With the support of a European funding grant , Hawkswells’ were able to install a state-of-the-art milking machine at the dairy which would allow an ‘up’ in production while still retaining that genuinely unique way they produce and deliver their milk products.

This was the perfect opportunity to ease a traditional family business into the 21^st century by developing a suite of communications that would extol the virtues of their heritage, whilst positioning them as an up-to-date forward thinking business.

We were commissioned to design and develop a new product range name, labels and website for Hawkswells’.

The name

The first stop was a new name for their range of milk products. Making clear market differentiation was key and creating a naming strategy that would be distinctive yet represent the fundamental USP of Hawkswells’ – a local family dairy producing and bottling pure, fresh, natural milk products on their farm in the Yorkshire Dales.

The answer was PureDales…‘it does exactly what it says on the tin’.

Pure Dales Logo

The labels

The name gave us the perfect foundation for the creative development of a label range, enabling us to add personality and character to the product lines through the creation of a little fun character ‘fluffy the cow’ (a name given to one of the ‘girls’ in the herd by a younger Hawskwell family member). The result is a set of eleven different product labels for six product lines, delivering great individual on-shelf presence and the potential for developing additional lines in the future.

Pure Dales Label's

Pure Dales Milk Bottles

The website

The responsibility of the website was to build on the character and personality of the labels, while making the user experience engaging and communicating the Hawswells’ USP in bucket loads. Developed using HTML5 and CSS3, the clean simple approach to the site really hit the spot, a neat homepage scrolling banner,  product gallery and contact footer, combined with our easy to use ForeCMS delivered on all fronts. We even created a nice little iOS icon too, just to put the ‘icing’ on the iPad/iPhone users’ cake. We like the attention to detail.

Pure Dales Website

Pure Dales iOS Icon

The outcome is a package of communications for Hawkswells’ that says ‘the right stuff, to the right people in the right way’ and has the potential to deliver genuine results for the business. Watch this space for feedback.

Our approach to building websites has evolved as we have made the leap across to HTML5 and CSS3 for all our websites. Following a ‘Hardboiled‘ approach, we can create responsive websites which are appropriately crafted to match the capabilities of each browsers and device. This means people using contemporary web browsers get the best possible experience, whilst users of older, out of date browsers still receieve an experience which is suitable for their browser.

These techniques can be seen in some of our recent lauches:

Stafford & Rural Homes - Relaunch

Hawkswells' PureDales

Arcadia Tiles

Merlin Claims - Relaunch

The Kitty

Astute Class

We also supplied the design and front-end build for the new Liverpool Womens Hospital website:

Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust

Work is now well underway on a number of other exiting projects which will be launching in the very near future. Follow us on Twitter (@forepoint) or like our Facebook page to be kept up to date on all our website launches.

Astute class website - Design Section

We were honoured to have been chosen to produce the website for the Astute class submarine programme, in order to showcase the advanced technical capability of BAE Systems and the skills and expertise of their staff, contractors and supply chain. The design and content of the site was based initially on the award winning publication, Astute Exit Barrow, which was previously produced for BAE Systems Submarine Solutions. The site itself is to be continually updated and enhanced to run in parallel with the ongoing development of the Astute class programme.

Astute class website - Holding page

We led from the front on the development and management of the project, working closely with BAE Systems in defining the strategy, goals and objectives to launch and also the social media awareness strategy, in order to drive traffic to the site whilst the countdown holding page was live. This enabled subscribers to register and receive progress updates to the launch of the microsite and the Ambush roll-out event. One day into launch and we have already received rave reviews both internally within BAE Systems and externally via Twitter. The stats speak for themselves, visits are on the up and visitors are spending time navigating around the site.

Astute class website - Take a tour

The site has been developed using the latest emerging web technologies such as HTML5 and CSS3. This has allowed us to produce a responsive website that is not constrained by the limits of older browsers and delivers an appropriate user experience to any browser or device. Users of contemporary web browsers such as Chrome or Safari will receive a significantly enhanced user experience, which fully exploits the advantages of technologies such as HTML5 and CSS3.

Astute Facts in IE6 and Safari

This ‘Hardboiled’ approach to development is clear throughout the site, more so in the more interactive areas of the site. For example in the ‘Astute Facts’ section users of contemporary web browsers such as Chrome or Safari get an experience which is appropriate for their browser which utilities the latest CSS3 properties such as transforms and transition to create a slick 3D interface allowing users to flick through the different fact cards on an infinitive carousel. Users of older browsers are presented with a simpler slider as their browsers aren’t capable of rendering the more advanced CSS3 properties such as transforms or transitions. CSS3 has been used throughout to enhance other areas in simple ways; such as the 404 error page, which makes use of CSS3 animations to animate the radar.

Astute class website - Email Updates

Although we were in amongst some great designs we held a strong lead throughout and we would like to thank all who voted for us and Sign-Up Technologies themselves for holding the competition.

You can view all the entries on facebook and see the official announcement of the result on sign-up.to’s competition page.

1st Prize: 32GB iPad with presentation packaging and personalisation

The 1st prize was a 32GB Apple iPad, which arrived today (to a very excited team) and we are very grateful for the prize, presentation packaging and engraving.

As a thank you we have offered to provide a white label of the winning email template for Sign-Up Technologies customers to use. We will notify you by twitter when this is available so make sure to follow us to find out about this and all things Forepoint.

We are looking forward to making use of the iPad for client presentations and to produce adaptive (iPad compatible) websites.

The chosen design is the Easter edition of our very own E-Forecast designed by our creative director Ali Heggie (View the Easter edition). Our E-Forecast contains a round-up of all our latest work as well as the editions hot topic. You can subscribe to our E-Newsletter below.

As fervent supporters of Email campaigns, the reasons for which we blogged about back in February in  New Year, New Campaign, we are really pleased by this news and would urge you to show your support by taking the time to vote for our design.

To do so, you can ‘Like’ our design on facebook. (You may need to ‘Like’ the Sign-Up Technology page first for your vote to count.)

The topic of the conference was CSS3. The first couple of speakers covered the more technical aspects of CSS3. Then one speaker in particular, Andy Clarke, grabbed everyone’s attention when he started talking about what it meant to be “hardboiled” and showed us some pretty cool things you could do with CSS3.

At this point rounded corners was about as far into CSS3 as we had gone and when Andy began to show us cards flipping over, pictures moving around and things fading in and out, well we sat up and got really interested.

Andy also stressed that it should be expected that websites look different between browsers and that we should be designing for the best most capable browser.

Our next step towards becoming “hardboiled” happened, a couple of months later, when Lewis and I attended the Future of Web Design conference in London.

We were really impressed by two fantastic speakers, Aral Balkan and Aarron Walter, who presented on User Experience (UX) and how we shouldn’t be building websites that just do the job, we should build websites that are truly enjoyable for the user and can evoke emotional responses from them.

Aarron Walter at FOWD

CSS Guru and Dribbble founder Dan Cederholm re-enforced this notion on UX and explained how we can use CSS3 to enhance and enrich a user’s experience. Dan’s ideas seemed to fit very well with what we had heard previously from Andy Clarke.

When returning to Forepoint we adopted a very clear development methodology, in which we develop first for all contemporary web browsers, using HTML5 and applying CSS3 techniques then degrading for the less capable browsers. This methodology can be seen in our own website, the WANO website and on some imminent websites we are working on right now.

World Association of Nuclear Operators Website

Last week saw the launch of Andy Clarke’s book Hardboiled Web Design. We had been waiting eagerly for this since Andy first spoke to us about his “Hardboiled” ideas on the Carsonified Conference. So last Tuesday Lewis and I waited rather impatiently for the book to launch – this basically involved us repeatedly refreshing the fivesimplesteps website until the book launched.

So far I have only managed to make my way through a few of the chapters, but I’m already completely hooked.

The book takes a no-nonsense look at the current state of working in web and casts a lot of the outdated ideas away. In the first few chapters Andy explains how it’s neither feasible nor cost effective in these modern times to expect websites to be pixel perfect across browsers. He then goes on to say:

“When we shift focus from looking backwards to looking forwards, invest time in design instead of in lengthy workarounds for less capable browsers, our bosses and customers will see real improvements in brand experience.”

And

“[T]hat designing from the top down ensures that everybody will see and experience a website in a way that’s appropriately crafted and responsive to the capabilities of their browser. Most importantly, no one will be left out.”

So far this book has confirmed that Forepoint’s development methodology is on the right path – we are getting hardboiled! The advantages are clear all round. Clients get the best website for their money, users get the best experience, crafted for their browser and we get to use the latest technologies to build our websites.

Hardboiled Web Design CSS3 Transformers & Transitions

Hardboiled Web Design is well on its way to being crowned the best book I have read this year … so I’m off to read to some more so that we can get even more “hardboiled”.

We feel our new website both articulates and strengthens our vision and values perfectly whilst demonstrating that both Guardianship and Innovation come to life in the hands of our people.

This simple, defined message shows we are friendly, helpful and reliable. We care, and we’re great to work with. We take a truly consultative approach and are able to understand the priorities and objectives of our clients, especially those that have to satisfy the requirements of multiple stakeholders. We deliver design communications that meets their criteria.

Our ultimate strength is our ability to produce exactly what is needed to protect and build brands.