SpicyWebDesigners.com by Luc Arnold

Jim Wiberley and Graeme White are both directors of Staak Ltd., a digital creative studio located in Royal Leamington Spa in Warwick in England in the United Kingdom. Together, this duo started Staak in late 2008 targeting the entertainment industry’s need for web design that suits their clients’ needs. Both had previously worked for other agencies and well known games companies so having their own studio for web design seemed like the next logical step to take. Staak is not only a proactive web design studio but it is also dynamic giving Staak an advantage over larger creative agencies. Together with Jim and Graeme and a few select freelance designers, Staak is making a name for itself.

1. When was Staak founded? How many people currently work at Staak?

Staak was officially founded in November 2008 by myself and Jim Wiberley. We’d previously worked for other agencies and well known games companies and having our own studio seemed like a natural progression for us. We’re a small studio with just ourselves and a few choice freelancers which we use on a project by project basis. We’ve always felt it’s our size as a studio that really allows us to be dynamic and proactive for our clients giving us an edge over some of the larger creative agencies.

2. Jim, Staak seems to have a lot of project work that involves clients from the entertainment industry including Sony, Xbox and Electronic Arts and I wanted to ask was it intentional to attract clients like this to your business?

The majority of our work has always been in the games and music industry and it was natural for us to continue in this area when we started Staak. We’ve always found that our creative style has been well suited to these types of clients and we’ve always really enjoyed pushing ourselves to produce the best work we can. Although having said that our work in the games and music industry does lead to further work with clients we wouldn’t have previously worked with.

3. What kind of quality practices do you have in place when dealing with a larger client to make sure the whole project is running smoothly?

Communicate at every step of the way! We can’t stress that enough. Without clear communication everything else falls apart. With larger scale projects we spec everything with the client and agree on schedules and budgets before moving forward. The one thing we’ve learned over the years is that every client has their own way of working. You can’t force someone into a process as it just won’t work, so there’s always a little give and take–but as long as you’re clear on the objectives and more importantly so is the client, you can’t go far wrong.

4. What is a day in the life like when of working at the Staak digital creative studio?

Coffee. Lots of coffee! We then kick start the day going over the studio schedule–what projects need looking at, any clients we need to get back to, fairly straightforward stuff. The important thing for us is keeping things fun and stress free. You spend so much of your day at work the last thing it needs to be is a pain in the ass. Luckily for us our jobs are pretty diverse. We can be knee deep in some motion graphics work or CSS one day, followed by a trip to a games convention the next–fun times!

5. What types of work does Staak take on currently? Motion Design? Web Design? Etc.

Although we’re primarily a web design studio we don’t particularly confine ourselves to any one particular discipline or area.

We do everything from full content managed sites (built with our own in-house CMS ‘Fuel’) to dynamic Flash sites and games with a sprinkling of motion graphics to pep things up! We’re always on the look out to learn new things. You can’t stop still in this industry–if you do, you get left behind!

Liam Faulkner and Katherine Boardman are web designers who run Twenty3Design, a small web design company in the United Kingdom. Liam Faulkner studied Multimedia Technology at the University of South Wales while Katherine Boardman has her BSc of Sound from university. They complement each other and have created some amazing web design work because of their vast experience in multimedia design, flash and graphic design.

1. How did you and Katherine get started in web design? When did you start designing websites?

Liam: I was always interested in web design.  Actually I have a bit of a coding background, I did a qualification in Visual Basic (of all languages), and when I went to University, I studied other programming languages, but actually found I like the visual design side of things best.  While at Uni I took on a few simple paid projects for clients, and learnt my freelance lessons designing and coding for them.  I then took a couple of full time positions as a graphic designer, but always had in mind that I will be working for myself, and it turns out that going freelance was surprisingly easy.

Kath: I fell into it by accident really.  My background was in Sound Technology, but I helped out on a few projects with Liam and found that I picked up HTML pretty quickly. I found coding incredibly satisfying and now can’t imagine doing anything else.

2. How long has Twenty3Design been in business?

Liam: Well, we’ve been Twenty3design full time for nearly 1 year …it’s our birthday soon!   We have both worked professionally for over 6 years, be that freelance or full-time and about a year ago we thought it was time to put all our efforts under one happy roof.

3. How many designers, developers and other creative people currently work for Twenty3Design?

Liam: There’s just the two of us.  We’re the designers, developers and project managers for our projects.  For anything we can’t do we rely on the extensive UK and US freelance community to lend a hand.

We’ve got some pretty good contacts built up now who we know we can rely on.  I think that’s the key for freelancing.

4. What are the biggest challenges that you face in web design currently?

Liam: I think from a design perspective the hardest and most crucial part is getting a really decent brief form the client.  It’s so important to understand what the client wants and needs, but sometimes they don’t know themselves or they’ll “know it when they see it”.  I guess what I’m getting at is that people are more web savvy than ever and managing clients’ expectations among the vast array of information available for them is an ever changing task.

Kath: Is it too obvious to say dealing with IE6? That said it does at least keep me on my toes .  Other than that I’d say for me it’s utilizing the correct technologies for the right project.  Sometimes clients want something fancy just for the sake of it and, although it might be nice to be able to bill for the extra dev work, you can over do it and ruin a good project.

5. Do you ever refer to yourself as a Front-end developer or a web designer? Do you code any of the web sites that you design currently? If so, what language(s) do you code in?

Liam: We code and design everything ourselves.  We have the luxury of being multi-disciplined; we can take on the coding and design aspect for our clients, providing them with the whole package.  We code in the standard languages: HTML, CSS and PHP as well as doing bits and pieces of other languages such as JavaScript when it’s required.

6. Where did you go to school and has it helped you become a better web design professional?

Liam: We both went to University in South Wales, but I’d say that real life experience has made us better professionals, nothing can beat that.  Our degrees certainly gave us the start we needed to find out what type of work we’re in to and the time we had while at Uni allowed us to experiment with taking on clients and managing projects for ourselves.

7. Since you first started how has the web design industry changed? Has it changed for the better? If so, how? If not, please explain?

Liam: The industry seems to have grown and developed in to much more of a community, everyone is chatting online using Twitter, comparing notes and sharing ideas.  It’s a nice industry to be involved with.  From a client perspective, more people seem to be tech savvy, giving people like us a little more freedom to be creative.  The openness of the design world has always been there, but now there are so many tutorials, blogs and communities that you can really immerse yourself it what ever you like.

8. What are your favorite tools to use when designing a web project? Why are they your favorite tools?

Liam: I love my Macbook Pro, can’t do without it.  I also use an A5 Wacom tablet when I’m doing illustration; it’s incredibly helpful to be able to sketch freehand.  Software wise I use Photoshop for web design and Illustrator for print work and logo design, they can’t be beaten in my opinion.  Oh and can’t forget pen and paper, cheapest design hardware available.

Kath: As a developer I live inside Coda.  I can do almost everything in there and it makes developing so much easier.  The other thing I really rely on is my notebook.  It might sound odd for a developer, but it’s always when I’m out and not by my Mac that I figure out how to solve some problem I’ve been stuck on for a while.  I’ve got to be able to note it down quickly or I’ll forget.

Pete Stubbs is the managing director at 2am a company in Wesham, Preston in England in the UK. 2am has been in business for the past 20 years. The business currently provides services for PPC marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Web Design and Graphic Design and has an extensive portfolio available online. 2am is an “AdWords Qualified Company” meaning that they have been qualified by Google to provide Adwords consulting on how you can use Adwords to run your advertising.

1. How many people currently work at 2am?

There are currently nine people here at 2am

2. On your site it says “we are an award winning agency…”  What awards have you won?

There is a local Cheese maker Dewlay Cheese for whom we won the award for their cheese labels.

3. What is your company known for and what business problem are you trying to answer?

We are well known for our creativity and brand management skills. We want businesses to succeed and therefore we answer the age of problem of how our clients communicate within their sector.

4. How long has 2am been in business?

2am has been in business for over 20 years.

5. Where did the company name come from?  2am – is that when the best web design work is done?

The name 2am was created by the original founders who both had the initial AM thus the two AM’s! Nowadays of course, this is when the best ideas pop into our heads!

6. Have you developed any in-house technologies that you use to market to your customer that give you a unique advantage in the web design marketplace?

Our in-house SEO skills together with our experience in design give us the edge over most competitors!

7. Why should someone hire 2am for their next web or graphic design project?

Basically 2am create work which exceeds our clients’ expectations and our designs always aim to push the boundaries of creativity, as-well as communicate effectively – this may be an obvious answer but it’s surprising how many designs applications there are out there that are frankly utterly shit. The client should always receive design solutions that work effectively!

Some web design companies are good at development but terrible at design. Others are good at design but not too hot on development. Most don’t have the in-house capabilities of SEO – 2am have it all!

8. What do you feel is the biggest barrier to overcome for a web design company like yours currently?

I think the biggest problem (which also links to the question above) is that many clients have had web sites created without the end user in mind and therefore just don’t work.

Too many websites not only look rubbish but don’t function to the browser, search engines or user so its our job to educate the customers and give them the confidence back!

So the biggest barrier therefore is trust!

9. Being an “Adwords Qualified Company” what advantages does this give your company in developing, managing and working on PPC projects and do you find that a lot of people are interested in your company because you are “Adwords Qualified”?

We feel that with the experience we have in developing ”Adwords” campaigns speaks for its self and we would only offer products and services which will benefit our customer. We feel that customers are interested in 2am because of our experience and the fact that we offer all these services in house gives the customer the complete package.

10. What is the “Dream Analytics & Reports” feature all about on your company’s website?  I see that it’s coming soon but what can you tell us about it now?

Dream will be a service that analyses data from search engines and allows us to identify strengths and weaknesses in our customers campaigns enabling us to ensure that either fixes are made or areas are developed and capitalized upon. We will be giving complicated statistics and analytics the human touch!