Category : Announcements

BBC North is live!

As you may have seen in the news recently, the BBC have started moving into their northern home at MediaCityUK in Salford. It’s a big strategic move for the BBC and we were chuffed when we won the pitch to design and build the new BBC North website. It went live last week, and is full of information about the move, as well as audio & video content, event listings and profiles of a wide variety of BBC staff members.

From a design point of view, it was a great opportunity to dig into the BBC’s new Global Experience Language as well. If you haven’t already seen the GEL, there’s a great article on the BBC blogs.

So a big hello to everyone who is making the move to Salford, and hopefully we’ll get the chance to work with some of you soon!

LHT Annual Report one of the big four

The National Tenant Organisations have recently published a joint report reviewing housing associations’ annual reports. The report reviews a sample of 257 annual reports from a cross section of landlords. All the reports were scored and we are delighted to be one of only four landlords nationally that received the maximum five points for our Yearbook.

What the tenants’ organisations liked in particular was our use of transparent and easy to understand performance graphs.

“Thank you for all your work on this and for helping us to make it a success – I have other housing associations calling me and asking for copies of it and the TSA have used it in a report on good practice.”
Andrew Bullock, Communications Officer

Online Radicals

Running throughout 2011, Liverpool City of Radicals is a programme of exhibitions, debates and events looking at radical Liverpool – past, present and future.

The website, designed and produced by Splinter, has just gone live. Whether you are left-leaning or not, give the site a visit at www.cityofradicals.co.uk.

Clwydian Range brand launches

The new brand for the Clwydian Range, developed by Splinter in partnership with Hi-Clarity Communications, was launched by Councillor Carolyn Thomas today at the Afonwen Centre.

The resources we have produced are designed to clearly define the Clwydian Range offering and raise awareness of all the area has to offer visitors. To check out more detail on the work we have done check out the Clwydian Range case study.

It has already been noted how useful the Sense of Place Toolkit has been for local businesses – giving them easy access to the words and pictures they need to promote themselves and the Clwydian Range.

Olympic success story

We’ve just heard some great news that Splinter team member Barry has successfully qualified for the 2012 London Olympic Games! Huge congratulations to him – he’ll be competing in the synchronised diving category, so make sure you tune in Sunday 29 July – Saturday 11 August 2012. We have a feeling he’ll be the only web developer competing at the Games, so please post any words of encouragement here in the comments. Best of luck Barry!

PHP developer needed

(job ref: 4-8-15-16-23-42)

Things are busy here at Splinter and we’re on the lookout for some talented web developers to add to our freelance roster. If you want to be added to the list then you need to:

• Have strong PHP skills
• Have experience building bespoke CMS PHP frameworks
• Have experience using MVC frameworks such as CodeIgnitor
• Use clean, standards-complient code
• Be able to work on-site in our Liverpool studio
• Be able to work alongside front-end designers
• Be able to lose gracefully at snooker

So if you think you tick all the boxes then drop us a line including links to examples of your work, your daily rates and your CV. We’re looking for some initial support for a couple of weeks in March, so if you’re interested then please do respond asap!

Branding the Range

Splinter, in partnership with Hi-Clarity Communications, have provided a comprehensive branding package to the Clwydian Range Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. One of the final deliverables is a general leaflet for the area which features a topological map of the Range. I want to say a special thank you to Trina from Denbighshire Council for her help and patience.

Splinter start work on BBC Bitesize games

We’re always excited to work on new projects here at Splinter, but one particularly exciting one has just been awarded to us. It’s a collection of 11 online games for BBC Bitesize KS1 – teaching 5-7 year olds all about science! The existing literacy and numeracy games are hugely popular, so we’re looking forward to the challenge of adding to the collection. It’ll keep us nice and busy for the next 6 months, and above are caricatures of some of the Splinter team done in the KS1/Max and Molly style – drawn by our in-house illustrator Ste.

You are ‘avin a Bafta!

Another exciting bit of news has come through about The Well – the multi-platform project we did Flash work on for Conker Media and the BBC… it’s just been shortlisted in this year’s Children’s Baftas!! And it’s in the Interactive category as well, which we’re chuffed about!

We were brought in by Conker to build the online game that ran alongside the 4-part TV series, alongside fellow local creatives Milky Tea who did the 3D graphics.

We ended up building 11 different mini-games for it in Flash, so it was a hugely entertaining job for us to work on, and we’re delighted that people out there enjoy playing them enough to put the project forward for such a prestigious award!

And if you’re wondering what all the fuss is about then go and try the game for yourself over at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/switch/thewell/game.shtml

Splinter in bed with the Bluecoat.

We have just launched a new website for the country’s oldest arts centre, the Bluecoat. The launch co-incided with the streaming of its popular Bed-In project, which draws on John Lennon’s actions for peace.

For those who don’t know… the Bluecoat is a restored historic building in the centre of Liverpool and its community mixes artists of all types and encourages connections between audiences, participants and artists. It uses its spaces to display talent from all creative disciplines, including visual art, music, literature, dance, and live art.

The site we have produced is clean and practical, allowing viewers to personalise the way content is displayed when they first arrive. It features a wide range of media and functionality including an in-depth events listing, online ticket booking, blogs and forums, panoramic views of the galleries and historic buildings, showcases for the creative community and of course the Bed-In stream.

Why not check it out now at: http://www.thebluecoat.org.uk