We totally fell in love with these curly haired pigs at the Pink Pig Farm in Holme, North Lincolnshire recently. Called Rhubarb and Custard, these adorable chaps are residents on the lovely farm trail.

These curly coated, rather large, ‘bundles of joy’ are an old Lincolnshire breed that became extinct and are now being re-introduced into Lincolnshire. Just imagine baby pigs covered in curls, it’s almost too cute to handle.

When we stumbled across them on our windy visit to the farm, I think the exact words uttered were “Good lord look at the size of these, they’re never sheep?!”. On closer inspection we realised our error and took photographic evidence as we doubted anyone in the office would believe our adventure.

Anna wants to adopt one, I think Marianne secretly does too, and I am jealous of their natural curls.

So here’s the proof of these most unusual porkers!!

Rhubarb or Custard?

Sheep Pig

If pigs aren’t your thing, The Pink Pig has plenty to offer. Delicious food in both the restaurant and farm shop. We ate in the restaurant and then could not resist picking up a few things on our way out via the shop; fresh crunchy asparagus and there are still two pieces of fudge on my desk I am guarding with my life. The service was very friendly and we got to taste some amazing cheeses, from a lady who could certainly teach you a thing or two about cheese.

Outside is the farm trail which is very interactive; animals, diggers, landscaped garden area, play areas and of course Rhubarb and Custard greet you near the start (they don’t take your money, just have a quick sniff). Just watch out for that cockerel he’ll appear out of nowhere to say hello.

Mr Crisp is an unusual addition to our team and we would like to give him a very warm welcome to the team. Frighteningly clever with web based technical stuff, we have brought him in due to the large amount of web work we are currently doing. That’s not the unusual part though. His obvious talents with the online languages were actually his hobby, his other forte lies in classical music and composition!

In fact he has a blog called ‘musicalmidget’ which gives a  little insight into his world. We are particularly interested in his keyboard as he uses it to alleviate computer related stress in ten minute breaks from his coding adventures. I think we’d all quite like being serenaded a couple of times a day, helping to provide tranquility and clear our heads.

Alan is also a grade 6 on the tenor saxophone which has sparked the idea that maybe we should run our own Britain’s Got Talent in-house. I myself am very handy with a kazoo and a couple of people have got some fierce dance moves. Any other agencies out there up for the challenge?

PROLOGUE

Welcome to the first installment of Captain’s Log(), the “techie blog” where you get to read about what the web developers & programmers here at D4 are working on and thinking about. I’m Jeremy (a.k.a. “The Captain”), and I’ll be your resident techie for this series of technical blogs.

Let’s get right into it, shall we?

INTRODUCTION TO FRAMEWORKS

Frameworks.

It seems like all the web programming languages these days have a framework: Ruby has Ruby on Rails. PHP has Cake, Symfony, CodeIgniter and Zend Framework. ASP has ASP.NET. Flash has the ActionScript Foundry. Java has Spring and JSF. Javascript has jQuery, Dojo, YUI and a few others. Even Python has a framework!!!

But what is a framework and why are they so popular?

DEFINITION OF A FRAMEWORK AND ITS BENEFITS

According to Wikipedia, a framework is “an abstraction in which common code providing generic functionality can be selectively overridden or specialized by user code providing specific functionality.”

In other words, frameworks are foundations of code upon which we build web applications and websites. They’re usually open-source, which means that they’ve been rigorously tested by thousands of developers from all over the world; and in many cases, they have huge corporations behind them, which means that they’ve been written by some of the industry’s leading web developers.

So in a nutshell, frameworks allow developers to avoid having to re-invent the wheel for each web application they develop, which is great - not only for big development teams, but also for small development teams who find themselves in the position of being flooded with work.

Which, fortunately, is the position we’re currently in, here at D4.

WHAT’S A CAPTAIN TO DO?

When I took the role of Senior Web Developer back in December, I quickly realized that things were changing at D4. Previously, the majority of our projects were exclusively for graphic design or print design, with the occasional website here and there. But today, it seems that most of our projects include some form of web development - whether it’s a website, e-commerce website, content management system, image gallery, etc.

Those kinds of projects usually require a large team of developers, but since the development team at D4 is quite small, we needed to come up with a way to get these projects out the door - and more importantly - a way to keep the quality of web development at the same high level as the quality of D4 design quality.

Definitely not an easy task!

INTRODUCING THE D4 FRAMEWORK

We’re still getting a high volume of projects in these days, which is somewhat surprising given the current economical climate, but not really that surprising because D4 is one of the best design agencies in the country.

In order to deliver these projects on time, we’ve decided to extend two of the best web development frameworks out there. The PHP side of the “D4 Framework” is built on top of Zend Framework and the JavaScript/CSS side is built on top of YUI.

By leveraging the benefits of Zend Framework and YUI and extending them to suit our own needs, we’re able to develop enterprise-level websites and applications in a fraction of the time it would take to build them entirely from scratch. Shorter development times mean that we can quote shorter timescales to our clients, which means we can offer the same high-quality solutions at more competitive rates.

And in the current economic climate, that makes for some truly satisfied clients.

CONCLUSION

I hope you’ve enjoyed the first installment of the Capatin’s Log(). Next week, I’ll be spilling the beans on a very exciting project we’re currently working on, so be sure to keep checking back.

So you wanna be a boxer,
In the golden ring,
Got a punch like a southbound freight train,
Tell me just one thing,

Do you have a really great website, ooooh that’s fast?…..Well we do, but we are about to make it better. Marrying the beauty of our fantastic design, with the science of algorithms, add in a few gorgeous illustrations, a couple of drops of profound prose (or Bugsy Malone lyrics) and you have our updated website. We are so excited to unveil our latest service offerings and insightful information, we keep doing an occasional impromptu tap dance, and I’ve heard a rumour or two that there may even have been some celebratory kebabs thrown in.

Just to be terrible teases, we’ve posted a little tit-bit here for your viewing pleasure, so as to get you salivating for the next course. So check back soon to see what we’ve been working on, in between our clients work. We’ve been so busy here, it’s been tough to get done, so we’ve been working 24/7 and getting up half an hour earlier.

Well who’d have thought it, a D4 representative lecturing 35 masters marketing students on online branding?! Clare Williams went in by request of Daragh O’Reilly, Head of Marketing at Sheffield University, to give students an insight into the working world of marketing & branding for online audiences.

We covered topics such as; an introduction to online branding, the creative process, understanding brands, translating values into functionality, target audience demographics, wireframes, results & reporting, email & viral marketing, microsites, online communities, SEO, ageing websites and gave numerous case studies relating back to the specific topics.

The presentation helped to back up eight weeks of theory provided by Daragh who himself is a marketing guru, with an extensive practical background as well as many published papers under his belt. So it really was an honour to be asked by such an inspirational figure.

Despite having done squillions of presentations to boards of directors, business owners and marketing managers, Clare was surprised to find that prior to the lecture her legs had gone slightly jelly like and she had the glare of a piece of glass. However she later admitted this was largely due to forgetting her wonder woman suit.

The presentation was warmly received and Clare was extremely relieved that no-one fell asleep, at least noticeably. In fact Clare has been asked back to lecture 120 in the autumn of 2009. If anyone can find her can they please let her know.

…and I’m not talking about the kind that happens at the staff christmas do or when you are trying to reach the chocolate mikado sticks from the top shelf and accidently photocopy your intimates, but the genuine kind that causes distress and pain.

D4 have been commissioned to do the re-brand of Accident Solicitors Direct, including their website with a content managed system geared towards some serious data capture, shopfront signage, stationery, literature and a full-scale marketing plan. We have given them a fresh, contemporary look which we are currently implementing on their website and in all their marketing materials. The next step is working in conjunction with an SEO campaign to increase their case loads and geographical reach.

Having seen their client testimonials we can honestly say people sing their praises. Often people are mis-advised in this area and don’t see the full amount of their claim, but one client said he didn’t believe he would get the full compensation until he was holding the cheque in his hand and was impressed by the speed, efficiency and personal service. Now we’ve given them a more up to date image to reflect this and at ASD they cannot wait to reveal their new image in all it’s glory.

There is also a photoshoot and video to come, more will be revealed but for now here’s a little sneak preview…

Yorkshire puddings, The Human League, Bobby Knut… all things we love about South Yorkshire. Now gorgeous curves can be added to the list…

Thinbelina - a small, independent business based in Maltby - are experts in bespoke, handmade corsetry and D4 has just finished their branding, design and website. Keep checking the D4 site for much more to come from Thinbelina, including a rather tasty postcard set we are currently working on. Speaking of tasty, The Drum magazine definintely thought so: www.thedrum.co.uk

Have a peek at the site and spread the word about an up and coming local brand. Full details of the project will be showcased on our website soon…

www.thinbelina.co.uk

This morning in the D4 studio we had delivery of samples for the campaign Anna designed for YMCA.

It is a campaign to attract younger people to become volunteers in the local community - the design style of the campaign needed to reflect this. Our aim was to produce items which were fun, youthful and positive; things to collect and keep. As well as a set of postcards, posters, banners and stickers, the graphic is to be printed onto t-shirts, pens, pencils and a mug and soon to be used on the Doncaster YMCA website. The full project will be available to view on our website.

This project is now featured on The Drum website.

Keep your eyes on the sky for the YMCA pigeon. He’ll be back…

We’re proud to announce we have a new client on board -  ‘Stratagia’, an Education Consultancy based in Chesterfield, Derbyshire. D4 won a three way pitch to develop and re-design their website and brand communications.

Stratagia chose us to redefine their service offerings and improve their online presence, and they believe the results of this will increase their company portfolio, whilst helping improve online communication to existing and potential clients.

The creative concept we produced is based around their company mantra ‘Learn, Share, Achieve’ which will feature throughout the site, and form the basis for a javascript and flash animation we will be producing. The project will also include photography and art direction.

The re-structure of the navigation, sitemap and HTML build is underway at the moment, and is shaping up nicely -  we are confident it will achieve some fantastic results for them, so watch this space.

I kid you not, when working late last night I asked if we could take on the office above us and put in some dorm style beds like fireman have (I didn’t mention the pole at the time but I wish I had). ‘Why?’ I might hear you ask, and if not I am going to tell you anyway. We have moved offices. They…..are……beautiful. It’s like we started off a caterpillar in our first offices, cocooned in the last ones and have now unfurled our spectacular wings to the gasps of every client who arrives in our beautiful lift. Yes, you heard it, even the lift is beautiful. Now I am normally very strict about repetition in my writing, but in this instance there is no other descriptive word than beautiful. If you don’t believe me get yourselves down here for a visit. We’ll even let you feed the fish.