http://www.creativespark.co.uk/feeds/news.xml The latest news from Creative Spark. 360 /news/ Stuart Broad has just been named as one of the top five cricketers of the year by the well respected cricketers publication Wisden. At this exciting stage point in his career he needs an online presence, and came to us to help him out. The website we’ve developed lets visitors send questions for Stuart to answer personally, as well as letting them read the latest news about their favourite Ashes star and look at photos and videos in the gallery. You can see more about the website in the Thu, 22 Apr 2010 17:27:31 +0100 35 /news/ We have won a contract with the Greater Manchester Community Foundation (GMCF) to redevelop its website. The GMCF is a community of donors that are committed to improving the quality of life and helping build stronger communities across Greater Manchester.It is hoped that a new website with simpler navigation will make the Foundation more accessible and enable it to help more community groups.In winning the brief we undertook considerable research into how other Community Foundations websites wo Tue, 20 Apr 2010 14:36:00 +0100 33 /news/ We were very proud that our Head Designer Andy was able to showcase some of his work within the April edition of Computer Arts magazine. Andy showed off two pieces of design. The first was a collaboration of work he produced with Creative Spark and stylist Jess Stebbings and photographers Jon Shard and Gary Steer which was put together as a portfolio piece. The second — which was also featured in Belgian magazine De Fish — was originally used across publicity for a night at Area51. Thu, 08 Apr 2010 14:39:20 +0100 34 /news/ Lily Allen isn’t a typical celebrity, the girl has bags of unique character, and recently she has poured some of it into her own jewellery range. We wanted to capture this ‘essence of Lily’ for the marketing imagery. So we spent a productive afternoon in Claridges and came away with some great shots of the girl of the moment. Lily’s range is inspired by many different influences, as she says: “My granny was a gypsy and I inherited a lot of her jewellery, so I inco Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:28:52 +0100 30 /news/archive/ After the success of last year’s work, Manchester United asked us once again to produce their print campaign for 2009 - 2010. Last year’s inspirational posters produced some great results, so the decision was made to carry on the theme – if something isn’t broken... We chose some more than willing and enthusiastic kids from a local school and spent a fun afternoon getting the shots. Our amateur models certainly rose to the challenge and some brilliant action shots were c Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:28:08 +0100 29 /news/archive/ Having dominated our TV screens for the past few years, Peter Kay is now set to take over our computer screens too, because we have just launched www.peterkay.co.uk. Andy explains;  “We have totally revamped Kay’s online presence over the course of the past two months to give it greater depth, interest and to reflect the comedian’s unique northern humour and personality.” “We’ve kept the shop element,” he said of the former incarnation, “but Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:27:34 +0100 28 /news/archive/ Following a two-way pitch process we were lucky enough to be awarded the task of designing and building a content managed website for Manchester Central. This iconic Manchester landmark is Europe’s number one exhibition and conference centre. Our brief is to re-design the user interface making things easy and clear. The high profile venue is an important hub for the city – and the new design needed to reflect this too. The new website will be a high profile sales window for Manchest Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:26:58 +0100 27 /news/archive/ In a detour from our regular “Chippy Friday” lunchtime taste sensation, this week we picked up a couple of Chip Shop Awards last night! One for Best Stationery Design and one for Invent Your Own Category, both in collaboration with Ian Hogg. With a night of befriending bouncers and getting a little too intimate with the chips after the awards show behind him, Andy managed to drag himself and the trophies back from London this morning so we could all wallow in the majesty of the hand Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0100 22 /news/archive/ After making a great impression with our work for Manchester United Soccer Schools, we were invited to pitch for, and subsequently won the contract for the 2009 Manchester United Premier Cup (MUPC) website. The MUPC brings together talented young footballers from around the globe to show off their skills internationally and to compete with the best young players in the world. Creative Spark have worked together with MUPC’s in-house design team to further develop and refresh the MUPC brand Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0100 26 /news/archive/ Continuing Creative Spark’s flourishing relationship with Manchester United Soccer Schools, we were asked to design a new “Player Journal”; a booklet given to kids on the Soccer Schools courses to record their course progress, get written feedback from the coaches, taken down notes and messages from friends, and read up on skills tips and nutritional information. The journal called for a fun, young, fresh approach that would appeal to the relatively wide-ranging age range of e Thu, 12 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000 25