Kilroy James » Web Design

The Incense Route

Cath James — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 14:50:31 +0000

And now for something old and yet totally new….The Incense Route is a new online gift store based on the idea from the old trading route from the 3rd Century BC…exotic gifts and rare items that you just can’t get on the high street. [..]
The new site is still under construction, and we are delivering the full online trading package with clear categories, totally secure payment environment and the easiest most elegant check out ever. Why not have a look at the holding page while it’s under construction, and bookmark it for late summer when it is due to launch. www.incenseroute.co.uk will have candles, incense, fabrics, soaps, bowls and fine pottery from across the world- all packaged and delivered to your door.

Get ready for the all new gorgeous boho hippy chic……

Cath James — Fri, 28 May 2010 14:33:17 +0000

Cheese and Grain website…………… This funky Frome venue has finally got a website design that reflects the venue, the programme and the town’s vibe and energy. Hurrah! About time too! – I hear you all say. Well, watch this space because it is due to launch in June 2010. [...]The new site has a funky, colourful look and will do everything you want it to do. This has been a labour of love for us – all of Frome previously struggled with the old site, and now we have finally had the chance to do something about it. We had a ball trying out new design concepts with resident graphic guru Paul Edwards, and the C&G team were thrilled with the result.

The site can be updated regularly by the Cheese and Grain staff, adding information about happenings, events and the all-important gig guide. Just a small amount of training required over a coffee or two.

Screen grab of new Cheese and Grain homepage

Look out Frome Festival website we have you in our sites | sights….

A new look for Romany Granite

John Kilroy — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:06:25 +0000

Romany Granite came to us wanting to update the look and structure of their website. They didn’t have a huge budget to work with and so we needed to keep things simple yet professional.[...] Their old site was very difficult to use and feedback from clients told them that information was hard to find. Our job was to make sure that the design and navigation was as clear as possible, but still have an edge over competitors’ sites. Our resident designer Kimberley took this project over and came up with a couple of design options for our client, and once the look was chosen, it was full steam ahead to get the site built. We think chic, with a sleek and professional look…and it’s easy to find what you’re looking for. Thanks Kim!

Romany-Granite

As always with our new websites, Romany Granite’s site is optimised for search engines, W3C tested and meets standard government levels for accessibility. And the site is covered by our standard programming guarantee that we offer to all clients. Check it out for yourselves: www.romanygranite.co.uk

David Hughes Dance

Cath James — Fri, 15 May 2009 16:44:37 +0000

As you have probably worked out, we somewhat specialise in websites (and other design and marketing work) for dance companies and arts organisations. In the last 15 years we’ve engaged in over 120 such projects and hope that number will continue to increase.

Adding to the list is a new website for David Hughes Dance who are based in Scotland and tour nationally and internationally. DHD hardly had a website before, more or less a single page with a few contact details on it. The new site has videos and lots of images and though it is (so we class it) a simple website, it lets the company publicise their performances and programmes. As well as offering necessary information to venues and the press.

Home Page Screen shot of DavidHughesDance

Yorke Dance Project

Cath James — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 12:14:19 +0000

OK, so we are doing a lot of arts and dance work recently. Please don’t assume we’ve forgotten or forsaken our corporate, trade and industrial clients. We haven’t, this is simply where our current new business is taking us and it’s leading to some fun and interesting projects.

The Yorke Dance Project is an existing American company, new to the UK. Obviously, after relaunching themselves here, they needed a website and some branding work and came to us via a recommendation (we love those) as a company they could rely on to launch them into the UK dance scene in the right way.

They wanted a flexible, content managed website, a stylish look (who doesn’t want that?) and lively, which would allow for expansion and development as the company grew.

Yorke Dance Project

Starting with a user-focused viewpoint, we mapped out the key areas that needed to be on the site and easily accessible, and then developed the site architecture. Once we had this in place, we started the design cycle, developing some design choices for the Artistic Director, Yolande Yorke-Edgell, to choose from. We were provided with a wide range of imagery from the dance company’s current and past repertoire, and created a set of ‘identity assets’ (logo, colour scheme, font etc.) for them to use throughout their business.

We included a range of galleries containing video and still images, a subscribers’ mailing list, as well as lots of pages for the productions and biographies. The site currently runs to 47 pages and counting. The front page has a live news feed, making the site look and feel appropriately current. The site uses John Kilroy’s specially developed word press theme called ‘Artsblog’, so that the dance company can manage the site themselves.

A Facelift for Milk Street

Cath James — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:58:20 +0000

The famous Milk Street Brewery in Frome has had a website redesign. The new site has a much more elegant feel to it, and the content management system works brilliantly for Griffin Pub manager Charlie, who keeps the site updated regularly, adding information about happenings, events and the all-important gig guide.

The redesign was actually forced due to the MSB’s aquisition of a new pub in Trowbridge called Stallards and would make a good case study about the identity problems that multi-faceted busineses can face (that’s for another day). As it stands now, the slightly rebranded business is in a good place to expand further, and we look forward to working with them on the Stallards website very soon.

Stars in a Story

Cath James — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 11:55:11 +0000

The desire to document and archive projects of all sorts is becoming more and more common. Villiers High School, courtesy of a grant from New Direction (a branch of Creative Partnerships, which is a government funded body who support projects between the arts, artists and education), undertook a storytelling project at their school that brought together artists (of various sorts) and students to study the craft of forming and telling stories, and of course to develop stories of their own. Our role was to document the process for them.

The Blog (ok it wasn’t just a ‘Blog’, we made lots of modifications) we created for them, and to which almost all the project participants contributed, was soon a-buzz with the project’s activities and the thoughts of those taking part. The Blog format is almost perfect for a recording/documentation project such as this, particularly one which lots of people or groups want to share and contribute to. The site is currently private, only the participants can use it, but hopefully when the project finishes in May we may be able to tidy up some of the raw edges and let the world take a look at what they’ve been up to. At the moment there are 135 posts, 80 images, 30 audio recordings, 37 videos and several dozen PDF files and word documents – which, given the scale of the project is a pretty comprehensive set of records I think.

Design-wise the site is very simple. It isn’t necessary or, given the objective, to some extent even desirable to go too far with the visual design (an archive doesn’t have to sexy and Villiers didn’t want this anyway). This keeps the costs down and lets us focus our energies on the content and organisational side of things, so the site works to the very limit of it’s capabilities (obviously this is budget dependent).

We would very much like to use this site as a model for further archival, documentation and/or “project process” projects in the future. We believe that, with certain important modifications, the simple Blog format has a lot to offer people working in that area.

Stars in a Story Screen Shot.

Million Prisoners

Cath James — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 11:17:42 +0000

Now this website is something else…if we do say so ourselves: our very first website for a political organisation/charity/lobby group.

A simple idea – selling a million pixels on some specially commissioned drawings by political satirist Steve Bright; and in the process gathering messages from people who want to make a protest to the Labour Government. There’s some shopping to do as well!

Steve Bright’s 1997

Visitors to the site are invited to join the prisoners by purchasing a ‘hypothetical’ pixel and leaving their messages to Labour. Each message can be viewed on the site and form part of the tagclouds (which highlight the most important words from peoples’ messages), eventually to be delivered to No.10 a week before the next general election.

The idea was brought to us by David Barrett, an artist and very disappointed Labour supporter, who wanted an elegant structure and funky-yet-retro design for the website. The brief included an ecommerce element so that the ‘prisoners’ can buy hoodies and T shirts as easily as possible. We hope they reach their targets – so if you’re a disgruntled labour supporter, why not pop on over to Million Prisoners and do something about it!

London Locksmiths

John Kilroy — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 18:51:17 +0000

We’ve recently finished what is Probably the Best Locksmith’s website in the World. We don’t drink Carling but we did go to some lengths to make sure that this website offers things that none of it’s competitors do: a mobile phone version for example (so you can find a locksmith’s number when you’re locked out); specially commissioned articles about the fascinating history of Locksmithing and on how to become a Locksmith, for another.

The entire redesign was a response to a very practical brief: create more new business from the website. To do this we set about a fairly comprehensive web marketing programme that covered search engine placement, link networking, creating really high quality content written by professional writers, special attention to the interface design, and running ongoing promotions and web offers.

The pretty regular emails we get from Alan at London Locksmiths show that he continues to be more than happy with the results. I’m not going to tell you his figures but I will say that his enquiries and new business are significantly up (as is his search engine placement [page one]) and he, along with most of our other web marketing clients, has subsequently and completely stopped his Yellow Pages advertising. For him this was a major step and one he didn’t take lightly; like many businesses targeting domestic customers, Yellow Pages has always been the major source of new business, but today when most people look first to the Internet for suppliers and tradespeople, the old directories are failing to bring in the business and to give good value for money. Everyone seems to know deep down that web marketing is the future for small businesses, as indeed does Yell (Yellow Pages’ online wing) – who hasn’t been called by them recently explaining exactly that fact?

If you need a Locksmith in London why not call London Locksmiths on 0207 978 2233, or visit their website www.londonlocksmiths.com

Peach of a gem of a beaut!

John Kilroy — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:05:25 +0000

The latest site to roll over our production line is a peach of a site for London Locksmiths.

This little fine cut gem is:

100% valid HTML,
AAA accessible (that’s the maximum),
it works on mobile phones,
it has proper print styles,
it’s thoroughly search optimised,
it looks identical across IE6, IE7, Safari and Firefox,
…and looks a beaut!

What more could a boy want?

Take a look at www.londonlocksmiths.com