In a small quiet village just outside of Milton Keynes lives a very, very fast car….

… This car belongs to Sam Head – owner of Forge Racing – a TVR Racing team on mission to make their mark on the 2008 Dunlop TVR Tuscan Challenge.

Sam was unbeaten in last year’s series, and had a 100% win record. This year he is back and Provide Design are proud to be supporting him in his efforts to take home some more trophies.

It has not been the smoothest of starts though. There has been mechanical dramas a plenty and one small incident involving a crash barrier but overall things are looking very likely that Sam will be teaching a few other TVR Racing veterans a new trick or two.

Provide Design Milton Keynes have been helping Sam out for 2 years now and 2008 sees Forge Racing furnished with a brand new website, new car graphics (waiting to be fitted) and even the beginnings of their own custom clothing line. We are very excited as if things go to plan Sam will be racing at the televised Silverstone event; PowerNights on June 19th 2008.

Sam Head is now keeping his race diary updated online and has all the details of the season so far:

http://www.forgeracing.co.uk/reports.php

Hi My Name is Rob.

You can call me the ‘new boy’ here at Provide Design, although just passing my 30th birthday, I’m not sure how long I can use the term ‘boy’ for.

I thought it would be best to introduce myself personally, not because my life is incredibly complex and decyphering it would take far too long but I wanted to ensure what was written was correct, or at least made me out to be vastly rich and highly intelligent.

I have been working professionally within the creative industry for over 8 years and have undertaken roles at numerous design agencies, print studios and publishing houses before seizing the opportunity to work for Provide Design.

I love working on all aspects of graphic design, be it print, web, illustration, product or any of their sub genres. Design comes in all forms and each one has it’s own challenges and although it may sound very ‘designer talk’, we all need challenges to keep us creative.

I regularly confess to being a bit of an über geek. My slightly obsessive love for good, clean web programming, (especially CSS and XHTML), would probably bore most people to a pulp but I like designing websites that not only look good but work really well. I find it imperative that as a designer we don’t loose track of the job in hand. The balance of form and function is never more prevalent than with today’s websites. I try and ensure that all our websites meet that balance.

Living and working just outside Milton Keynes makes me happy. It’s nice round here, lots to see and do, and the countryside is never too far away for a quick hammer on the mountain bike. If only to burn off chocolate muffins.

Any spare moment I can grab I spend with my family. I’ve been married to Rachel for the past 6 years with one child and another about to arrive any day now – what was I saying about liking challenges?

So this is me, pleased to meet you. If you’d like to know more, drop me a comment.

Although I’m not sure what I am letting myself in for!

The Burning Question for May is: Web or Print?

How do you read your news? Do you buy newspapers?

Our lifestyles here at Provide Design seem to have changed. Now instead of browsing the newspaper over an early morning cuppa, we switch on our laptops and catch up with the news online via our feed readers and the many news websites. Now we get vivid images, audio clips, video, articles, games and a whole interactive experience whilst sipping our tea… and not a hint of black ink smudges on our hands.

But now what do we use cover the carpet whilst decorating?

Close friend of Provide Design, Simon Chambers, has just launched his new online gallery on ebay – Psynapse.

The mainstay of this gallery is archive quality prints of Simon’s fractal based digital art.

Check it out for yourself here: PSYNAPSE DIGTAL ART GALLERY

When it comes to web design and development there is always two paths to take – the bespoke service or the ‘off-the-shelf’ package. Personally I feel there is always the right option for the right job.

Take our new site for example, have a look around, poke a stick at it, kick its tyres and click a few links. On the face of it it looks like a fairly simple site but to achieve this it has taken a lot of hard work. However, a lot of this hard work had already been done for us by courtesy of the kind folks at the WordPress camp and its steadfast community.

Started in 2003, WordPress has since grown to become one of the most popular Open Source publishing/blogging platforms who’s developers are entirely focused on aesthetics whilst achieving web standards and accessibility. Its user friendly experience – you don’t need to be a ‘php guru’ use its content management system, built in Search Engine Optimisiation and the ability to entirely customise pretty much everything, make it extremely flexible for the designer, the developer and ultimately the client.

Their ethos towards web development is comparable to ours and when it came to re-developing our site there really was no option but to construct it on the WordPress platform. Sure, a bespoke, personal option would perhaps make us feel a little more special and all warm inside but put up against WordPress and its 5 years of development, its community of developers and constant security and functionality updates, it would seem a little over the top and a waste of resources to fulfill our requirements.

To utilise established, Open Source platforms such as WordPress, CubeCart, Joomla, Vanilla as well as other applications and frameworks such as MooTools, Script.aculo.us and jQuery is like having someone lay down the foundations for a building for you. The hard, messy, yet hidden parts are done and so, as web designers, we are able to focus upon the form and the function of the rest of the “building”. Afterall, we like making things look pretty, that’s why we became designers.

Open Source applications are becoming more and more accepted as viable, cost effective, alternatives to commercial software. We, as many others, now think of it as our 24Hour, One-Stop web development team. They have given us more tools to produce the desired results and meet the demands of our clients.

Our such recent examples include www.shipmanagementinternational.com and www.forgeracing.co.uk. Both sites have different demands but both began as a basic WordPress site. With WordPress anything is possible, that’s why I think it rocks!

However, I must add that with all this talk it probably makes me sound like I am dissmissing a bespoke service, I am not. Yes, I won’t deny we like and regularly build sites on WordPress but there are a lot of benefits of commissioning a bespoke site that shouldn’t be ignored. I am mearly pointing out that today’s web developers and designers need to assess each job on its own requirements and restrictions to choose the most practical solution.

After all, we still go all warm and fuzzy over custom sites.