Well done to us.

Sheffield: Shortlisted for UK City of Culture 2013

Sheffield, Derry, Birmingham and Norwich have made the shortlist to become the very first UK City of Culture in 2013. Sheffield is therefore on its way to achieving its ambition to be the most creative city in the UK by 2020.

Sheffield’s bid sets out to curate an amazing programme of events and activity in 2013 which will engage, not just those already involved with arts and culture but, everyone in the city by inspiring, nurturing and celebrating their creativity. The bid also highlights Sheffield’s international credentials as a city with strong cultural assets; a diverse community; a great place to live, visit and work; the capacity to deliver big; and an innovative approach.

UK City of Culture 2013 aims to build on the success of Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture 2008, which had significant social and economic benefits for the city – including a total income of £130 million over six years.

The four shortlisted cities will be required to submit a final bid to DCMS on 21st May 2010 and the winner will be announced in early July.

Join in at www.sheffieldcityofculture.com

This has prompted us to make a decision which we have been agonising over for quite a while: by default we are not going to support it any longer.

Why? Well, in short it doesn’t really work. We have to do things to our websites that we’d rather not do to make them work in IE6 – things that often break the site in other browsers.

That’s an oversimplification, of course. IE6 was OK in its time. But its time has passed. Things we take for granted just didn’t exist in August 2001 when it was released. No PNG transparency, lack of proper CSS support, non-standard rendering of pages and bugs galore were not so much of a problem when there were no standards to stick to. However, times have changed and browser manufacturers – despite still arguing about details – are making an effort to standardise the way websites display and work in order to deliver a better user experience.

The Web 2.0 revolution that has happened since the release of IE6 depends on technologies that just don’t exist in that browser. Neither YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or Google want anything to do with it any more because they don’t want to be held back. Other browsers allow them to move forward and innovate.

The biggest problem we have is that we are constantly told that “large corporations” still use IE6 because their IT departments insist upon it. We’ve never actually seen proof of this but we do come across clients who have shown their new site to somebody who is still using IE6 only to see it break or just look plain ugly. This, of course, makes us look incompetent. The hacks we need to do to avoid this often cause a huge amount of lost time as it involves actually finding out what the problem is first before embarking on a long quest around the internet to find a solution which doesn’t have the opposite effect on the other browsers. Then we have to actually implement that solution. Naturally the incompatibility is usually spotted at 4:45pm on Friday.

If we allow for this when quoting for work our prices will look expensive. If we don’t and take the chance everything will be OK, we’ll probably lose out. It’s always a dilemma.

We’ve read endless tirades against IE6 and why it should be killed off. Calls on discussion groups for militant action and rants and raves (which just usually end in general Microsoft-bashing), usually made in the early hours of the morning by web developers who are at the end of their tether trying to make their site work in a crappy, obsolete browser and not getting paid anything for it, whilst trying to explain to clients in simple terms what’s actually going wrong. We understand this – we’ve been there ourselves.

But mouthing off on the internet isn’t going to help, so we’ve decided to do something a bit less confrontational and, hopefully, helpful.

We’ve decided to make IE6 support an option with the websites we build. From now on our quotations for web work will have an “IE6 compliance” line which will detail the extra costs involved in making the site backwards-compatible for this browser. It’s not a way of charging extra…believe me, we’d really rather not have to bother supporting IE6 at all – life is just too short. But we can and we will if we have to. This way the client has the option. Long term, we hope if more web development companies calm down a bit and do the same IE6 will just become a ghost in the browser’s graveyard along with AOL, Netscape, Mosaic and CyberDog.

We’d like to hear people’s thoughts on this approach.

The visual style of the site is inspired by the work of Martin Bedford – a highly influential graphic designer and co-founder of the Leadmill in Sheffield. The Park Hill flats which dominate the Sheffield skyline are a powerful image and evoke unique memories for the people of Sheffield including many of the musicians participating in the film, so we decided they should be an ever-present part of the site. Bold contrasting colours and high-contrast imagery highlight the different areas of the site. You won’t find many clean lines and straight edges on this site.

Quotes from the film are pulled out and displayed randomly throughout your journey through the site. When clicked, you can watch the part of the film they were taken from.

As well as the video clips and screenings news and reviews, we have built a shop, a media area (including exclusive video, photos and a listening room where rare Sheffield tracks can be played) and a “Making Of” section. The site pulls together content hosted on Vimeo, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter and makes full use of Facebook to complete the social media coverage – vital for a site like this.

Technically, the site it totally content managed by the film’s producers at every level.

www.thebeatisthelaw.com

He was asked by Jo and Nigel from the Sensoria Festival to help out on one of their training days. The festival is more than just a fortnight of music and film – it has an ongoing commitment to education throughout the year and is involved in the new Creative Diploma courses (an alternative to GCSEs).

Andy:”By chance, we have already had a work experience student from the same school and course on a two-week placement here and we are the designers for Sensoria, so it seemed obvious to continue the connection. The help I gave was mostly technical in the end – the creative skills were already there. I learnt a lot from them !”

We’ll be doing some more work with the school soon.

Labels: Abbeydale Grange, Creative Diploma, Red Tape Studios, Sensoria, Sheffield

A totally redesigned and reprogrammed ecommerce site, this update builds on our previous version which has made the Complete Runner one of the country’s top online sportswear retailers.

They’re having a sale to celebrate the relaunch. Why run over for a look…

www.completerunner-online.com

A completely content managed solution, the site is now administered by the office staff at the Institute without the need to call on us.

The site is the UK’s official (and very comprehensive) source of information on the tax implications of giving to charity. Hopefully, we’ve made it a bit more interesting than that sounded.

www.tax-effective-giving.org.uk

We were at the launch party of K-Pasa which turned out to be a very good evening…the place was packed. Thanks to the management for inviting us and bravely allowing us to meet some of their future customers as well as the press and other Sheffield high-flyers.

Feedback for our work was excellent and coupled with the excellent food, we’re sure everyone will return with their friends and make K-Pasa the success it deserves to be!

Now who’s got the headache tablets?

The film is a sequel to 2001′s “Made in Sheffield”, a chronicle of  the rise of music in the city from the early 1970s to the early 1980s when pioneers such as the Human League, ABC, Cabaret Voltaire, Heaven 17, Pulp, I’m So Hollow, Artery, The Extras, 2.3, Clock DVA and The Comsat Angels set about their mission…to “kill off Rock and Roll”!

That film was premiered at Sheffield’s International Documentary Festival (another client of ours!)  and has since become an international success, becoming part of musical history itself as well as making it into Time Out’s list of 50 greatest Musical Films Ever. It also features one of the last interviews with John Peel, as well as contributions from all the main players.

“The Beat is the Law” continues the story through to the 1990s taking in Pulp, Babybird, Longpigs, Moloko and more and also follows the rise of dance music from Warp, FON and  WAU!MrModo as well as interviews with Jarvis Cocker and Richard Hawley.

Eve Wood (director) and Richard Wood (Producer) asked us to create a website for this project after a conversation between Andy and Eve which started in the Showroom cinema in 2001, got interrupted, and then, strangely, resumed in 2008 in exactly the same place.

The film has been entirely funded by Eve and Richard’s Company Sheffield Vision. Tonight’s premier hopes to allow the film to be finished and marketed by gaining the support of Sheffield businesses. Plenty of local artists, designers and musicians were in attendance and are hopefully, spreading the word. Eve Wood showed a compilation of highlights from “Made in Sheffield”. Human League and Heaven 17 founder Martyn Ware made an inspiring speech to drum up support before a tantalising teaser trailer was shown leaving all who were there wanting more. Music was courtesy of a DJ set by Ralph Razor.

10th Planet are proud to sponsor and support the project and we wish it every success.

Keep checking the site for updates…

www.thebeatisthelaw.com

In case you wondered, “The Beat is The Law” comes from the pioneering 1987 Krush track “House Arrest (The Beat is Law)”.

How do you make reusable pallets interesting, then? Why not have a look…

www.loadhog.co.uk