Freelance Website and Media design

I’ve been working as a cameraman with the crew at Sharkbait Productions this month to help in the production of a documentary on raptor conservation, which has taken us around the country. This week, we had the fascinating job of interviewing MSPs in the Scottish Parliament building; in the next couple of weeks we’ll be tramping around various country estates collecting opinions from some of the folk on the other side of the fence. It’s definitely nice to get out of the office for a bit.

And talking of getting out of the office, it doesn’t look like I’ll be moving from my desk for the next few months. Currently working on eight different design jobs, an ongoing CRM development project, and fielding more enquiries than are altogether healthy. The diary is almost full for the rest of 2010; book now for 2011!

Just finished some video work for JBA, a long-term client who are keeping me very busy this year. This 10-minute video was shot on location in a local garden centre; the ident at the start and end were created using Photoshop and After Effects, and the titles put together using Final Cut Pro. A fun little project which came out looking pretty good!

Readers with children might pick up on the influence for the ident - thank you CBeebies. You can view the video on JBA’s website or their YouTube channel.

I’ve been hired by the Crichton Development Company this month to provide video services for the Ladyfield Charette - a series of public meetings which took place to allow residents and developers to work together to come up with a sustainable development plan for the local area.

The process was carried out with the incredibly talented team at DPZ Consulting, and consisted of five days of development, with three presentations held in different locations on the Crichton estate. We worked with both companies to provide full video coverage of the presentations, even producing an 80 minute DVD of the final presentation within a 12-hour turnaround for the following day’s events.

from tomorrow, i’ll be spending a couple of days a week at the beautiful crichton campus in dumfries, in my new position as (and i’m breaking into capitals here) Lecturer in Creative and Applied Multimedia (there, won’t do it again). a nice symmetry there, as this is where i started my degree in 1997.

i’ll be lecturing in flash, actionscript, and sound/video editing - there’ll be less emphasis on web delivery than i’m used to, but it should still be a lot of fun.

new to the portfolio is this printing work for jba seed potatoes. the new packaging will be rolled out across the whole of jba’s extensive and ever-growing (no pun intended) product range and is on the shelves now.

the new packaging is designed to compliment the companies brand and stand out over the competition - look out in your local garden centre for the new packs.

here’s an embiggified version of the photo above, and here’s the original designs.

a quick logo composition for the vaults, a local cafe/bar, which will be finding its way onto print, signage and t-shirts shortly. here’s some that didn’t make the cut: #3 is my favourite, but i suspect it might have been a bit too smartarse for it’s own good…

spent a day this week in london, covering photography at the annual veterinary marketing awards. involved some snapping in tricky low-light conditions, but was a fun challenge nonetheless.

eskdale solutions recently unveiled their new promo video, which we collaborated on over the back end of last year. eskdale contacted me for my production skills and we ended up doing a lot of after effects work too, producing motion graphics and visuals. i’m looking forward to working with them in the future.

you can view the promo on eskdales website.

hope the year is good for y’all. i’ll be working with the number one ladies’ detective agency in london during 2009. established by the late anthony minghella, the film company currently produces the series of the same name for the bbc.

the upshot of this is that i’ll be zipping up and down the country between scotland and london approximately every two weeks, so will be available down south a bit more often this year.

what’s the best way of massively increasing traffic to your site, pushing sales through the roof, and getting yourself noticed? in the case of long-term clients iloaded the answer is this: a fairly staggering promotion which should send some shockwaves through the industry.

essentially, it’s a short-term promotion which offers customers blockbuster films such as iron man, arctic tale, no country for old men and hundreds of others for under two pounds; plus a huge range of music videos for one pound a piece. the catch? amazingly, there isn’t one.

i’ve been working hard for the last week preparing graphics and advertising for the site to push the new promotion, although frankly i’m not sure it’ll need much pushing. get them while you can.