Web Design Melbourne News

Websites, Emails, Surveys and more!

2009-06-02T14:42:00.006+10:00

Our blogging record has suffered a little recently but there's been some great work going on....

Stockland Tooronga - www.stocklandtooronga.com.au

A new single page site for Stockland and their new development gardiner Apartments. Designed by the team at Cornwell, the site captures interested parties information in a nice clean form and showcases some great images through a Flash slideshow.

made.living - www.madeliving.com.au

A full featured site running on the Efront CMS (Backstage). Designed by Philippa at The Candy Factory, this site allows the team at Made to update content, add images, video, news and text as they see fit. A great looking site that helps them present a great product and service.

Grocon - www.pixelbuilding.com.au

Still on the property front, Grocon have announced their exciting new vision for the old Carlton Brewery site in Swanston St. The Pixel building will be the first carbon neutral building in Australia and potentially the world. We've taken Cornwell's design and created a placeholder site that showcases the brand, vision, media and contact information along with a video flythrough of the site to be.

Along with all this there's and a stack of email campaigns have been developed for Philip Island Tourism, Carbon Edge, Film Victoria and Ambulance Victoria to name a few.

There's some great work in the pipeline too, with 7 new websites coming together for Cengage Learning, a new site in the works for Neometro, Australia New Zealand Society of Criminology, Victorian Actors Benevolent Trust, Otek, Melbourne Open House 2009 and some blog and email work for ABC Digital!

We're happy to be able to help these organisations, businesses and groups make the most of their time online and look forward to wrapping up the (financial) year with a bang.

Keep on truckin',

Mark

New website for the Schools First project

2009-05-06T09:30:00.004+10:00

Busy times here at Efront in the run to the end of financial year, lots of news to come but what better place to start than Schools First.

In October 2008 we started work with the NAB on the Schools First project and now we're proud to announce the launch of the full Schools First website

If you're unfamiliar with the project here's a blurb from the site :

"Schools First is a fantastic new initiative that is about improving outcomes for young people. At its heart, Schools First is about bringing together students, teachers, parents and community members, to support each other and help improve student outcomes."

There's a prizepool of $15 million dollars being awarded to schools and their partnerships over a 3 year period! A fantastic opportunity.

Our involvement with NAB and the Schools First partners (Australian Centre for Education Research and the Foundation for Young Australians) has been all around the design and development of the Schools first website. It's been a great process to be involved with and to date we've had the pleasure of helping hundreds of schools across the country register for workshops online via the website! With the inclusion of community partners, there's thousands of registrations being processed and organized via the site.

The new site includes a calendar of events, live polls, social network interaction, a comprehensive search tool and (of course) great content! All of this is and more running on the Efront Backstage content management system, allowing the content owners a quick and easy way to keep content fresh, up to date and accurate!

We're proud to be involved in such an excellent project and we're excited about continuing to deliver great tools to all involved!

www.schoolsfirst.edu.au

Mark

12 months on - Mum's Grapevine

2009-04-20T13:49:00.007+10:00

On May 6, 2007 we blogged about our first meeting with Caroline and Vicky and the Mum's Grapevine idea. Well, twelve months on and Caroline has taken the business to a whole new level. Via referral, the site now boasts over 20,000 subscribers, all receiving the weekly email!

Mum's Grapevine is essentially a way for people to stay aware of discounts, specials and offers across a range of maternity, children, toddler and baby items. From strollers to holidays to good old nappies (or diapers depending on how much TV you watch) there's always a stack of items coming out in the weekly newseltter. The idea is simple, sign up on the site, receive a weekly email, save money! The idea is great because it's a no brainer, who doesn't want to save cash?

Efront built a small site and workflow that allows users to register their interest in the Mum's Grapevine newsletter and refer friends and family. We then built a HTML email newsletter for Caroline, that looks and feels like the site which she can populate with content each week and send out to her subscribers! Behind the scenes there's a little ad management tool or two in place that monetise the whole idea for her.

Mum's Grapevine is front of mind at the moment as we've recently finished developing a new HTML email template. Anna K's design is clean, fresh and looks fantastic. We've taken that and ensured compatibility across Outlook(s), Apple Mail, gMail, Yahoo, Hotmail and even Lotus Notes.

The new HTML newsletter can be seen here.

So to sign off, congratulations to Carline for making a success of the last 12 months and we wish her and the team all the best for the next 12 months!

Mark

New site for Knowing & Film Victoria

2009-03-26T12:04:00.003+11:00

Today the new Nicholas Cage film Knowing makes its debut, the sci-fi thriller entirely filmed in Melbourne, Australia. Already getting great reviews (David - 3.5 and Margaret - 4) it's been likened to Donnie Darko and The Sixth Sense.

Working with Film Victoria we've made an addition to the Filmed In Melbourne website, with a new micro-site detailing some of the great location shots and information from the film. It's the second Nicholas Cage film to be shot in Melbourne (Ghost Rider previously) and it's excellent to see the town we love pulling more international attention.

So, love him or hate him, get out and support your city by seeing Knowing.

www.filmedinmelbourne.com.au/knowing

Mark

New website for Soho Projects and busy times

2009-02-16T16:28:00.004+11:00

We've been working with Jane from Sinclair design recently on the new site for Soho Projects.

"Soho Projects is the result of a collaboration between two brothers, Josh and Shay Nassi. Josh has over twenty years in the construction business, Project Managing an extraordinarily diverse range of large, medium and small scale projects. Shay brings to Soho Projects a degree in Technical Engineering, as well as two decades on building and construction sites - both in Australia and overseas."

We turned Jane's design into a fully funcitonal CMS driven site that allows the Soho team to update client lists, show off their excellent work through Flash image galleries and update copy, documents and images throughout.

In other news, we're in the middle of our busiest February ever, with multiple projects on the go. Watch this space for a bunch of new work coming soon for Cornwell, NAB, Special Olympics Victoria and many more!

Cheers
Mark

MySpace reskin

2009-01-16T14:51:00.004+11:00

Coming to the end of another week and January's flying by. As people get back into the swing of things Christmas is starting to feel like it was months ago already! It's a good time of year for us to take stock of the year that's gone and get prepped for another good one in 2009.

Just before Christmas we tackled the demon that is MySpace and had a great result for an Aussie band Zoophyte. Cam from the band designed the page and we waded through MySpace to apply his look and feel. We reckon it's come up really well, you can check it out here.

We've got lots on the go at the moment and will have some great new work up in February, have a great weekend all.

Mark

Cornwell Design : New website

2008-12-24T13:45:00.006+11:00

We've been working with the team at Cornwell for a couple of years now and it's been great. Beautiful imagery, great ideas and excellent design is par for the course.

From a web developers point of view we get the challenge of translating the vision from the Cornwell team into dynamic digital content. Our work has spanned small registration websites, digital ad campaigns, full service Flash websites and large content managed sites for international companies. We've worked with property developers, charity organisations and initiatives driven by the Committee for Melbourne to name a few.

So when it came time to build and develop Cornwell's own website, we were both excited and a little nervous about the prospect. Cornwell didn't fail to deliver, designing a site that is stunning and engaging all at once. Utilising our content management system (Efront Backstage) we took Cornwell's design and built one of our favourite sites to date.

www.cornwell.com.au

Built entirely in HTML/CSS, the site showcases some of Cornwell's best work through imagery and text. Including a projects list, blog, contact details and other content, the entire site is updateable via a normal web browser, allowing for different layout selection, document, image, video and text inclusion by the Cornwell team. A great way for us to finish the year.

We're looking forward to getting stuck into 2009 with some great projects on the horizon. Meanwhile, have an excellent Christmas and New Year.

Mark, David and Darren.

3 new websites for Builders, Musicians and Architects

2008-12-12T15:17:00.003+11:00

Coming into Christmas is always a busy time, though things are a little crazy at the moment. The launch of three more sites this week has kept us humming along here in Little Collins street.

Building and Beyond has been a great project to work on. Building and Beyond is run by Joe and Justin and for the last ten years has traded as Justin Moylan Building. Designed by Phil at The Candy Factory,the site runs on Efront Backstage (our CMS) and let's B&B updated projects, images, text and press articles.

Tin Alley String Quartet "...has rapidly achieved recognition as one of the most exciting young quartets, not only in their home of Australia but also on the world chamber music stage."

Having recently undergone a makeover courtesy of Marke, updating all their materials, press shots and their website, Efront developed the new site for Michelle, Lerida and Justin. Tin Alley are able to update images, create new pages, add text and documents and run a performance calendar for their upcoming shows.

Rachcoff Vella are a boutique architectural firm based in Melbourne. We've worked with Jane Sinclair to present a small, Flash based placeholder site that announces Rachcoff Vella to the world and is able to highlight some of their work. We're looking forward to developing their full site and ideas further in the new year!

That's it from us for now, have a great weekend everyone.

Mark

Three New Websites

2008-11-28T16:08:00.005+11:00

The end of another busy week, Christmas just around the corner and it looks like things aren't slowing down! We're happy to announce three new websites this week for three very different clients.

Fitzpatrick Woods work with "governments, multi-lateral agencies, industry, donor agencies, unions, non-government organisations – all on a wide range of themes and issues." It's been a pleasure working with Tim, Sarah and Carolyn on the launch of their new site. Interface design by Luke Gerner over at Marke, the new site is wholly updateable FWC can add/edit and delete copy, images, video and create pages on the fly. For a diverse and ever changing company, a flexible site is not only important but essential. We're looking forward to continuing our relationship and helping them reach more people.

Made Living - 'offer a full range of european designed kitchens and accessories ideal for you and your family'. Currently just a placeholder, Jane Sinclair has designed a look and feel that leaves us wanting more, keep an eye on this space for the full site soon!

Filmed In Melbourne - we've been fortunate enough to have worked for Film Victoria for a couple of years now and have honestly enjoyed every second. We've designed and developed this new site that showcases Melbourne as the premier film destination that it is. You can view an active Google map highlighting the areas throughout the city that films like Ghost Rider, Charlotte's Web and more have been filmed at. The site presents great shots of this city we love along with video and stacks of great information.

Creativity Australia

2008-11-11T15:26:00.004+11:00

Last night we attended the launch of Creativity Australia at the Sofitel in Melbourne.

It was a great night and we are proud to be a creative partner for the cause.

A highlight for me was seeing Dame Elisabeth Murdoch at the event. At a few months off 100, Dame Elisabeth is an amazing individual, supporting worthy programs like Creativity Australia.

We developed the website for the program in conjunction with Cornwell's design team and even managed to catch up with Amelia, Deanna and Giuliana from Cornwell for a celebratory school night beverage. The End. David

http://www.creativityaustralia.org.au

Websites Launched

2008-11-11T13:53:00.000+11:00

It's been a busy few weeks and we're really pleased with the work we've delivered.

Here are a few of our newest web design clients that have had their websites launched over the last week.

JF Capital Partners

Angela and Paul from JFCP have been great to work with on the redevelopment of their website. Proactive, responsive and know exactly what they want. JFCP is part of J.P. Morgan Asset Management which has a strict style guide. The site conforms to the style guide so it fits in with the J.P. Morgan group. This site uses our "Backstage" CMS to manage content and helps JFCP keep their clients up to date.

Camatic

If you want to talk about a home grown international success story, Camatic is a great example. Camatic design and manufacture commercial and venue seating around the world. Take a look through their project gallery to get an idea of the scale of the stadiums and venues they fit out, the images are fantastic. Managing the huge amount of content on this website is a breeze with our content management system driving the site admin.

lilli Apartments

This promises to be a spectacular development. We've helped with a simple web placeholder site which was designed by Cornwell. Take a look at the registration form and see if you notice anything - a clever little gem included by Wes from Cornwell.

A great team effort on these projects which had some very tight deadlines - but most importantly great results all round.

It's a beautiful day in Melbourne today - so don't forget to look out your window and take some of it in. fin.

David

Melbourne Cup Day

2008-11-03T14:01:00.010+11:00

The Melbourne Cup carnival is one of the biggest sporting events in Australia. Tomorrow the nation will again pause for the running of the worlds most famous 3200m horse race. It's a great time of year to be in Melbourne and Cup day is all about catching up with friends for a BBQ and to hopefully finding a winner or two. The Flemington track can expect 110,00 plus patrons, in what is a great party atmosphere. If you've never been to a Melbourne Cup do yourself a favour and get to one!

Interesting to note that those of us at work today are in the minority, with most Melburnians opting to take the Monday off and enjoy a 4 day weekend. We're here keeping things ticking over. Whatever you're up to have fun and enjoy your cup day.

For what it's worth here are our Melbourne Cup selections:
David - 18 Profound Beauty
Mark - 8 Mad Rush
Darren - 5 Nom Du Jeu (with chances to Master O'Reilly and C'est La Guerre)

Happy punting!
Darren

The Source Espresso

2008-10-24T16:55:00.004+11:00

Happy Friday everyone, awesome, big week and lotsa work on.

Nice to finish today with a live site for the coffee guru from Sydney, Russ & The Source Espresso. A Wordpress reskin - template build, the site offers Russ a chance to blog his travels, learnings and movements in the coffee-sphere (?).

The Source had some great imagery we were able to take and manipulate to get a site up that's functional, SEO friendly and (we think) looks great.

www.thesourceespresso.com

Avagreatweekend,

Mark

Reclaim St Kilda

2008-10-17T11:04:00.002+11:00

A few weeks back we met Sean O'Donohue. Sean's an endorsed candidate of CAPP, the Community Alliance of Port Phillip and is standing in the council elections for the City of Port Phillip.

Sean came to Efront looking for a website that would let him communicate directly with locals in his area and help to facilitate discussion. Over the last couple of weeks, we've worked with Adrian at Shopfront Design and reskinned a Wordpress blog to provide Sean with not only a website, but a functioning blog too. This kind of tool lets Sean invite discussion and provides a means of getting his message out there whilst leaving his comments and posts open for debate. We've also added a small form that allows visitors to leave their details, capturing this information in an online database that Sean has access to as needs be.

We're really happy with the outcome and wish Sean all the best!

www.reclaimstkilda.org.au

Happy Friday all,
Mark

Australia Cares Website

2008-10-03T08:41:00.007+10:00

Australia Cares is an independent national organisation dedicated to creating large-scale and sustainable positive social change.

The new Australia Cares website was just launched last week and we though we'd take the opportunity to do give a shout out.

Keep an eye on Australia Cares - they have some really exciting initiatives coming up and are involved in the Schools First project which was launched today.

Oh, and a big thank you to the team for the Krispy Kremes, I think we are still bouncing around from all that sugar...

http://www.australiacares.org.au

David

Schools First Website Launch

2008-10-03T08:19:00.011+10:00

Well this morning we've taken off the bubble wrap on our latest website. It's for Schools First which is about bringing together students, teachers, parents and community members to support each other and help improve student outcomes.

The joint initiative between NAB, the Australian Council for Educational Research and philanthropic groups Australia Cares and the Foundation for Young Australians will provide $5 million every year for an initial three years.

We've really enjoyed working with Nicola and Silvia from Edelman Australia. Always great to work with switched on people that are also a lot of fun - we've been impressed.

A few more things to get on to today - so I will leave you to it. Have a great weekend.

http://www.schoolsfirst.edu.au

David

New website for Holt & Hart

2008-09-26T12:29:00.008+10:00

It's great to finish the week with a new website and happy people. We've been working with Cornwell this week on a site for the Holt&Hart development in Sydney.

The brand and design is Cornwell's work, with Damian doing an excellent job. Stunning visuals that outline the developments key points are a focus and present everything a potential buyer needs.

Enough from me, enjoy the site and have a great weekend everyone.

www.holtandhart.com.au

iPhone Web Development

2008-09-05T09:51:00.005+10:00

We love the iPhone.

The best thing for web designers like us is the ability to have great looking web sites and web tools in your pocket.

We've developed a web application to give water/wind sport enthusiasts the ability to tap into wind readings from weather beacons around Australia.

If you're interested and have an iPhone, bookmark the link below on your phone and have wind readings anytime you like.

http://www.stkildakiteboarding.com/iphone/

Bring on summer!

David

WRAP Living - New Website

2008-08-27T17:28:00.006+10:00

Baracon have contributed to skylines the world over for a number of years now. A "...leading Australian company with a proud tradition of providing property development, construction, project management and property investment services."

Some of their previous projects have included Oasis Mission Beach in Queensland, Charlie in Richmond and now WRAP, in Southbank, Melbourne.

Efront have again had the pleasure of working with Cornwell Design, who have been the creative minds behind the WRAP brand. Working with Brett (Baracon) and Amelia and Ben (Cornwell) over the past month or two we're extremely proud of the result. Stunning imagery, combined with great floorplans and excellent content have been polished off with some clean transitions, adding to an excellent user experience.

Congratulations to all involved, get over and take a look if you haven't already - www.wrapliving.com.au.

Have a great week,
Mark

Website rebuild for The Academy

2008-08-27T16:49:00.008+10:00

We've been flat out and unfortunately our posts have decreased over the last few weeks. Why you ask? Well we're happy to announce one of the premium sites that have been chewing up our time of late...more in the next post ;)

The Australian National Academy of Music

"The Australian National Academy of Music (the Academy) is Australia’s premiere institution for training the country’s finest young classical musicians."

It was a real pleasure working for a premiere institution like The Academy and without a doubt their South Melbourne location is one of the more stunning offices I've visited. The Academy previously had a site built entirely in Flash that was no longer serving their needs. The brief was to create a site that could be content managed, improve search engine visibility and allow their audience access to information easily and without fuss.

We worked very hard with Melinda, Matt and the team at The Academy to create a site with intuitive and user-focused navigation that was search engine friendly and had the ability to be updated easily. Using the Efront CMS (content management system) the site allows event creation that links into a calendar for easy access throughout the site. Each page and area can be updated, including the banner images, home page content and standard content areas, covering images, text, bookings and dates.

All in all a great result and a success.

More to come....
Mark

iPhone & Wordpress, a powerful combo

2008-08-04T11:28:00.004+10:00

One of the most exciting things about the iPhone is the app store. Watching what other developers are doing in a commercial and non-commercial space is great. Leading companies like Salesforce have proprietary apps out there and on the flipside, great open source organizations like Wordpress have Wordpress for the iPhone.

Such a nice, standalone application can let Wordpress users jump online and update their blog/site ANYWHERE that they can get 3G or wifi coverage. We recently launched a site for Milke Performance Services that runs on the Wordpress platform. An application like this would let the Milke team live post STRAIGHT to their website from a show, performance....anywhere. Great excuse to get a new phone too ;)

Personally I think this type of mobile blogging (see Twitter/Plurk etc) is just the beginning. We're often reading stories about services like Twitter announcing breaking news, being the first one's on the scene with images, links, text etc. This type of information and fast access to updates is only made easier on a device that is accessible, easy to use and available to all.

We're currently working on some iPhone applications just to be across the development potentials and we're very excited about the possibilities. Watch this space and have a great week.

Mark

New site for the performance industry : MILKE

2008-07-30T11:48:00.003+10:00

It's a good feeling getting a new site live. Achievement, progress, ticking off something from that 'to do' list and the freedom to move to the next job with a slightly clearer head. This is all fine except when you really like working with a client, then it's all about "how do I get to do more with these guys" and "wonder what they're doing now" and "I miss them".

Well maybe not the last one, but we had a ball working on Milke with Laura and the team. Milke describe themselves as "...a Melbourne based company assisting creative people realise their ambitions, whether it’s producing a show, managing a project or managing a career." Milke has worked with Marke to develop and create their brand and Efront (that's us) to get their digital footprint (electronic handshake/bandwidth brand/electro imprint etc etc) out there.

Running on the Wordpress platform with a fully customsied template, the site is completely updateable and links in to a subscription system that let's Milke stay in touch with interested peeps via html email. We're happy with the outcome and we're pretty confident Laura and the gang are too.

Now.... *waiting for free tix to next big show*

Melbourne company Property 10 has a new website!

2008-07-15T13:43:00.006+10:00

"For many years Tim and Mark had been providing investment marketers with residential property on a wholesale level. They recognise the lack of service many end clients receive but more importantly, the poor value in pricing that end consumers face.

Acknowledging they have superior product and pricing to go direct to the market they embarked on a strategy to “cut out the middle man” and deliver a sound service to match. They embarked on delivering a complete property investment service that will manage an investment purchase from start to end including land and construction, taxation, finance, legal and property management. A true one stop shop that any consumer or partner could interface with."

Property 10 is the result of this work and partnership. It's been great working with Tim, Mark, Ange and the team. With design assistance from Bec Smith at Gamma Ray the site has come up swimmingly. Included in the site are some hand coded calculators and a newsletter subscription service along with nice clear and accessible content.

Congratulations to all involved and we know it'll be another great addition to the Property 10 arsenal.

Cheers
Mark

Efront and the EJ Whitten Legends Game

2008-07-04T09:20:00.009+10:00

From November 2007, Efront has worked alongside the team at Baker Smith Management to get the Legends Game website developed, built, tested and operating. The site is built on a custom content management system, allowing Baker Smith to add pages, video, images, copy and news feeds as they see fit. Along with all of this is an e-commerce component that allows for various online transactions as needed.

We were pretty chuffed to see our logo up on the big screen at the game and a little recognition in the footy record throughout was pretty sweet! The three fellas to your right are David, Adam and Darren...enjoying the hospitality at the Legends Dinner.

Efront was proud to have sponsored this landmark Melbourne event and is looking forward to being involved next year in the web design and development of the Legends Game!

Oh and for the record, the All Stars beat the Vics by two points ;)

Hopin your day is excellent,
Mark

Designer meets Developer

2008-06-30T08:58:00.005+10:00

We've recently been lucky enough to have started work with Jane Sinclair. Jane is an accomplished designer who had a hand in the formative days of Cornwell Design with her husband Steven.

Starting with Soho Projects (more on that front soon) we've been able to move on to a placeholder for Jane's site at - www.sincalir.com.au. I've said it before but it's great to work with people who are passionate about what they do and Jane is no exception. We're looking forward to a great ongoing relationship and outcomes in the future!

Have a great week,
Mark