Your work will include examples that demonstrate a good understanding of online media and the modern internet. You must be organised, original and methodical in your design approach. You should be able to create original designs that work with a brand and meet the briefs objectives.

This position requires self motivation and discipline. We are looking for someone who is able to work in a small design team, understands the medium and has experience in producing online marketing campaigns. You will be able to work to deadlines and should be familiar with working under pressure. You will be working on all of the accounts and you’ll ideally be looking for a position that will allow you to grow with a company that has big ideas and a forward thinking vision.

Good communication skills are essential as you will be required to work directly with clients where you will be able to take and understand a design brief.

You should know how email campaigns and banner ads work and what best practice techniques to use.

Your responsibilities:

• Designing and producing compelling and technically sound HTML email campaigns
• Designing and producing banner campaigns GIF’s and Flash
• Designing and producing websites (HTML/flash)

Required skills:
HTML, CSS, XML, Flash AS2 & 3. Php and MySQL would be a major advantage.

Why work for us?

• We are a privately owned business run by real people who care about what they do and enjoy it
• We are located slap bang in the middle of Shoreditch in a nice open plan wooden floored office
• Our clients are all very different and come to us with a variety of briefs that keeps us thinking and current
• Its a relaxed working environment with music, table football and as much coffee as you can drink
• Holiday entitlement is the standard but we also close over Christmas as a rule for a week

Salary – Up to £25k
Closing date for applications – Friday 1st June
Start date – July 2012

Contact Stuart Edwards at jobs@bythescruff.com.

Please send your CV and links to current and past work or/and your website.

Please be aware that having your own portfolio site will help hugely.

No agencies.

A beta launch will be available for clients to test in the coming days

The system was developed because all-too-often, editors and marketing departments found the process of updating banners took too long and cost too much. This simple to use system empowers teams and individuals to make changes themselves in real time and cuts out the middle man and ad ops teams to get banners live instantly. It also offers comprehensive traffic reports through its statistical reporting tool and the ability to create GIF backups in one click without the need to upload any files or edit any flash files.

All this is managed through a single piece of JavaScript that doesn’t change ever which means your banners can be altered as quick as you can say Bannermate.

The system is hosted on a UK server with a unique customer URL and allows multiple users to access the password controlled dashboard

How does it work?

Administrators are able to choose from a selection of pre-built flash templates that would have been created especially for their requirements and brands.

Any predefined element can be altered such as logo, image, headline, background image or colour, destination URL etc.

The user can also create a GIF backup of the flash banner by using a simple snapshot system that captures selected frames from the flash banner and then creates a GIF version that is made available if flash is not running on the viewer’s machine or device.

Benefits

• 100% control over banner content
• Cut out agency costs for updates to banners
• Full traffic reporting for impressions and CTR
• Creates Flash banners with GIF backups
• Accessed through secure dashboard
• Quick and easy to use system
• Respond to promotions in your time
• No files are hosted on your server
• No need to use a database on your website

Functionality – you can change:

• Logo
• Cover/product Image
• Background image
• Headline text
• Call to action button text
• Destination URL

If you would like to be notified when this system will be available for testing please email us or ask us for more information. Pricing details will be issued shortly.

Here is an example on an MPU delivered through Bannermate.

The navigation has been made much clearer to drive bookings and make it quicker for customers to find what they want.

Lewis Swan, Managing Director says
“Given my previous experience of how the guys at By the Scruff work and how they always seem to deliver exactly what I wanted (plus more) it was a no brainer for them to redesign our company website. The results have been outstanding and the functionality we now have on the site means people can find tours even easier and get all the information they need within 1 or 2 clicks at most. People say to us they love the simplicity of the site and that its very easy to find things. That has been a big contributing factor to the success of our business since we launched 2 years ago.”

Visit the Britmovietours website britmovietours.com for some great film and location tours in the OK.

While the website may perform the basic stuff you want it to, it will not be the best it can be, for many reasons.

Things like SEO optimisation, considerations for the best user experience, call to action button theory and a multitude of other crucial things that web design and development companies (like us) are likely to simply not be there, if you do the website yourself or if you hire a cheap bedroom coder. The things I just mentioned come with years of experience and are absolutely critical to building a successful website.

The cost argument might come up if you are just starting your business and want to reduce your spending, however you have to consider that a website that doesn’t sell you in the right light or makes you look cheap will not help you attract new business and win over clients.

If you don’t have a web presence, you don’t exist. If your web presence is not positive, you will be ignored. Playing a game of roulette is fun in a casino, but doing so with your business may not be the best idea.

I hope this article will nudge you in the right direction. ByTheScruff is only a quick phone call ( 0207 033 4269 ), brief email ( getit@bythescruff.com ) or  contact form away.

Some don’t understand this idea or don’t care about it enough and build exclusively for the desktop environments and the larger screens. iPads and iPhones have built up a market share too large to be ignored.

There are various ways and various approaches to building cross-platform web applications. One site and one html can be supplied to mobile and dektop environments, but may look completely different when looked at in the different browsers.

In this series I will review different websites and approaches to making your website work on different devices.

Example one: The bbc responsive news prototype site.

• Technology: a mixture of CSS and JavaScript that makes the website adapt to the new resolution instantly on load and on screen size adjustment.
• Hazards of this method: unless extreme care is taken when writing JavaScript functions, large and JavaScript-intensive websites will chew through RAM faster than the developer would like to admit. The reason behind this is the fact that the DOM tree has to be rewritten on every resize. Another thing to consider is the fact that not all parts of the website and not all JavaScript behaviours will be required on every resolution. The functions that are reused throughout are subject to heavy variable changes. Meaning that the user-side cache is likely to be flooded with temporary stuff, resulting in reduced performance in browsers where localStorage is not available.
• Benefits of this method: Most popular resolutions can be easily targeted using only one line of code and a completely different set of styles may be served to that resolution. A seamless experience, the user visits one site and it is rendered appropriately to their device, no need to configure any settings or to use separate addresses for the mobile site, the old bbc mobile news site is a great example: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/index.html
• BTS Responsive Test score: 8/10 (on 22/11/11, we fully understand that the website is still in development and will review again when it goes live)

Here’s a video recording of the website adapting to resolution changes:

The new website benefits from a completyely new design and is developed on the WordPress system.

The London Wildlife Trust is using the blog to promote their work in the area and to encourage people to take a more active role in local conservation and to appreciate the diverse wildlife. They have many different activities planned that will be promoted on the Barking Riverside website through this year and 2012.

Users can find new image galleries with pictures of the new building taking place including the recently completed Rivergate Centre. The website will be updated more regularly as new property is built and becomes available for sale.

Developed under the management of the Homes & Communities Agency this new site has been in the making since 2007 when we were first commissioned to design and build the website. Its been a long time coming and many changes have happened in that period. We hope the site can see the development through this next phase of building.

For further information go to barkingriverside.co.uk

Previously that meant having a huge number of email accounts, desktop applications and a selection of devices, and spending a lot of time. Not anymore! Thanks to Litmus we can test our emails across a wide range of email clients with a few clicks. Litmus allows you to preview what your email will look like in all the major (and minor) browsers, websites and devices.

Litmus makes testing emails easy

Each email client renders HTML emails differently, so with Litmus we can quickly see any differences and adjust the code accordingly. Therefore we can assure our clients that their email will display correctly across all the major email clients and a wide range of devices.

BrowserStack is the most refined in-browser testing software that I’ve seen on the market. It’s free to try for an hour and the paid subscription is not gonna break any budgets, but the value it brings is absolutely irreplaceable.

You are able to test your website in all the browsers that you wish, using a virtual environment. Here’s an example of me doing exactly that.

Quality control is a top priority here at ByTheScruff and we appreciate great tools that enable us to test our web sites more efficiently. If you think your testing suite is better or have some project that you would like us to help you with, please get in touch with us.

Read ahead for the race report:

Smarts4youracing which owns and runs the 4Two Cup, a race series for the little town car, entered the larger forfour model owned by the smart club into the prestigious Britcar 24hr race at Silverstone. It was the first time in the world that a Smart car had been entered into such a gruelling race and was up against some very fast cars from marques including Porsche, Ferrari, and Aston Martin.

The drivers consisted of four very experienced racers: 4Two Cup founders and former Britcar winners, Paul Bates and James Palmer, local racer Tom Mills and 16 year old David Moore, the current 4Two Cup series leader. Nigel Moore from Tockwith motorsport help build and run the car as our chief engineer. Nigel is the youngest British driver to race at Le Mans for a works team, So plenty of experience there.

Paul Bates said: ‘We had a very good team running the car and some great sponsors, including CFT Financials and drum and bass label, Ram Records.  The team set out with one goal and that was to finish the race.’

Things didn’t start off too well during Thursday practice as the car had a misfire, which took until the early hours of Friday to rectify.  This meant that the car went into qualifying without any testing on the tyres that would be used in the race.

Qualifying took place and due to their practice problem this left the team on the starting grid in 54^th place out of 57 cars.

The race got underway at 4.30pm on Saturday afternoon and first to take to the wheel was Paul Bates.  James Palmer was followed by Tom Mills and finally 16 year old David ‘Nipper’ Moore.  At this point the Smart car was up to 27^th overall.

Near disaster was about to strike as darkness approached when David radioed through to the team with a fuel surge problem.

James Palmer added: ‘ He came into the pits for a check and the team found that the fuel tank had split.  So 6hrs in to the race a decision was made to take the fuel tank out of a road car, fit all the special fitting and put this on the race car. 1hr and 5mins later the car was back on track, but had dropped back to 36^th place.’

The car pounded on into the night gaining places and was back up to 33^rd, when a wheel bearing broke causing the brakes to fail.

As Paul Bates said: ‘What a scary moment,  I was approaching Brooklands at 125mph with no brakes.’

Once again the car pitted for a new wheel hub and brakes and less than an hour later the car emerged from the pits in 37^th place.  On it went for the next 11 hours with only the scheduled stops for fuel, new tyres and driver changes. As the race went on the team climbed back up the leader board.

By 4pm on Sunday the car was not surprisingly looking worse for wear.  Half its wing was missing, it had no side skirts, a very badly cracked windscreen and a suspension issue.

But despite all that on it went to take the chequered flag on a late Sunday afternoon in 28^th place overall.

The car had completed a total of 456 laps of Silverstone race circuit, a total of 1,672 miles.

740 Litres of fuel had been used and 6 sets of slick tyres.

We would like to say a massive thank you to all of our sponsors and team. Without them this would have not been possible.

Roll on next year.

For more information about Smarts4YouRacing go to smarts4youracing.com

The website already offers tips and advice on the latest style and trends from the world of interiors and this new online service will allow customers to contact Pippa directly and draw on her 15 years as an Interior Stylist.

Customers from anywhere can submit their questions to Pippa and her team, who will answer them at an introductory rate of £38. This online-only service can be bought directly from the website, and Pippa aims to answer all questions within 5 working days. Her answers will provide advice and guidance, and aim to help customers make an informed decision to make their homes beautiful and stylish.

To use the service simply go to www.pippajamesoninteriors.co.uk and click ‘Ask The Experts’. Users can buy this service through Paypal and then submit their question to Pippa who guarantees a personal response. We are confident that customers will like what we say, but if for any reason they are not entirely satisfied then we will refund their money.

Pippa says, “We realised that there was a gap in the market for people looking for quick solutions to their dilemmas that are too small to warrant employing a full-time Interior Designer but still need the expertise of an industry professional. We see this as an affordable and accessible service that can benefit anyone that is looking for answers to their interior style questions.”