The web design and corporate branding teams at Pixel8 in Manchester have launched a new brand and a new website for a UK business locations portal.

locations4business provides comprehensive and comparable information on all potential business locations in the UK. It’s a one-stop-shop for companies within and outside the UK looking to establish new business operations.

The website helps existing companies, start ups and investors to find the best locations for their organisation and provides detailed information required to make an initial evaluation.

Pixel8 created the brand identity, a new logo design, the website design and web development of a CMS system and an integrated database.

The new website be found at www.locations4business.com

The Pixel8 design and marketing agency in Manchester is proud to announce the appointment of Alan Woods to the new position of Creative Director.

Al provides a real boost to Pixel8’s management team and will be fundamental to business growth.  The new position has been created to ensure that Pixel8 maintains its high quality standards as the agency continues to expand.

Al spent 10 years as studio manager at Manchester United Merchandising Ltd, overseeing a wide variety of projects ranging from product range design, right through to events and store concepts.

Most notably was his work researching and designing the style guide documents that were used to direct over 50 licensees with their creation of products spanning over 150 categories. His work creating and art directing the Manchester United Premier Cup events, the largest under 15 football tournament in the world, showed his ability to create a strong visual style and oversee its use throughout the tournament on various products, event signage, website design and event launch video, meant Pixel8 knew he was the right person for the Creative Director role.

Pixel8 already has over tens years expertise creating corporate branding, logo design, packaging design and web design projects for sports related clients including Manchester United and Manchester Sport and Leisure Trust.

Nigel Daws Joint Managing Director of Pixel8 said, “Al brings a wealth of experience, further cementing our credibility within the sport sector”.

Having established the logo design for the Starters Orders café at Sportscity in Manchester, the next step was for our graphic design team was to create the look and feel for the new canteen area, which is situated in the National Squash Centre in Manchester. This was visualised at the proposal stage as an illustration.

Once this was approved, our first task was printing out a selection of deep red swatches, so that decorators could colour match for the paint for the walls, to tie in with the brand identity.

After this was completed, work began with the Pixel8 design team creating artwork for a larger Starters Orders logo. The logo was digitally printed in colour directly onto a 10mm Foamcor panel, measuring 700mm wide by 430mm high. It was then fitted to the wall using 20mm stand off fixings.

As with any canteen, an essential requirement is menu panels! Our graphic design team were supplied with items to be featured on double-sided panels. One side with a regular menu for non-event days, and the reverse side was a meal deal menu for Manchester City match days.

There are 5 menu panels altogether, all designed to be in keeping with the Starters Orders brand identity – using elements like the star, stripes and fonts. Each panel measured 700mm wide by 920mm high, digitally printed full colour onto 10mm black Foamcor panels, complete with holes and hooks for attaching to the wall. This made it easy for staff members to turn the menu over for the relevant days.

The canteen is now almost complete. Furnishings are in place and we have just been asked to create artwork to ‘brand up’ the tabletops.

To see more of Pixel8’s design and branding work for the Starters Orders café including our graphic designs for the café interior, embroidery designs for uniforms, printed logo cups and confectionary bags, please visit our Starters Orders design portfolio.

As part of our ongoing web support services for our client, the Expert Patients Programme, our web design and online marketing teams provided them with access to our easy-to-use email marketing system.

First, we designed and developed an HTML email template for their Self Management Division and integrated it into the content management system (CMS) of our email broadcasting system.

After an initial email marketing training session with the client, they were able to insert the text into the email campaign using the content management system which features a simple to use WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor with the ability to edit text and images, insert banners and links to their website or to other organisations such as the NHS.

When the email content had been added, it was a simple case of uploading the mailing list as a CSV file and using our email broadcasting system to send the email out to members of the Expert Patients Programme and the Self Management Division associates.

Once the email campaign had been broadcast, the client used our live email reporting system to browse through analytics and statistics including the number of times the email had been opened, which links had been clicked on and which email addresses caused a bounce back.

Pixel8 recently provided website redesign and web development services for the Expert Patients Programme website, to find out more please click here.

For more information visit our web design or our email marketing portfolio pages, or call the Pixel8 design and marketing agency in Manchester on 0161 228 6489, 0845 230 1336 or contact us today by e-mail

Several graphic design agencies in Manchester have very good web design skills, but few have in-house expertise in web development and web server technical support.

This was the case with the website for the Expert Patients Programme. Our web design and web development teams took the existing web design and developed it into a fully functional website with an easy to use content management system (CMS), which allows the client to update the website themselves.

The new web design is now hosted on a Linux server and we provide routine maintenance including installing patches to the CMS system, Linux server software updates and patches and website traffic reporting.

For more information about Pixel8’s web development and web server support services, please call us in Manchester on 0161 228 6489, 0845 230 1336 or contact us by e-mail

In addition to providing web design services for the Tullis Russell Group, we also provide web hosting and website support services.

Part of this work has recently involved updating their website with additional product information and stockist information. We also carry out routine maintenance on their Linux web server including downloading and installing the latest server software updates and patches. We now also provide Google analytics consultancy.

We look forward to our continuing our web support services for Tullis Russell in 2010 and to increasing visitors to their website through our search engine optimisation (SEO) and SEO copywriting services.

The Pixel8 graphic design agency in Manchester has designed and printed large format vinyl graphics and graphic designs on canvas for Manchester Sport and Leisure Trust.

The Trust, which manages 19 sports facilities in Manchester, went through a massive gym refurbishment at two of its locations, Sportcity and Belle Vue leisure centre.

As the incumbent design agency for Manchester Sport and Leisure Trust, Pixel8 we were on hand to enhance the Trust’s brand awareness at both venues; and also to help with installing the large format graphics.

Pixel8 were asked to use the “swoosh” element from the brands logo design to create a full colour, large format printed vinyl graphic design, to be placed  on one wall, and a single colour vinyl graphic design on the facing wall at the Belle Vue venue. The full colour printed vinyl graphic design measured over 26ft wide, whilst the single colour graphic design measured over 40ft wide. Both of these graphics stand 11ft high.

Large format printed vinyl graphic designs were also installed at Sportcity. The first in the main gym area measured 30ft long and over 6ft high above a large mirror. The second was applied to the upstairs gym area, it measured over 17ft wide by 13ft high.

As a finishing touch, Pixel8’s design team created full colour artwork for a series of ‘inspirational’ graphic designs on canvas featuring images of people working out in the gym.

All of the full colour designs were printed in-house using Pixel8’s large format colour printers.

Pixel8 will be providing additional large format graphic designs for the Trusts’ remaining 17 gyms in Manchester as each one is refurbished.

For more information please call the Pixel8 design agency in Manchester on 0161 228 6489, 0845 230 1336, contact us by e-mail or visit our graphic design portfolio.