Artist, Friend of Provide Design and all round top bloke Simon Chambers opens his new exhibition on Friday 12th June. This new body of work from Simon is entitled ‘Portals of Perspective’ and shows a new route of development for his vibrant abstract style.

Having seen a sneak preview of some of this collection of work, we must say it some his finest to date. If you are passionate about abstract art, or you are looking for that original piece to fit that empty wall in your home or office, please go along and check it out.

The exhibition is at The Courtyard Gallery in Aylesbury town centre and the private view is on Friday 12th June – 7.30pm to 9.30pm. If you would like an invitation please email simon@simonchambers.net

The exhibition is open to the public from June 13th – 28th, Mon – Sun, 11.00am to 6.00pm.

Visit www.simonchambers.net for more info.

… sums up a lot of what happened at my Dad’s 60th Birthday Party this weekend just past.

When my Dad was 6 years old he saw the Dagenham Girl Pipers performing a march. He has been telling us all about this memory for the last year mentioning that he would love to throw some kind of party and have them perform at it. A nonsense fantasy he thought.

With my Dad’s 60th birthday happening this year, some how my Uncle Tony managed to book 7 of the 22 strong Dagenham Girl Pipers Marching Band to come and play for my Dad. A surprise party was organised, cryptic invitations sent out and on the day it was a total shock for my Dad and most of the party guests too!

The band performed brilliantly and blew everyone away. It was a surreal experience watching a bagpipe marching band doing their thing on my parent’s lawn, but one I will remember for ever.

Then after the band were done, there were more suprises! A convoy of steam engines on their way to the local pub for a skittles match just happened to pass by. With invitations of beer shouted to them from across the road they pulled in and showed everyone at the party their fantastic machines…

Then after they had left, with the party well under way another surprise floated over the horizon. A local balloon flight decided to take a landing spot in a nearby field. The balloon flew so close overhead that words were exchanged from party revellers to the flying travellers.

The party then went on into the night with wine, song and ping pong. A day to remember!

Full photo set at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/providedesign/sets/72157617589304241/

Provide Design are proud to announce their website design for golf clubs service: Net Driver.

Net Driver is comprehensive web site design and build package developed especially for golf clubs. Net Driver websites are designed to integrate with your golf club’s existing marketing and expand on it giving you an excellent platform to communicate with existing members and attract new members and club sponsors.

The Net Driver package starts at £1750 for the complete website design and build package. This includes:

• Website planning of all your site pages
• A completely customised website design for your golf club based on our Net Driver website template
• A powerful, yet easy to use content management system that allows you to edit all your website content in-house
• Easy to update news, dates and diary feeds
• Interactive score card / golf course tour
• Password protected members area on the website
• Live dynamic weather reports for your golf course direct on your web site
• Search engine optimisation to make sure your website is found online
• Population of all site pages with your text and images
• Full testing and upload of the site your webserver

Additional services available to help make the most of your Net Driver website:

• Professional photography of your golf club and course
• Professional content creation and writing service to help put the all important right words on the website pages
• Website bolt-on – ProShop online – put your ProShop online with a full ecommerce system built into your website
• Website bolt-on – Email Marketing – Use your website build up an invaluble database of email addesses and market to them a click of a button with customised email templates
• Website bolt-on – Integration of your web site with your existing club management software systems
• Website hosting – range of hosting and email packages available to support your golf club
• Logo design and golf club brand development service
• Design and print of supporting paper based materials such as scorecards, menus, brochures, membership packs and much more

To see Net Driver in action please see the recently launched Dunstable Downs Golf Club website: www.dunstablegolf.co.uk

For a review of your golf club’s existing website and to see how Net Driver could work for you please contact us at: info@providedesign.com or call us on 0845 003 9559

In the world of social networking it seems that Twitter is the web 2.0 app of the moment. A micro blogging service that allow users to add quick ‘Tweets’ about themselves, their lifestyle, job, company, breakfast, dogs etc.

3 years ago I was asked to put forward suggestions for a quick, personal, update app that allowed a company to put a ‘friendly’ face on their website and grow their social network. I put forward Twitter. At this time they barely had a 50,000 users and was very much in it’s infancy. However, the company in question felt it wasn’t ‘corporate’ enough and shelved the idea.

Moving forward 3 years and Twitter, with it’s few million users, has recently become an integral part of the companys website. This isn’t just a one off. Many companies are now using Twitter to reach a wider audience, to promote their products and increase their traffic. It seems Twittering is fast becoming the new blogging, so much so that the mighty FaceBook has restructured it’s homepage to rival it.

Twitter takes less time to write and perhaps more importantly it take less time to read and with the use of such tools, (FaceBook, LinkedIn, MySpace et al), the possibilities have now been totally realised by many companies, especially in the doom and gloom climate we all seem to be living in today. There seems to be a certain sense of urgency, to be a “part of it”.

But what about good old fashioned blogging? A well written blog will always attract more attention than a tweet. It becomes indexed by the search engines and it’s not confined to a user, it is far more global. The possibilities of using a blog (or blogging platform) when considering a website should never be under-estimated. We have had some great success from constructing sites based around blogging platforms and are continued to be amazed at the development that goes into them. Wordpress in particular is always highly recommended at the Provide Design camp. But now we have many more options/toys to play with.

With the amount of web apps available to web developers a company can reach their target web audience in more ways than ever before. We as web designers, can utilise this time of social networking to create that killer site that really works the way it needs to work as well as look darn pretty.

And that really does make us want to blog more!

Are you looking for a hotdesk near Milton Keynes, Leighton Buzzard or Aylesbury? FunkBunk, the home of Provide Design is now offering hot desks to writers, designers, freelancers, photographers, marketeers, muskateers and anyone else who needs a desk for just a few days out of the month.

In addition to full time desks being available there are 3 desks currently available for hotdesking. Prices for hotdesk spaces start from £30 per day depending on how many days you book in advance. Hot desk rental includes wireless or wired high speed broadband access, free parking and free tea and coffee.

The atmosphere here is non-intrusive, friendly and creative. With the added bonus of having somewhere to hold meetings and your own business address, hot desking at the FunkBunk is the way to go!

For more photos and information please visit www.funkbunk.com

If you would like to book a space or come over and have a look for yourself please email iwanttobe@funkbunk.com or call us on 0845 003 9559