We’ve just finished a new identity for UK based photographer Ben Camp.

The logo needed to be clean and simple and also incorporate a meaningful symbol, therefore we took the letters ‘B’ and ‘C’ and created a stylised camera lens.

Look out for Ben’s website launching soon, of course, being developed by Ploc Media :)

Therefore the design had to match the content. We came up with a simple and clean layout that didn’t scream “teenage boys” and instead appealed to anybody who visited the site, gamer or not.

The site is based on Wordpress (a popular blogging platform), and had to integrate with all the existing content as well as include features like user login, photo galleries and a games system filter.

Visit the site now at www.pushingplay.com, and if you’re into games give it a bookmark - there is regular content from a refreshing perspective.

Some of the sites extra features included a streaming MP3 player, an easy to manage calendar, and newsletter subscription. We had to keep the style of the site very elegant, much like the style of Robert’s playing, and what is more stylish than black and gold?

This is what Robert had to say about the project:

“I would also like to thank the fantastic team at Ploc Media for creating this site.  They are absolute professionals.  Their communication was prompt and easy to understand, and I remain very impressed with their work ethic and diligence to the project.  I would recommend them without reservation.  They are based in England (a long way away from the USA), but don’t let their proximity worry you.  They are only an email away.”

You can visit Robert’s site at www.roberthenry.org

UPDATE: Despite only being online for a day, roberthenry.org has already been featured on many design inspiration sites, including the popular FaveUp gallery.

“Black and dark websites, when utilized properly, can have stunning outcomes. Often the dark background is mixed with subtle glows and gradients to produce even more brilliant results. It seems that a new trend for this type of style is quickly expanding into mainstream web design. From Corporate sites, to Web design firms, right across to personal Portfolios this trend is becoming more and more apparent.

What is showcased here is a collection of dark and black websites that have used this trend in some way or another. The collection varies across all types and styles of web design. They are hand picked to showcase the huge variety of stunning dark websites that hopefully will inspire you in your own work.”

It is always nice to get featured in stuff like this, we never set out to be part of any design trend but it is good to get recognised along side some beautiful sites.

We’ve been described as having “Excellent contrast between the dark and very vibrant blue”

Thanks guys!

We’ve got a large number of projects on the go at the moment, and can’t wait until some of them get finished up so we can show you guys.

Our website is still getting lots of recognition after being launched months ago, being featured in more galleries, and also making it onto Dzine Blogs ‘27 Dark Website Designs‘ which showcases “27 examples of beautiful dark website designs for web design inspiration”. So thanks guys!

Life in the office is good (when we get some summer weather!), we’ve been listening to The Subways latest album, which we’re all lovin’.

We’ve also taken far to many trips into town to have a ‘Mi-shake‘, those things are addictive!

With the soon to be released new X-files movie, we’ve all gone a bit X-files mad. After catching the odd episode on TV back when it first came out (1993?!), we never really gave it that much thought. But after getting the whole 9 seasons we’re starting to see why it was so popular! Why wouldn’t it be? IGN has written 10 great things about the X-files. Bring on the nightmares!

That is it! I’ve kept it short. Just letting you guys know we’re still around. Expect some more informative articles in the future.

We finally got our new business cards! Printed on 300 GSM Silk Card, with a nice Spot UV on the back. Lovely.

So lovely in fact, they’ve even made it onto Faveup, a site that showcases inspirational design. Wehey!

“MediaCamp Bucks ‘08 - An un-conference digging on advertising, blogging, web-dev, branding, new and social media”

We attended a couple of talks in the morning and learned some very helpful information regarding social media and its importance in the future on of the web, as well as meeting some very interesting characters!

Social Media is fast becoming a very important way of marketing your business online, and we’re looking in to all the possibilities here to help our clients keep up with the ever-changing online world.

So what exactly is Social Media?

Trying to put it simply, social media uses emerging technology so that people can share content, personal opinions, perspectives and insights over the Internet.

Some of these ’social media’ websites are among the most popular in the world right now, these include.

Social Networking

Websites that allows you to create a personal profile and then chat, discuss and share information with others such as friends and family. The leaders in this area are MySpace, Bebo and Facebook.

Wikis

Wikis are websites that allow you to create, edit and share information about a subject or topic. A great example of this is Wikipedia, no doubt the most famous of the Wikis.

Video Sharing

Video-sharing sites like YouTube allow you to upload your own videos to the Internet and share them with anyone and everyone. Everything from personal opinions to viral marketing videos can be found here.

Photo Sharing

Photo-sharing websites like Flickr allow users to upload pictures and images to a personal account which can then be viewed by web users the world over.

News Aggregation

News aggregators provide a list of the latest news stories published by users from a range of different websites. Digg, for instance, is one of the web’s largest news aggregators with one of the most dedicated communities.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking sites allow users to publicly bookmark web pages they find valuable in order to share them with other internet users. Delicious is a popular example.

Presence Applications

Websites that allow you to post micro blog-like posts to announce what you are currently doing. Twitter is a good example of a presence app.

Social media is evolving so fast, the examples above are just some of the more popular sites at the moment, but many of these formats have been used on smaller more specialist sites sticking to one genre, a video sharing site just for website design for example, or a news aggregator just for sport. Not only is social media evolving, it is breeding too, creating hybrids of any of the above mentioned applications.

So where can you find Ploc in all of this? Well here we go:

Ploc on Myspace
Ploc on Facebook
Ploc on Twitter
Ploc on Flickr

If you’re interested in attending a similar event, there is a MediaCamp London ‘08 on the 5th of July, maybe we’ll see you there.

We’ve created a lovely batch of 15 stickers using Moo.com.

We will now proceed to stick them on everything in the office until we get told off. Yay!

Take a look: