For all these years, our beautiful designs have been taken by our technical team and transposed into a language that web browsers can interpret in order to render these amazing designs to our users across all the different browsers and platforms.

And we’ve thoroughly enjoyed doing this. We’ve loved it – we still do. It’s what makes us all tick. Delivering these beautiful designs.

But the thing that has made us happiest recently is Microsoft’s objective of ridding the world of IE6. Hallelujah. Praise be to the browser god. Thank the Lord!

For so long this toad of a browser – this software abomination lurking around like a bad smell – has blighted our studio. It has put boundaries on our designers, limitations on our technical team, red faces on our PMs and testers. It has single-handedly put stress into our days and in some cases fragmented relationships in our teams. Screw you IE6!

But no more! Never again will we need to use the phrases ‘IE6 workaround’, ‘IE6 hack’, ‘graceful degrading in IE6′, ‘lack of support for PNG alpha-transparency’. We can go back to concentrating on our designs and writing proper HTML and CSS without that nagging thought in the back of our minds.

You’re history IE6. History!

Crossrail is a pioneering transport programme that will bring huge benefits to the people who live in London and South East England. Young Crossrail have launched an educational campaign aimed at schools affected by the Crossrail works. It is mainly promoting the theme of lorry traffic safety and construction site safety as traffic will increase and more construction sites will emerge as the work progresses. The aim is to make kids aware of these changes, as well as teaching them about the history of London transport.

Yet more fun, interactive games aimed at kids – we love this!

Screenshots taken from the game:

and therefore definitely couldn’t spell !!

We were kindly invited by our friends at The Times with whom we worked very closely to develop the www.timesspellingbee.co.uk website which proved to be a vital window to the world in promoting the whole event going forward. We even managed to be nominated for a Webby !!

They say the best ideas are the simplest and without doubt a National Spelling competition for schools seems obvious, but never before has an initiative been undertaken of this nature in the UK. Hats off to The Times and especially to the Editor James Harding who has been the driving force behind the realisation of this competition, although in his speech he did credit his girlfriend Kate with having come up with the idea !!

So he’s a gentlemen as well as a scholar !! Top marks James…

Congratulations to everybody who competed in both the heats and the final with the winners being St Martin’s School in Middlesex who have already made an appearance on BBC Breakfast this morning !!

Life will never be the same again……..

www.timesspellingbee.co.uk

Cockpit Arts is the UK’s only creative business incubator for designer-makers. Renowned for being a ‘hotbed of creative talent’ their studios are brimming with cutting edge fashion, jewellery and interior products.

As a registered charity they exist solely to nurture creative talent, from first beginnings through to international success. They house 165 designer-makers at their incubators in London all benefiting from affordable studio space, inclusive professional development support, one-to-one business mentoring and public selling opportunities.

Cockpit Arts is launching ‘Maker Difference’ a new campaign to raise awareness of, and encourage support for talented designer-makers.

The campaign comes to life on 12-14 June 2009 and 19-21 June 2009 when Cockpit Arts opens the doors to its renowned London studios, inviting the public inside. At these free summer ‘Open Studios’ events you can meet designers and see new trends in the making.

2008 saw us deliver some great projects. Knoll International and The Times Spelling Bee were highlights for us. We grew the Design and Technology teams and have got some really great people bringing with them their very own piece of the digital jigsaw.

By the looks of things we’ve got an equally great year coming up too, with several top projects on the go at the moment for clients old and new. It’s all very exciting.

Says Dave McDougall, Creative Director at I-D Media, “the design and development challenge for us is to create highly playable games that draw on the principles of Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training™ series for the DS platform and that are deliverable in a browser”. 

Both challenging and fun, the games provide a quick hit for puzzle enthusiasts and with prizes to win, and leader boards to raise the stakes, who can blame them? 

Try them at www.timesonline.co.uk/surpriseyourself

Get more details about the project here