We here at Fluid Creative/Fluid Digital are pleased to announce that we have just launched a new website design for the innovative “Tweet Thing” tool.

We also developed the Twitter application that integrates the Twitter API that turns everyday tweets into a focal point for your seminar or event.

Tweet Thing is a valuable tool for event and venue managers with the responsibility for conferences, seminars and awards where the display of event-related tweets would add to the experience of attendees.

The ability to easily brand the platform also provides highly visible and potentially lucrative sponsorship opportunities for all kinds of events.

Location: Bury, Greater Manchester
Salary: £competitive, negotiable on experience
Contract: Permanent
Hours: Fulltime
Start Date: ASAP

Fluid Creative is a full service design agency operating from offices based in the centre of Bury, Greater Manchester.

The role will involve working within a team and developing php websites and applications, which have been designed by our in-house designers. The role will cover a wide variety of projects and will be an exciting opportunity for you to work within a young, growing company and help develop the digital team within Fluid Creative.

It is essential that you are self-motivated and you must be able to manage your own projects and meet deadlines.

Our Candidate

We are looking for a self-motivated web developer. Strong PHP development skills are essential with at least 1-2 years commercial development experience working with PHP and MySQL databases. Experience of working within an MVC framework such as Codeigniter would be beneficial.

A strong understanding of HTML, CSS, Javascript, jQuery, AJAX and cross browser development is essential as is a keen knowledge of industry design applications such as Photoshop and Fireworks.

Additional knowledge of SEO will be an advantage. The best candidates will be able to demonstrate their ability to code with this in mind and be able to provide examples of their work through either an online portfolio or live URLs.

Experience of WordPress and other CMS applications is useful but not essential as you will mainly be working with our own custom CMS, and ideally you will have a working knowledge of Linux, Apache, Firewalls and security.

Applying for the job

Please send your CV, a covering letter and URL’s of your work to adam@fluid-creative.com

STRICTLY NO AGENCIES

We are pleased to announce that in association with Sprint Communications we’ve set up a special deal to offer our customers and friends alike something to help you and your business that’s a little different from our normal offering.

You can now get your hands on the the much talked about Apple iPads for just £75! These are not only great for having the internet to hand wherever you may be, or, for taking to a meeting and dazzling your prospective client with a snazzy presentation, they are also great as word processors, presentation designers and of course, the odd game or two!

So how is this possible? Simple… All you have to do is sign up for a 24 month contract. Just like any mobile phone really. For this you’ll get 15gb of data (more than any facebook fiend will ever need) and a brand spanking new iPad!

The contract is cheaper than most mobile contracts too at just £34.60 + VAT and you will receive your iPad ready and raring to go in all it’s HD glory!!

Contact our Bury office for more details on 0161 764 6464 or email ipad@fluid-creative.com

Terms and Conditions apply. Business customers only.

Crystal Iced offer unique bespoke crystal customization, where clients mail in their mobile phones, iPods, laptops, trainers or any other accessories and they are customized using Swarovski crystals.

We where approached by them to create a logo for an offshoot company called Candy Pop which design hand made jewellery in a similar fashion.

They wanted something classic with a modern twist, which would best represent the handcrafted jewellery they produce. The logo had to be versatile in order to transfer onto various marketing material such as gift boxes and bags, without losing any of its impact.

SAScon exists to provide a UK platform for the finest thinkers in Search, Analytics and Social Media to share where they are leading, not where they are following.

SAScon came to us for a modern logo that encompassed the cutting edge nature of their conferences. The logo was to be primarily text focused with simple graphical elements which could be representative of the brand. The finished logo was completed and the client was very happy with the result.

Choosing the right logo for your company can be a daunting process, so we wrote this post to help you quickly decide which logo package is the right for you.

Our logo packages range from £99 – £349 and are dependent on how many logo ideas you’d like us to come up with, how much creative input you’d like from us and if you require your stationery to be designed at the same time. Our logo package prices can be found here.

Below is an example from our Premium Corporate Identity package.

Our packages range from 1 to 4 logo ideas. If you know exactly what you want or have a hand-drawn logo, which you’d like us to create in a digital format then the Economy Logo Design package is for you. If you’re not sure what you want then we can take care of the whole process from concept and research through to visualisation. The above is an example of 4 logo variations.

Once you’re happy with the logos we’ve sent over its then time for fine tuning. This is one example of logo fine tuning. For this logo we gave the client 4 colour variations, for other clients we’ve tweaked the entire typeface to make it thicker or more unique.

Once you are happy with the final logo it’s time to create your stationery which includes the design of your Letterheads, Compliments Slips and Business Cards in our Premium Corporate Identity package. Stationery design can be added to any of the other packages for an additional charge of £99.

Now it’s time to add your logo to every piece of marketing material you send out to convey solidarity and professionalism. The more people see you’re logo the more they’ll remember you!

Alongside graphic design, printing and branding, we are also heavily involved in website design and development. Recently, one of our clients asked us to develop a website that would include property listings and information from their own systems and Rightmove property feed. The company was ‘Rent The House’, a specialist set of letting agents in Lancashire who have offices in both Accrington and Oswaldtwistle.

The site has a number of specific features:

Property Rental Search:

One part of the website we were asked to create was a rental search so that potential customers could view properties quickly. We also integrated Google Maps to give the user that extra bit of functionality and information.

A Screen Shot of properties to Let on Rent The House

Investment Property Search

In a similar respect to the rental property search, we created an investment property search so that the owners could add investment properties to their online portfolio through the use of an easy to use CMS.

Landlord Property Management

Another stipulation of the brief was to include statement services so that property landlords could manage their own statements through an easy to use portal.

Landlord Property Portal

Rightmove Integration

One of the more critical parts of the website’s functionality lies in its ability to use feeds that Rent The House creates as part of its daily update to the property website Rightmove. We created a data handling facility that allowed the website to accept a data feed from their in house software. This allowed Rent The House to update their website at the same time they provided their properties in just a single action, thus saving them time and money.

SEO

At Fluid Creative, we know the importance of well constructed website and with this in mind we heavily optimised the website to give it the best possible chance of succeeding in the ever competitive search engines. Throughout the build process our SEO techies were constantly involved with the developers to make sure that SEO remained at the heart of project. Together with ongoing optimisation and marketing, the number of visitors and leads from the website has risen dramatically to help Rent The House stay ahead of the pack.

Many of our customers are finding that calendars are a great way of keeping their business name at the forefront of their customer’s minds – all year round.

Use them at networking events, as ‘thank yous’ for ordering, or as part of a direct mail campaign – they’re a great, useful giveaway. Send your customers a calendar and they’ll use it all year – and be reminded of you – not your competitor.

Personalise your calendars with useful contact information, your website address and your logo to point people in your direction, and enforce your brand.

If you’d like a free calendar just send us an email and we’ll pop one in the post for you today.

On Monday morning we shut our Bury store due to a fire on Bolton Street, which cut our electrical supply.  After sitting in the dark for over an hour Adam kindly sent me home with some work to do. Before I left I took some photos on my phone. Not your usual start to the day!

Did you know, in a poll taken back in 2008 two thirds of people said they’d rather not receive an electronic emailed “e-card” compared to a traditional printed one as they thought they were impersonal. Traditional printed Christmas cards show that you care and are a great way to say thank you for business passed this year.

Below is a small range from our Christmas sample pack, which also includes Calendars, Mobile Phone Holders and more…

Background

Eco-explore is a provider of high quality guided tours of the wildlife and ecosystems of south Wales. The company offers unique opportunities to take part in hands on ecological research and encounter wildlife in a variety of beautiful locations.  The company caters for individuals, schools and corporate groups keen to explore the wide variety of eco-systems the southern Wales region supports, and find out more about the challenges they face.  Eco-explore was launched in July 2010 by Dr Alex Pollard, who came to Fluid Creative with a brief for a full company brand, website and marketing collateral to ensure it reached its target market with exactly the right messages.

The Fluid Creative Solution

Adam Hindle, a Fluid Creative director, says: “eco-explore needed a brand that communicated creatively its innovative approach to helping people engage with the natural world. Our response was a logo and branding that encapsulated this perfectly, fusing green, environmental themes with the modern.

“We translated the brand into a message perfect website (www.eco-explore.co.uk), that’s bright, user friendly and enjoyable to visit. The site allows Alex and her team to easily manage and update the tour page, ensuring bookings are consistently high.

“Finally, we continued this fresh approach with the marketing collateral, with a cleverly designed brochure, letterheads and business cards, which allow eco-explore to reinforce its brand with clients at every stage of the business journey.”

The Client’s Verdict

Alex says: “eco-explore is going from strength-to-strength and a large part of our success has been having the tools to grow the business – an excellent website and brand that work hard for the company.

“Fluid Creative’s approach met our needs precisely and every element was bang on message, ensuring our clients are assured of the quality of our tours. Our experience of Fluid Creative was purely positive; they understood what we wanted to achieve and our business objectives. I can’t speak highly enough of the service provided by Adam and his team. I’d have no hesitation in recommending them to other organisations, in fact I already have.”

Breeze Accounting was a very exciting job for me, which gave me the opportunity to test my typography skills. The concept behind the logo was that of making accounting a breeze. The stationery followed on from this with a unique look and style, which was what was needed for this forward thinking company.

If you’ve ever needed something a bit different than the usual A5 Leaflet to grab attention and boost sales, then cut-outs may be for you. Cut-outs offer you the opportunity to use the media in a variety of ways to emphasise your message. If you’re a painter then a simple cut-out flyer in the shape of a paint bucket will quickly tell your perspective customers who you are and what you do. Here are some of the latest cut-outs we’ve done for our clients.

Higher Access are nationwide suppliers of Spider Lifts and specialist hire for customers working at height. Their brief was to update their existing stationery and create a sales brochure that would compete against their biggest rivals.

The result was a bespoke metallic brochure printed with custom illustrations, which received great appraisal from new customers and existing customers alike.

Decor:Fusion provides quality interior solutions across the UK commercial market. Formerly known as MNB Furniture, following recent growth through a series of strategic acquisitions and mergers, Decor:Fusion came to us with the vision of creating a new brand.

Following the initial meeting, Tom took to work in creating a new identity for the company, which would uniquely offer four specialist services under one identity. The result was a clean, memorable logo, which followed through seamlessly to a new website design, business stationery and a shiny spot UV presentation folder.

Hooties Tex Mex Bar & Grill was Jason’s favourite job of the week. The brief was to produce a Menu and Promotional Flyer to celebrate the opening of the new Tex Mex Bar and Grill based in Colne. The result was a very tasty looking menu!

This weeks set of portfolio shots includes the design of a new Logo and Visual Identity for Ramsbottom Metalwork. The brief was to create a simple, memorable icon, which could be used on Vehicle Livery, Clothing, Business Stationery and a Promotional Flyer.

Jason then went on to create a clean visual style for the Letterheads, Business Cards and Flyer with the simple imagery of metal work to promote this well established business.

Our new blog has been created so that we can show the world some of the creative ideas and finished products that we create for a wide range of our clients. Fluid Creative and its sister company Fluid Digital are based in Bury and Blackburn and aim to help each client achieve their individual goals with their unique twist on the traditional design agency.

We create designs and ideas for the following categories

• Branding
• Full Colour Printing
• Corporate Identity
• Online Marketing Campaigns
• Marketing
• Website Design
• Web Applications

We look forward to reading your comments and hope to hear from you soon.