posted by Mladjan

This hits the nail on the head!

posted by Mark

We’ve been asked to be part of the panel of judges over at CSS Awards for 2010. It’s a real honour to be a part of an awesome panel of judges and great opportunity to keep up to date with what’s hot on the web and we are thrilled to be a part of it.

The Css Awards was born out of the idea to give artists and designers a way to showcase their work, be evaluated by top specialists and have the possibility to win some cool awards. It’s basically a gallery of the most prestigious websites in the world created using CSS. The panel of judges literally span the entire globe, have a look here for 2010 jury list.

Websites are selected for the Site of the Day and Site of the Month using a strict valuation system. Winners of the awards receive cash prizes, hardware, and most importantly, high-level exposure of their work through a vast network of blogs, collaborators, directories and international forums related to web design and creativity.

So go on, what are you waiting for? If your think your site rocks, submit it for evaluation!

posted by Mark

We've just launched the new website for Roya International. Just as their slogan "Total Hospitality Solutions" says, it's a leading specialist hospitality consultancy firm offering expertise to the hospitality, leisure, tourism and real estate industries.

While Lighthouse developed their brand and printed collateral we had free rein on the website with an arsenal of great images to work with. We’re particularly happy with the end result as its very much in line with the less is more style we enjoy exploring.

Check it out: www.royainternational.com

posted by Mark

Woopie-do, another website by Blue Beetle has just gone live. It’s for a company called PeopleFirst, a human recourses company based in Dubai.

PeopleFirst is an HR Consulting practice which works in partnership with clients to help unlock value and realise strategic goals through effective people policies and processes.

They’ve got an impressive client list all singing their praises (see the testimonials on the website) so PeopleFirst obviously know what they are doing. Check them out...

posted by Mark

Need some ideas for Xmas presies? Like the image of the cows on our contact page?

If the answer to either for these questions is yes, you got to check out this link. Our good friend Doug Lapsley has started selling his work on eBay. He’s got some fantastic shots for sale and as a final run up to Christmas he's reduced the price on all prints to £15 including free worldwide shipping!

stores.shop.ebay.co.uk/Doug-Lapsley-Landscape-photography

If you like what you see check our his website: www.frozen-light.co.uk 

Oh and BTW, if you're into photography, check out the kit he uses and try not to drool all over your keyboard!

posted by Mark

We've just launched another website that we are very proud of. Yes it's another real estate website but not just any real estate website. LIH Group needed a website that would complement their internal set up and asked us to develop a full website and listing content management system (CMS).  As a result we build a real estate module into the BB CMS from the ground up.

The website has some very cool features like Google Maps integration and other property related functionality not yet implemented. This is version 1.0, watch this space for more to come!

posted by Mark

Not that we're big on bigging ourselves up but getting a mention on Smashing Magazine is pretty cool, so we're gonna give it a mention. They posted a blog last Thursday with the title of "69 Sexy Portfolio Designs To Inspire You" and our site is amongst the list. As a result we got over 2000 hits on our site directly from this article!

Besides the fact that we got a mention (did I mention that already?) the blog is a great inspiration showcasing some very cool websites. I have not gone through the whole list yet but I think we’re the only web design company from Dubai mentioned.

Anyway, a big kiss and thank you to Smashing Magazine for the nod :-)

Update: Here's another couple collections we're been listed in.

spyrestudios.com/awesome-submissions-css-awards/
www.instantshift.com/70-creative-and-inspirational-website-designs/

posted by Mark

We’ve just launched a temporary website for a new web shop that will be launching in the not too distant future. The site will allow you to customize and order classic and contemporary Arabic sandals and have them delivered right to your door. This temporary website is pretty funky though, it’s our first attempt at integrating Facebook.

Basically if you register your interest you get a 10% discount and once you’ve done that you’re enticed to share the website link on your Facebook account for an additional 10% discount. Simply by clicking on the Facebook link you’re presented with a call to action which when sent will appear on your Facebook wall.

Check it out!

posted by Mark

The lovely people over at www.thecssawards.com awarded our website "Site of the Day" last Thursday (05/11/2009). This is great news because these awards are "given to the best CSS websites in the world from the top designers, agencies and bloggers working today", so we're very happy to be included in this prestigious list.

If you have not checked out the site yet, you must. The websites listed there are a big inspiration for everything that is great about web design. Each website is rated by an international panel of judges on 4 main criteria (design, creativity, usability and content).

Here you can see how we did:

• Design – 6.75
• Creativity – 7.75
• Usability – 6.88
• Content – 6.5

Overall we scored 6.98 so not bad but plenty of room for improvement. We'll be heading back to the drawing board to see if we can knock this up a bit further.

posted by Mark

Stefan Sagmeister has got it right; can you imagine taking a year sabbatical every seven years? His line of work lends itself very well to this sort of break; I don’t think our clients would appreciate it if we said “don’t bother us for the next twelve months please”. It makes a lot of sense what he does though and the work that comes out of it is phenomenal – in his case anyway.

If you're into branding, check out the work he did for Casa Da Musica. Very cool indeed and breaking away from the belief that everything has to be the same, “sameness is overrated” as he says.