CookandKaye | Images | Mapping | Animations | Education | Site Design

Site Design

We specialise in information heavy sites that must be accessible to the widest possible audience, who are likely to be using older hardware, and slow modem connections. These are not, however, reasons to make a drab site!

On this page are links to examples of our work for:

• CD publications when you know your target market, and need to restrict disclosure to this
• University departments helping you tackle your most important publicity and marketing exercise
• Conference sites make organising conferences and large meetings easier for you
• Centres of excellence bringing your research colleagues from around Europe together
• Charities and smaller commercial sites great looking and effective sites, to your specifications
• Upgrades and enhancements add a little style to your existing site, or help you tidy up something that has got a bit out of hand...

Our level of involvement with the site can be tuned to match the needs and resources of our clients. which might include any or all of the following services:

Consultancy - we offer both technical and research support to our clients. Keeping a track on international developments in web design, we can help you tackle your most important investment in advertising and communications.

Material support - design issues, provision and integration of graphical work with your site. Whatever the subject, we can produce material that will make your site more interesting and appealing (see links below for examples of graphical, animated and educational content we have generated for others.)

Maintenance - High street shops clean their windows every day, if they didn't they'd loose customers. Keeping your website maintained ensures that there are no out-of-date pages, that news is quickly and accurately disseminated, so that your site reflects your business NOW (not six months ago!).

Research - bringing together the material you need to publicise your business or department is one of the most demanding tasks. We have an excellent track record for meeting your staff members and customers face to face, and acquiring the data for your site directly. We will also assemble a photographic library during the research phase, which can dramatically cut your publicity budget!

Site renovation - where you have the information, but cannot get it across to your customers, we can get you on track quickly! We can also suggest improvements - to comply with accessibility legislation, or for a faster loading site!

Total site design - incorporating as required elements of consultancy, research, material support and maintenance.

CD Publications

In some instances you will want to put together information in an attractive package, but for reasons of confidentiality or copyright might not want to make this available on the World Wide Web. We can build attractive HTML or Acrobat^® publications accessed through an attractive FLASH based auto-load sequence. CD publication offers an alternative to paper - hyperlinked to online resources and with no additional charges for colour artwork!

The Sound of Mull Archaeology Project - A NAS Monograph: Our input was to create a CD to accompany this publication, allowing people to browse the extensive library of geophysical survey images taken during the project. We carried out additional georeferencing work to allow many of these images to be viewed in context within Google Earth®. You can order a copy of this publication through the NAS: SOMAP order form (PDF format, 26kB).

Medical interface project - a CD of research interests within the medical school at the University of Sheffield (internal publication).

University Departments

Public access to science: What is Nanotechnology? aims to put the nano world into context for high school children, examining some of the reasons why nanotechnology has become so important, and taking a critical look at the future this technology may offer us. The site offers a range of resources, plus links to selected sites on the internet for further information.
Site written by Barry Kaye of CookaandKaye with scientific input from the Universities of Leeds and Sheffield nanofolio.

The White Rose DTC, a leading doctoral training centre for interdisciplinary scientists at the life-sciences interface.

NanoFolio, the nano scale science, engineering and nanotechnology educational portfolio of the Universities of Sheffield and Leeds. Offering Europe's most established and prestigious qualifications in this rapidly expanding area of science and technology.

We have developed sites for the School of Medicine and the Department of Chemistry at the University of Sheffield, for inclusion within the University's content management system:
School of Medicine
Department of Chemistry

The Sheffield Kidney Institute, required a more individual site, reflecting their teaching, research and important health care roles.
With this site is was vital that all aspects should be accessible to disabled visitors, which will include patients treated by the Institute.

Other departmental sites include:

• Oral Biomaterials research website for the Sheffield dental School, whose research is considered of international standing by independent UK Government analysts.
• The Dental Advice Research and Technology Service (D.A.R.T.S) places the range of scientific, technical and clinical resources of a University of Sheffield's Dental School at the disposal of manufacturing industry and technical and clinical dentistry.

A new Biopolymer research website is in preparation for the Department of Chemistry at Sheffield University, covering exciting work at the interface between soft materials and biology.

Conference sites

Organising a conference on top of your regular teaching and research load is hard work. We can take some of this burden off your shoulders by designing and running your conference website. We can enable your delegates to register and submit abstracts online, and normally ensure that their abstracts are checked and on your conference site within 48hrs of submission. Current websites include:

• The High Polymer Research Group runs one of the most prestigious international polymer conferences. Established in 1960, with its first conference in 1961, the group has held annual conferences ever since that date. We took on the site in 2007, replacing an earlier website that was unusable if you did not run Internet Explorer!
• POLYFILM: Confined polymer films an international conference covering thin polymer films including polymer crystallisation, polymer brushes, glass transition, soft nanotechnology. (September 8-12, 2008, Sheffield)
• New directions in complex molecule delivery (November 28th 2007).
• IKUWA 3, The Third International Congress on Underwater Archaeology (10th July to Saturday 12th July 2008).
• Functional and biological gels and networks: theory and experiment - the 18th international conference of the Polymer Networks Group (3rd to 7th September 2006).

Previously we have prepared sites for major international conferences - "Synchrotron Radiation in Polymer Science" (2002) and "Frontiers of Polymer Colloids" (2002), and a smaller site for a showcase meeting - CBTE Showcase 2005

Centres of Excellence

Interdisciplinary research centres are essential to the research health of a University, but to convert them from a good idea on paper into functioning entities, with useful dialogue between members in different departments requires a lot of hard work. For the centres below we started by interviewing all of the members, and assembling prospectuses of their research interests. The prospectuses were then circulated internally - giving everyone a chance to make hook-up their research with other members. Finally, the material from the prospectus is converted into a site, placing salient features, and contact details in the public domain to bring in new research contracts.

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Centres of Excellence (continued)

The Centre for Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering draws on expertise in Engineering, Science and Medical faculties at the University of Sheffield to tackle problems in this complex area of applied science.
We were active in researching content for the site, as well as in the final design.

The Polymer Centre is another high profile research centre within the University of Sheffield. It provides research, technical and training facilities to industry, research degrees and educational material and features.
We were active in researching content for the site, which also formed the basis of the prospectus published by the Centre. We are still very much involved with ongoing developments at the Centre, developing new animated features to illustrate research and industrial tie-ins.

Bringing researchers together across the UK and Europe

The Macro Group UK is a joint special interest group of the joint interest group between the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Society of Chemical Industry. It brings industrialists and researchers with an interest in polymers together.

LigBank^® is a major new European Commission initiative to bring researchers from across Europe together. The site being developed by CookandKaye allows information and new designer chemicals to be traded quickly across the sub-continent. This site makes extensive use of databases to search for chemicals with the desired characteristics, and subsequently order samples for further testing online.

The Polymer IRC represents polymer researchers at three Universities in the UK. The site is a hybrid between database driven pages and 'normal' pages, which are, in fact, created using a wiki. This permits administrators to edit copy on the site very easily.

PolyFilm is a European Community-funded Framework 6 Research Training Network established with the aim of studying the properties of confined polymer films. The website brings together the research from twelve leading groups in the European Community. Designed by CookandKaye from copy provided by member institutions, this site is also maintained by members using Macromedia's Contribute software.

INDAC-Chem brings together the Universities of Nottingham (UK), Geneva (Switzerland), Sassari (Italy) and Dortmund (Germany) to offer advanced training in selective catalysis and synthesis.

The FUMASSEC consortium brings together the University of Nottingham, UK, the Université Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, France, and the Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona (CSIC) in the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. The consortium aims to train PhD-level personnel in using multifunctional nanomaterials for sustainable development.

Research group, charities and commercial websites:

Exacting websites crafted with the greatest attention to detail to your specification:

We have recently taken on the maintenance of Mobility Nationwide, following the sad death of the original designer. Mobility Nationwide specialises in quality vehicles accessible to wheelchair users.

The SeaFishDirectory, due to be launched in early 2008, will bring communications in the UK fishing industry into the 21st century. The site provides geographical search engine coupled to a contact service, to allow fishermen, merchants and fisheries service industries to find the most appropriate products nearby.

Electronic and photonic molecular materials research group, our client wanted a site that reflected the University of Sheffield style, but needed assistance updating copy and developing artwork to make the site stand out.

Mark Geoghegan's research pages, we developed a new style for Mark based on his existing site, which had a lot of great ideas, but gone a bit out of control. The new design is unusual for us, with links ranged to the left of the page featuring little graphic details activated by mouse overs. The interactivity adds greatly to a design that might otherwise be used for a quality print run, allowing the art work that is an integral place on Mark's site to stand out.

Working Glass stained glass windows, mirrors and sun-catchers craftsman made in the Yorkshire Dales.

Polymer and biomaterials chemistry labs, based at the University of Sheffield, cover a broad range of research and consultancy activities.

Functional materials by design, research pages for Prof. Mike Turner's group at the University of Manchester.

Lochaline Dive Centre this new site has a number of animated banners to highlight each aspect of the facilities on offer. The banners have interactive components to maintain interest in the site, and fast load times, ensuring the Centre's website engages with its visitors. Alternative style sheets have been developed for screen and print media, so visitors can print pages (such as booking forms) without extraneous detail (like navigation buttons) - yet have these available on their computer screens...

RASSE - a three-year project funded by the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund administered by English Heritage to evaluate underwater archaeological sites. The project is being run by the University of St Andrews School of Geography and Geosciences.

Ortalan^TM - a new website for a cutting edge public safety consultancy that draws on the talents of top health and safety and legal professionals in the UK.

The Lancashire Area Marine Conservation Society site is a showcase for beautiful underwater photography.

The Nautical Archaeology Society is the lead charity for underwater archaeology and ethnographic study in the UK, and is well regarded internationally. The website communicates with a widespread membership - offering online access to their journal, newsletter (avoiding printing and postage costs has allowed the society to reduce the cost of membership and turn a profit on the Newsletter for the first time).

The Barnsley VTS builds on our experience in the medical field, providing a site for the very well regarded General Practitioner vocational training scheme based at Barnsley. The site is maintained by the VTS secretary using the simple 'Contribute' content management package.

OMEC - research into new carbon based electronics.

PDS Diving Services - replacing a site that was loosing our client business!
CookandKaye revised this site in 2002, to take account of the additional work that our client is now undertaking!

Coychurch Primary School a simple, low maintenance site to allow primary school children to express them selves online!

Upgrades and enhancements:

Database control makes keeping your news pages up to date easy. Old stories are removed automatically, and the latest additions are highlighted. A simple news feed add-on ensures that all your visitors are kept up-to-date with the latest news you have to offer - we can customise this to offer just-in-time reminders for events in the next few days. - Simple ways to make your site really useful to your visitors!

News feeds are increasingly important components of websites - these help keep people in touch with developments on your website, and help you bring visitors back to you by telling them about interesting news or offers. Recently we have added news feeds (RSS1, RSS2 or Atom formats) for a number of our clients. Our feeds are tested for compliance with the W3C - but we also check our feeds against a number of feed readers running on PC, Linux and Mac operating systems, to ensure trouble free operation.

Do-it-yourself websites - you just type! Our style sheet controls the layout, ensuring excellent conformity across the website. You can add pages and images as you wish...

Based on the popular wiki format, these sites look good, and offer you simple facilities for updating and extending your own website. This type of site is really useful for collaborative projects, we can restrict access to your group, who can get together to brain-storm or share news.

Self maintenance we can build websites that integrate with the popular 'Contribute' (content management) and 'Dreamweaver' (web design) programmes. Areas of the page that can be safely modified are highlighted, giving you full control of content - without damaging the layout or style! This option offers you a flexible website that you can update and maintain in house.

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