Developed in WordPress using a modified two column theme and a combination of several plugins. Migrated partial content from an existing static HTML website.

Leeds Community Foundation is a charity dedicated to bringing about real and lasting change in local communities. They believe in helping make Leeds a place where everyone is able to make the most of their life and fully explore and develop their potential, where local residents feel valued and respected, and are proud to contribute to the city in which they live.

Leeds Community Foundation

“Chris is full of useful suggestions and has a good way of communicating with clients so that they’re not baffled by IT jargon. He is always willing to talk through any challenges and find cost effective solutions. Highly recommended!”

“The fact that I’ve already passed Chris’s details on to a few people is testament to the fact I was really impressed with the service he gave me and my website that came from that. His price was fair and he stuck to it which is always a worry when you’re dealing with the dark art of the internet. Chris was ultra-precise on the layout – just as I like it – and had a real attention to detail, as well as a willingness to try a couple of options for me to choose one I wanted.

I can’t recommend him highly enough!”
Service Category: IT Consultant
Year first hired: 2011
Top Qualities: Great Results, Good Value, High Integrity

Well, the reasons are thus:

1. I have a lovely, fantastic, goregous wife, who I love to spend my time with.
2. I have a keen interest in board-gaming (which I also enjoy playing with my wife) and dare I say it? Magic: the Gathering. Yes, that makes me very geeky and dammit – I don’t care!
3. I am enslaved to my Xbox (much to the annoyance of 1.), I can often find myself engrossed in a game for hours, see Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood or Call of Duty multiplayer.
4. I am also enslaved to the Sky+ box, which if I leave it alone for more than 5 minutes it seems to fill up with quality programming – we had a marathon session of Game of Thrones at the weekend – all I can say is WOW! Good plot, great actors, can’t wait for ‘winter’ to come.
5. I have also recently purchased a Blu-Ray player and am now experiencing ‘the very latest in high definition home entertainment’ – exactly what they said when DVD came out. But….. it does look good, very good. Casino Royale looks amazing and the just purchased T2 is very sharp. I think that having the player will also stave me off getting Sky HD (well for a year or so).
6. When I’m not doing the above, I’m usually sleeping or working, or at a beer festival enjoying a few ales. See below.

But somehow, I’ve managed to put a blog post up detailing how I can’t put a blog post up.

Developed in WordPress using with a custom-designed CSS one column homepage and two column site/blog pages and a combination of several plugins. Migrated from a WordPress-hosted blog and a stand-alone flat PHP website. Home page features latest blog post and a sliding ‘top 10 reasons’ widgets built into footer.

Spark is Jennifer Holloway who, with a career including 15 years in PR and communications, is a personal brand specialist, using her knack for spotting someone’s USP and her way with words to help them promote that in everything they say and do.  Known as ‘The Antidote to Yes-Men’ her down-to-earth, straight talking, honest style delivers real value by helping today’s leaders discover how, by being themselves, they can be even more successful.

Spark

Migration to WordPress-based business directory website with custom CSS layout.

Website taken offline due to split in chamber membership

Yes, I know all you web/graphic designers out there are probably guffawing in your chairs – “You haven’t been using PNG-24 – are you mad?!!”

Well, I’d seen it, sitting pretty in the file type drop down in the Save for Web dialog box and often thought “what on earth do people use that for?” whilst struggling with making colours transparent in the Colour Table, or making the background of my icon the same darned colour as the background it’s hovering over on the website. I’ve become a master at that I can tell you!

But alas my ‘eureka moment’ came just before Xmas, when I was creating an icon for the college intranet. I was following a tutorial to create a cool looking 3D mailbox icon in Illustrator, however when it came to the dreaded PNG-8 ‘choose colours to make transparent’ step in Photoshop, I mis-clicked and ended up saving as PNG-24. Only to find the finished file had – would you believe it – a smooth alpha channel drop shadow with no pixellation.

How many design-hours could this knowledge have saved me? I dread to think.

Well, I’ll hold up my hands and say I don’t know it all and I learned something new and really useful that day. Having been in this business for over 10 years now – that’s quite refreshing!

Are bulk mailshots too costly? Have you taken lots of email addresses but don’t know what to do with them?

I can offer a cost-effective solution!

1. Email me your customer email data (max 5000 addresses, preferably in Excel format).
2. Send me your company logo and any other brand material.
3. Tell me what you want on your Emailshot, eg. details of special offers, discounts or promotions, website info etc.
4. I will create an Emailshot based on this information and send to all of your customers.

Read more here

My wife, Helen, is a primary school teacher in Bradford. Last week she attended a seminar led by Wes Magee (author and poet) and rediscovered her love for creative writing.

She started writing a children’s story called ‘The Underground Experiment’ and I thought it was pretty darn good! Fun, very descriptive and engaging. So, to encourage her to continue with this, I set her up a WordPress-based blog website for her to express her thoughts, and add more chapters to her story.

Helen Wray

What does a top notch graphic designer have in common with an amateur photographer who uploads his weekend pictures on Facebook? They both love Photoshop!

Infographic: The Darwinian Evolution of Photoshop by Tech King