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Hard Format

dave@designcreative.co.uk — 2008-08-11T17:18:09+01:00

It’s good to see hardformat.org up and running again. The pet project of one of my colleagues at Cocoa, Justin Amphlett and a mate Colin (BBC, EleventhVolume), it has suffered some server problems recently (not ours I hasten to add) but now seems solid.

quote:
“It seems like everybody’s talking about the end of physical music media. Who knows whether they’re right or not, but Hard Format is a little place we’ve set up to celebrate our love of brilliant music-related design. That means we’re going to focus on records, CDs, cassettes and their like. However, Hard Format isn’t intended to become a dusty museum devoted exclusively to past glories, though there’ll certainly be some of that, we also want to highlight the brilliant new design work being produced right now. In fact, we’re not setting ourselves up to supply a canon of classic design - this is a place where we record stuff we like, if you want yet another reproduction of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band there are enough ‘Greatest album covers of all time’ books out there already.

Oh and who knows, perhaps at some point in the future we may even need to set up a parallel site to celebrate brilliant virtual design…”

Poundbury Rocks

dave@designcreative.co.uk — 2008-08-11T11:11:51+01:00

Congratulations to the Maiden Castle Group and all involved in the Poundbury Rocks event this weekend. The whole event was very successful despite the inclemant weather, the British summer on form.

The operations appeared very smooth and professional, I hope it wasn’t too fraught backstage.

Thank-you for giving Cocoa the opportunity to be involved with this event, hopefully the first of many.

Sunrise Shutters & Blinds

dave@designcreative.co.uk — 2008-07-03T09:31:02+01:00

Another website published - Sunrise Shutters & Blinds.

Cocoa has undertaken the branding and styling for this new company. This has included logo works, website, innovative business cards and a full vehicle wrap (details and photos to follow soon).

latest website complete

dave@designcreative.co.uk — 2008-06-27T09:05:50+01:00

we have just published our latest site for harlequin house

Fine Foods from Dorset...

dave@designcreative.co.uk — 2008-06-11T10:44:37+01:00

‘Roberts Food Service’ incorporating ‘Fine Foods from Dorset’ is now live and can be seen here:

www.robertsfoodservice.co.uk
www.finefoodsfromdorset.co.uk

Out of Studio

dave@designcreative.co.uk — 2008-06-02T08:19:29+01:00

Just to let you all know that Dave will be out of the studio, from Wednesday 18th June through to Saturday 21st June.

I will pick up my voicemail on +44 (0) 1305 340034, and will try my best to react to any pressing matters.

Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

Open 4 Business now live

dave@designcreative.co.uk — 2008-05-22T20:12:54+01:00

The Open 4 Business site went live today.
-------------------------------------------
"MAXIMISING THE 2012 OPPORTUNITY"
Open 4 Business is a series of events where local businesses in South and West Dorset can access information, support and networking opportunities through a range of partners, organisations and sponsors."
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The site currently has fairly minimal content, and a lot of the features are 'hidden' due to the fact that information about the events is not yet available.

The site is fully CMS (Content Management System), written in PHP and based on a MySql database, allowing the administrators to update and add content to it.

This particular site also features an 'Events' engine. This allows events, event venues and event categories (themes in this case) to be added to the database. The site will then show them graphically in a calendar, or by event date, event venue or event category on the fly as the visitor to the site asks to see them.

Cocoa spotted in Dive Magazine..

dave@designcreative.co.uk — 2008-05-15T09:40:33+01:00

The photography was commissioned for the new HUV brochure, but was incidentally picked up by the internationally distributed 'Dive' magazine for this competition feature.

Out of studio...

dave@designcreative.co.uk — 2008-04-13T15:34:18+01:00

Just to let everyone know,

Justin will be out of the studio from Friday 11th April to Wednesday 23rd April.

Dave will be away from the studio from Friday 25th April to Monday 28th April.

If it's an urgent matter he can still be reached via his mobile:
07973 326 153 - and he will still be picking up his voicemail.

Latest site...

dave@designcreative.co.uk — 2008-04-10T12:35:21+01:00

Just finished our latest website.
www.aandsjamesflooring.co.uk

This is an HTML brochure site utilsing some PHP for the dynamic forms and picture galleries.

Open4Business...

dave@designcreative.co.uk — 2008-03-28T16:40:59+00:00

Cocoa Media in conjuction with Poundbury Systems Limited is pleased to be providing sponsorship to the Weymouth & Portland Open4Business event this year in the shape of a new website.

The site is planned to be dynamic and updatable, with a live events calendar keeping organisers and attendees up to date with all the happenings over the event.

Poundbury Rocks...

dave@designcreative.co.uk — 2008-03-28T16:28:01+00:00

Cocoa Media is happy to be providing sponsorship in the form of graphics and website to the Maiden Castle Group, for their upcoming rock concert taking place in the centre of Prince Charles's model village in Dorset.

The concert aims to raise money for to go towards activities and organisations working with youth in the local area.

The site can be viewed at: www.poundburyrocks.co.uk

Up Music Magazine.. new format

dave@designcreative.co.uk — 2008-03-13T10:02:12+00:00

One of our talented team of designers has a side project called 'Up Music Magazine' which lives on the web but is based in the smoke. He has just completely re-vamped the look and feel of the mag as well as re-authored all of the framework the site runs on.

upmusicmagazine.com

Quote:
"UP Music Magazine is the first fully interactive new music and arts magazine on the web combining pictures, music, articles, videos, games, live videos and interviews.

It’s free to read and aims to bring a voice to the readers! With feedback on bands and reviews encouraged!!

We are starting a revolution; this hasn’t been done before, so there are no rules !"

Demos, eps, albums, reviews, pictures, comments and anything else you can think of are wanted. Why not email us? hello@upmagazine.co.uk or post your demos to us at

UP MAGAZINE
267 The Broadway
LONDON
SW19 1SD

exciting and new...

dave@designcreative.co.uk — 2008-02-20T21:09:38+00:00

In an exciting move the digital design team from Creative Solutions is now known collectively as cocoa media.

The team brings a massive and varied amount of skills to the mix, just some of which include digital illustration, 3D design and animation, design for web, design for print and even project management.

We are all looking forward to working with our existing clients in this new format, and hopefully bringing a few new ones into the cocoa family

cocoa artwork on BBC Online

dave@designcreative.co.uk — 2008-02-20T20:56:55+00:00

Some cocoa design can now be seen on the bbc.co.uk website, albeit in a very small way.

One of our clients Portland Gas plc, is planning a multi-million pound gas pipeline and gas storage facility on Portland in Dorset. We are very pleased to have produced a complete corporate identity for the company, as well as their planning and public consultancy brochures.

The pipeline map on the site was commissioned for purpose.

http://www.portland-gas.com/