setting). Your friends have you in their friends list, therefore there's no real need to have a short, memorable URL to give out to people.

However, Vanity URLs make much more sense when you look at Facebook Pages. Any user can create a Facebook Page. People create pages to allow Facebook users - or 'fans' - to congregate around a common interest.

So as part of managing my Personal Brand I've been looking into the places on the internet where you can set up for free. Free websites in other words. Back in the 60's the main player in this area was Goecities. They provided a relatively easy way to create a website and share with the world pictures of your cat. Geocities is no more, but arguably the likes of Facebook, Bebo, and MySpace have stepped in to fill that gap. Everyone now can have a 'presence' on the web.

But what if sharing cat pictures isn't your main concern. What if you're a fledgling business and want a professional website to reflect that? Generally you'd employ the services of a web designer, but if money was tight, how would using these free web services compare to a bespoke website?

A Film by Aaron Stapley and Sarah Castelblanco

Nice film. As a small business myself, I identify with a lot of points in this.
...especially the hours!

I'm finding the subject of personal branding of great interest lately. Especially being a design freelancer.

But what is personal branding? Well, what is a brand?! Generally speaking, a brand is the way people associate with, or feel about a product or service. Branding is the act of manipulating that association or feeling to differentiate said product or service from it's competition. So, personal branding is manipulating the way people associate or feel about you. Reading that back, it sounds much more evil than it is!

Think of it this way. If you're going to a job interview, you'll clean your shoes, comb your hair, wear your Sunday best. You want the interviewer to have a good impression of you. Well, in the world of business, and especially online, there's a myriad of ways to 'clean your shoes'.

Andy Goldsworthy is an artist/sculpture/photographer who’s medium is nature itself. Leaves, mud, snow, twigs, trees and rock are all used to create both temporary and permanent sculptures which draw out the character of their environment.