Hutchhouse is a digital design agency. This blog reflects the interests & musings from those within the team.


• 7 Most Recent Articles

  • We’re hiring!
  • A return of the traditional
  • The “Wow” Factor in Web Design
  • #Glug does it again!
  • Allworkedup 2 is launched
  • Shop by colour
  • 24 hour start-up
Benjamin Hutchins
Creative Director | Follow on Twitter

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As taken from the OGN homepage:
“Oxford Geek Nights offer a chance for web developers and designers in the local area to get together, share their skills and talk about new ideas, techniques and technologies.

Each OGN consists of two keynote talks of 15 minutes each. There are also frenetic bursts of socialising, sometimes adverts for other local groups, but always interspersed with two sets of 5-minute-long microslot sessions.”

Hutchhouse will be there, as will the White October gang.  Hope to see you there too!

The guys behind the successful networking notworking™ night are throwing their first Christmas bash. They’re even throwing in a competition with some decent prizes (more info below).  The once-a-month evening has been gathering pace and now boasts a regular turn-out of talented creatives.  Visit the blog to find out more.

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Here’s the info for the Christmas competition, start sending your entries in now! We’ve got an incredible judge lineup and prize list. Event will be 17th December, venue is the Bodhi Gallery in Brick Lane, East London and tickets will be out soon, keep an eye on the blog, entries need to be with us by 1st December. Good luck!

VAUGHAN OLIVER (V-23)
MICHAEL C PLACE (BUILD)
JON BURGERMAN
PHIL STUART (PRELOADED)
ADAM JENNS (MAINFRAME)
LAURA JORDAN BAMBACH (GLUE)
GINA LOVETT (DESIGN WEEK)
GUY FEATHERSTONE (WIEDEN & KENNEDY)
HELEN BAYNES (NET-A-PORTER)
IAN HAMBLETON (STUDIO OUTPUT)
NICK CLEMENT (MADE STUDIO)

Prizes are:

- SIGNED FRAMED ‘PIXIES’ PRINT BY VAUGHAN OLIVER
- SIGNED FRAMED ‘BUILD’ PRINT BY MICHAEL C PLACE
- INTERNSHIP AT EITHER STUDIO OUTPUT OR MAINFRAME
- JON BURGERMAN HEROES OF BURGERTOWN MINI FIGURES
- 3 COURSE EVENING MEAL FOR 2 AT BLUU MOORGATE INCLUDING BOTTLE OF HOUSE WINE
- A YEAR’S SUBSCRIPTION TO DESIGN WEEK
- PLUS FURTHER PRIZES TO BE ANNOUNCED.

Email entries to gluglondon@gmail.com or by post to Studio Output (London), 109 Black Bull Yard, 24–28 Hatton Wall, London EC1N 8JH, UK.

Poster design by Sam @ Studio Output, thanks Sam.

At last! We’ve finally got our new website designed and built!

Why the Giraffes?
“A new website was so overdue that we’re hoping our new offering makes up for it. We toyed with keeping the previous ‘yellow & white’ colour scheme but we finally decided to let it go. A good thing too. We’re really happy with the direction this one took and chuffed it made it to the slice & dice stage!

We really wanted to add some fun to the site. A comment was made about a logo we’d been trying out (and finally chose!) and how the wordmark looked a bit like two giraffes standing back-to-back. This got us thinking about a softer approach to our redesign; perhaps introducing zoo animals and adorning the design with vibrant, friendly, exotic creatures! After a brief search on iStock we stumbled across this fine illustration from Borisz. Immediately we knew this was what we were looking for and so the giraffe(s) were purchased, reworked and placed into a mock-up. It looked right.

We’d already discussed adding extra functions to the site and one of those was a ’style-sheet switch’ or ‘theme-changer’. It didn’t take long before we were thinking of themes for the giraffes. ‘Client concerns with web technology’ seemed like a good place to start so we worked up a few analogies around this idea, finally settling on four themes for the different homepages; Jungle, Night, Space and Depth. Themes that are then clarified further with the following headlines:

It’s a jungle out there!
It’s not rocket science…
Don’t get left in the dark!
Feeling out of your depth?

We hope you enjoy the the site as much as we do. Add the RSS feed if you like. It will keep you updated with our latest work.  Have a listen to our last.fm studio radio whilst you browse. It makes for a good backing track to the website.  We can’t promise you’ll agree with our taste in music though!

As always, feel free to get in touch…

The Hutchhouse Team.”