"Brand identity" is a business' logo, colour scheme and typeface and a good, consistent identity is essential for a professional image.

Think of any well known brand (e.g. a high street shop) and you will be able to identify the colours and lettering that is unique to that company. The most commonly found logos merely consist of one single colour and a typeface.

Brand Identity Designs: MAS Environmental, Make Your Own Noise!, The Apartment Company (uk) ltd.

Useful links: lo8os, Color Scheme Generator 2

Site design covers two main areas, Style and Content. flamingegg.co.uk design with both in mind.

The style (such as layout, imagery, decoration) is driven by the content and a good design will complement and help deliver the content, not distract from it.

Site Designs: MAS Environmental, Make Your Own Noise!, The Apartment Company (uk) ltd, White Bell Group, more...

Useful links: stock.xchng, The Design Shack

xHTML (or plain HTML) is the code used to break up the content into relative sections, such as headings, paragraphs, lists, etc. Stylesheets written in CSS are then used to style these sections so that they are easy to read and interpret, and also so they look good.

An example of xHTML (content) with CSS (style) is the design switch in the top right corner. The content remains the same but a different stylesheet changes the way it is displayed.

Useful links: CSS Zen Garden, CSSPlay

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), along with others, were the driving force behind the Web Standards movement. "Standards Compliance", "Table-less design", "Validation" and "Web 2.0" all refer to a new and evolving way of designing sites so that they are universal, semantic and behave more predictably across different browsers. The result is faster and cheaper with less code required meaning less bandwidth used. Having a site that is Standards Compliant ensure compatibility with other forms of web browsing such as mobile phones, browsers for people with disabilities and automated search engines such as Google.

All our sites are designed to meet the W3C Guidelines.

Useful links: Web Standards Validator, Designer's Checklist

If the (x)HTML content already exists, but the site needs redecorating, a new design can be introduced with just a new CSS stylesheet and imagery.

flamingegg.co.uk design fixed-cost templates for customers of Webfactore which accommodate the adaptability of the content management provided. Use the Custom Template service to have a custom design by us.

Useful links: Webfactore, Web 2.0 Design Guide

Content management is the ability to change the text and other content on a site easily without the need for web programming skills.

Content managed websites work from with a database (MySQL) and scripted pages (PHP) which talk to the database and retrieve/store the necessary information. Also often called dynamic sites they can offer membership, forums, uploading and much more.

A good example is Make Your Own Noise! which was tailored to suit the needs of its users.

Javascript is a language which is used to program functions and add interactivity to a site. Examples include working with pop-ups, making instant calculations and working with cookies (locally stored data). The design switch on this site is driven by javascript. Good use of javascript will enhance the useability of a website without preventing access for those without javascript.

Javascript designs: MAS Environmental (noise calculator)

Useful links: Javascript Examples

A plug-in in your web browser allows files created using Flash to be displayed. Flash is a very powerful program that can handle audio/video, create animations and handle scripting for interactivity such as games. It is very popular for creating moving menus, slideshows and advertisements and certain sites are created entirely in flash.

It's always important to include basic text and functionality for people and applications that can't handle flash.

Flash designs: Make Your Own Noise! (flash map), The Apartment Company (uk) ltd (slideshow), White Bell Group (logo)

Useful links: Actionscript.org Tutorials

Getting your website onto the internet requires hosting on a server. You are welcome to use our linux servers to host your site. Prices are based on the content of the site, for more information click cost of hosting.

Hosting includes mailboxes and control panel access for statistics and backing up. Hosting does not include the price of the domain, e.g. nameofsite.co.uk, however we can purchase this at a very reasonable price.