We hope 2009 has started well for you so far? As this is our first post this year I want to look ahead to what the market is doing and also promote some of our activities.

Firstly, it seems as if the coming year will be a challenging time for most of us. But running a small business is all about tackling and overcoming challenges, so in many respects, it’s business as usual. It’s just that the difficulties we now face are different to those we’ve battled in the past.

Wise words from a recent article by Jeffrey Zeldman in the .net magazine:

‘While it’s difficult to tell what will happen in the wider economy, web design has remained robust through numerous economic ups and downs”

He reasons for the increase on our reliance with online services – even if shops close down and staff laid off, products need selling and websites need creating and maintaining. This means freelancers, in-house staff and agencies should be busy, even when others are losing their jobs’

What should you be doing as a design company?

• Our main aim for this current economic climate is to continue to have empathy for users, base our work on a strong design process based on site users and client business goals.
• Continue to look ahead, embrace and adopt new technologies and assess their usefulness for your clients work.
• Diversify your capabilities and services/products you offer to appeal to a wider client base.
• Get organised, form teams of compatible skills through your networks to increase your chances of being able to respond to a wider set of briefs
• Think beyond the desktop browser – get a head start and learn about the web on a smaller screen
• If you have a quiet time you can still be proactive – here’s some ideas:
  • Teach yourself new skills
  • Get out meet new contacts for coffee
  • Get off-line and you may find it easier to focus on what is important for your business

What we have planned for 2009:

• Client guides – In a series of free ebooks we will explain to our new and existing clients about current web services, trends and technologies in easy to follow guide
• Training freelancers and mentoring local colleagues
• Work with our peers
• Develop International business opportunities
• Attending conferences, meetups and networking events, and also attend more non-technical events (no not knitting classes)

How you are going to stay confident, fresh and stay relevant in this industry? We’d love to know, comments are on..

Where to start! What a year 2008 was (to recap this was 2007’s review).

So 2008 was all about collaboration, online, with local colleagues and forging new projects and relationships with clients and friends alike, here’s what happened at Callender Creates:

• 2008, the year my girlfriend started to use the mobile web!
• Recovered from a big theft at home during a new year trip to India
• Moved office from the North Laine to The Werks in Hove
• Proposed to my lovely girlfriend in Sussex, married her in the Peak district and honeymooned in Cornwall – magic!
• Networked and partied at SxSw 2008, and photos here
• Attended The Future of Web Design in London
• Moved house within Brighton
• Designed and developed a variety of ecommerce, content managed and social networking sites for a variety of UK based clients, startups, agencies, local government and councils
• Saw Neil Young play a live open air gig in Kent
• Sponsorship for local conferences – BarcampBrighton and the Head conference
• Pitched on large projects in collaboration with a number of development companies. From startup to local government tenders
• Attended part of the UX Week run by Norman Nielsen Group in Amsterdam
• Judge in partnership with the Brighton Farm for the Brighton DIMAS awards

Our biggest achievement in 2008
To take on large projects and successfully work collaboratively with local colleagues and achieve results at much higher quality than a individual would be able to produce.

Sites I visited on a daily basis in 2008

• Twitter
• BBC
• Google Reader (RSS subscriptions)
• Popurls
• Google Analytics
• ReadWriteWeb

ReadWriteWeb have done a big list of the top 100 products of 2008

Looking ahead into 2009 – Guardian online have picked the web’s cream of the crop, their latest selection finds that location-based services, work-anywhere collaboration and video are prominent –
100 top sites for the year ahead

To all the people we’ve worked with in 2008, to all our readers, family, friends, peers and everybody else. A big thank you and looking forward to more success and interesting work in 2009.

A list of the most popular articles on Callender Creates in 2008

• Top tips for HTML email development
• Geek desk spaces
• Email newsletter statistics
• Essential web design and development conferences
• Callender Creates website redesign
• Pagerank – A client guide
• Top 5 time management tips
• Online charts and diagrams

This post is regarding online brands, and accompany notes from Internet world which was a while back now, however it’s always a good free event to visit and see the big brands and startups represent themselves in a competitive marketplace on and off-line.

There were lots of seminars on search to content management, from hosting to email, some terrible powerpoint slides.

One particular highlight was Andy Hobsbawm’s (Agency.com) Keynote on “How people value brands and brands value people in an interactive world”.

Below are some quote and points from his Keynote:

• Be a verb not a noun
• Go with the flow
• Be a guide not a gateekeeper

“Today ‘the virtualisation of everything’ is possible”

“A brand is not what you say it is, it’s what Google says it is”

“No place for brands to hide, as information flow to the consumer is so great on the internet”

“The internet is one big social network, email being the biggest tool for networking”

“Don’t assume customers don’t know anything nowadays, they now have the information by searching for the answer = information driven”

“Exploding connections on the web means that brands can’t be linear anymore”

This article I written originally for the Insight Guide – A monthly Lifestyle Magazine for readers in Brighton and surrounding areas. The article gives newcomers to mobile internet a reason to take its future seriously and look ahead to what’s coming soon on the mobile platform.

There is only one web, the principle of making the same information and services to users regardless of the way they access it. No doubt about it, the number of mobile devices we choose to interact with websites and online applications is increasing, comared to just desktop computers. Mobile will revolutionise they way we gather and intereact with information in the next 2 years, and this is using the mobile in your pocket, not just the iPhone.
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We are pleased to be invited to sign up to the Company Customer Pact.

This reinforces the values with which we follow in our day to day working lives here. Particularly these two which are on the charter.

1. Be human. Use a respectful, conversational voice, avoid scripts and never use corporate doublespeak.
2. Demonstrate your good intentions by speaking plainly, earnestly and candidly with customers about problems that arise

We think things would be very confusing if we didn’t share our knowledge, issues and foster and long term reputation with the company.

We hope you think so too, voice your support in doing business like all the folks at CCPact, by signing up as well.