Web Stuff
- Abban Dunne
- HeyStaks
- Howdie! Url Shortening With A Little Twist
- Music Shoots
- Mixtape
- Retailers Against Smuggling
Video Stuff
From the Blog
- Welcome to the BrightSky Studio
- Basic Camera Controls
- An Awesome New Option for Rural Internet Provision
- I Like Drisco – a charity single to help the people of Haiti
- Handy jQuery Overlay Info Panel
- Fun Friday: Jim’s Xmas Jingle
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Design
Jun 21st
Abban Dunne
I recently finished off building my website and I thought I’d add it to the portfolio as I really like the design of it. As we specialise in WordPress I need somewhere to test ideas and experiments so this will be the place you go to find them.
Abban.
May 5th
HeyStaks
The great guys over at HeyStaks came to us looking for us to give them a new look and feel for their site. We took an already existing design and vastly improved it making it work on a proper grid system and applying a baseline grid. We also drew them graphics based on their logo and improved usability across the site.
“Abban’s sterling design work has dramatically improved our user retention figures and has seen our site’s conversion rates quadruple, not to mention how great the site now looks.”
Maurice Coyle – MD, HeyStaks.
Dec 2nd
Music Shoots
Upcoming music photographer Tomasz Bereska asked us to make him a website to display his portfolio. He needed it in a big rush and we made sure he got it up in time. We made this site in one day. Like most of our sites, its built on WordPress and allows the user to upload new photos at any time, add links, new pages etc.
I really needed this site quickly to enable me to get a contract for a pretty big job. The guys in BrightSky really pulled out all the stops for me and not only did they get it to me in time, they built something that I can add my own photos to hassle free. I love these guys! Really a lot! Maybe too much…
Tomasz Bereska – Music Photographer.
Dec 2nd
Sep 24th
Mixtape
Mixtape started off as a hobby but quickly turned into something much bigger. We wanted somewhere to post videos we make that wasn’t one of the free video hosting sites like Youtube or Vimeo. We decided to make a custom WordPress blog to host them. We integrated Flowplayer into the theme which gave us a really nice way to show off our video work. In September 2009 it was long listed for 7 Irish Web Awards and we hope to be shortlisted too!
Edit: Just got shortlisted! Check out the other nominations here. Go team!
Features:
- Heavily customised WordPress theme.
- Full Flowplayer integration.
- Beautiful retro yet modern looking design.
- Awesome embed code which allows others to embed videos into their own blog.
- Great videos.
Sep 9th
Drop-d
Drop-d is a free online Irish music magazine. The contributors all do it for free and its ranked third in Ireland after Hotpress and State. They asked us to do a whole site redesign (for free or as they put it “a love of music”) for them back in April. We were eager to build a large site on WordPress at the time so we agreed. We started by designing a new logo for them and built the site from there. We also optimised the site for Google and managed to move it from obscurity in the search rankings into the first page. Hits on the site almost immediately doubled and have been increasing ever since. The number of contributors has also risen.
Features
- Newer much easier to use design.
- Site is much more accessible.
- Semantic development, all the code is extremely well laid out.
- Easier to read typography.
- Loads of free gig tickets for Abban.
“I found BrightSky to be fantastic to work with. Since they helped re-launch Drop we’ve seen our traffic improve massively. The site is so much easier to use both for the viewer and the administrators. I found everyone at BrightSky showed a great maturity and an even better professional attitude towards their work, something which is lacking among their peers. Not only would I recommend them for others looking to improve their website I would commend them on all their work to date.”
Patrick Murphy – Editor, Drop-d Music Magazine.
Sep 8th
The Stigismotron
Abban made this through a brief downtime in his internet connection. Its a micro site based on the introduction speech said by Jeremy Clarkson when he introduces The Stig on Top Gear. It has all the lines said by Clarkson and allows users to input their own lines too. It got pretty filthy pretty fast so not one for the easily offended. Keep an eye out because we’ll be doing more labs like this when we get the chance/ideas. The Stigismotron
Sep 8th
Meat The Teem
Some friends of ours over at Websplash recently redesigned their website. To go along with the shiny new design they wanted some drawings of the staff and commissioned us to draw them. Luckily as they’re all quite good looking we didn’t have to work too hard.
“We engaged our friend’s over at BrightSky to create a series of creative concepts for the meet the team section of our website. Abban started out by analysing our needs and then got to work on the designs. We are delighted by the end product produced by Brightsky & would have no hesitation in recommending them and have done so already.”
Patrick Leddy – MD Websplash
