22nd April 2010
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 work section.
20th April 2010
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 work. Discovering that the majority tended to over complicate their websites, leading to information being difficult to find and creating barriers to seeking finding.
We wanted to have all the information available to community groups within a couple of clicks. We however didn’t just want to develop a website that was functional, we also wanted to inject some of the personality that we found at GMCF into proceedings to allow it to be a welcoming site that allows users to access what the information they require when they need it.
The most important aspect of the site however is that everyone, from people trying to apply for a grant to get a minibus to help OAPs get to the supermarket; to a sewing group from Sale, can access the information they need that can change their community.
Nick Massey the Chief Executive of GMCF said, “We were excited by the designs Creative Spark came up with, and hope that this new website will enable us to help more community groups through them applying for funding. I know I speak for all at the Foundation when I say we’re excited about the launch of the new site, and the implementation of their ideas.”
8th April 2010
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.
21st October 2009
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 incorporated the traditional gypsy sovereigns into my coin collection. The Smiley pieces were based on my acid-house tattoo.”
We had a lot to try and communicate with the imagery, so we collaborated closely with a digital artist and created a unique look and feel – Gypsy meets fashion meets pop meets fun. The results form the bedrock for the worldwide launch of the range, seen in your High Street soon.
21st October 2009
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 captured.
Then it was just a case of adding a touch of magic from our light painter and the stunning imagery was ready. See the results for yourself.
21st October 2009
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 we’ve added features such as news updates, tour information, freebies and of course the ‘nowt’ tab. It was developed very closely with Peter himself, who wanted it to be very traditional and British in its character” – a quirk that can be seen in the background photography for the site, which was shot in Bolton specially by lens man Matt Squire.
Video clips are being added soon in the freebies section, and subscribers can hear Kay reading from his new book and find out about tours and other events prior to their official release.
21st October 2009
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 Manchester Central, and is due to be live before Christmas. Watch this space.
11th July 2009
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 handmade yellow beauties and set up lighthearted photos of them with our usually-sofa-bound stuffed toys.
You can check out the full list of winners on the Chip Shop Awards site.
17th April 2009
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 for the newly-launched website. Alongside the branding and visual design, we needed to create a site that would better the already high technical standards of the existing one, and continue to improve its placement in search engines.
Feedback on the new site, launched two weeks ago, has been immensely positive from both the end users and from MUPC themselves, and the traffic to the site has noticed a marked increase in traffic of over 100%.
12th February 2009
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 eight to eighteen year olds and would carry as little resemblance to a schoolbook as possible. We combined a faux-leather embossed cover with uncoated, recycled inner pages, filled with hand-drawn doodle illustrations.
20th January 2009
After the huge success of Soulmate and their Creative Spark-designed website, the company was ready to branch out into other avenues and again approached us to develop their online presence. Their original website didn’t have the right feel for where Soulmate was moving, they needed to reposition themselves as fresh, healthy and approachable.
We have created a clean and friendly site split into a number of key service areas such as food and fitness, that should give Soulmate a new lease of life moving forward hand-in-hand with their recent printed material.
The initial response the new site has been excellent, with a significant increase in visitors and much improved search engine rankings due to the attention paid to web standards and a well-structured navigation.
24th July 2008
The nominations have been released and our video ‘The Move’ has been nominated for the Dadi Awards in the ‘Best In-House Website or Campaign’ category. The winner will be announced at the awards on the 31st October. Fingers crossed!