blog archive.

We have just finished working on creating a new microsite for the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Ireland's fundraising team - Take a Challenge

We were briefed to bring all their regular fundraising sporting activities together under one heading and one identity to promote the different sponsored events they have throughout the year.

I'm not into running or swimming myself, but I think I could manage a walk in cuba ...

Ireland are having their first Mud Run on Saturday 27th February 2009, sponsored by Persil, and to raise money for the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Ireland.

The challenge was to create an visual identity for the event, and a microsite accessible through MSI's main website, that would enable users to log in and monitor their own contributions to their account.

They've had a record number of sign ups, and hopefully the event will go off with a bang - it'll certainly be something worth taking a look at for next year!

YouTube is 5 years old!

No, we couldn’t believe it either. Hasn’t it always been around? Whether it’s for watching music videos (which we’re now allowed to do again), prison inmates dancing to Thriller in unison or just for giggles, YouTube has well and truly ingrained itself into our lives. And with TV broadcasters such as Channel 4 enabling users to view their 4OD content  through the channel, it continues to pioneer the way for free video content online. Even if the newspapers are all looking to start charging!

Happy birthday YouTube! Here’s to another 5 years...

South Gloucestershire employee and client of Focus, Rhiannon Holder, 22, has been awarded an MBE in recognition of services to young people’s healthcare.

Rhiannon, who was named on the New Years Honours list, is employed as a project worker (teenage pregnancy) by South Gloucestershire Council and has been volunteering since she was 15 to offer advice to young people on a range of issues.

Rhiannon is now offering advice and support through the No Worries scheme to help reduce teenage pregnancies by increasing young people’s participation in the project and ensuring that services are young people friendly.

Rhiannon is using the No Worries website, which was designed and developed by Focus, to support the work carried out by the scheme by ensuring it is a useful resource with up to date and relevant content.

The site can be accessed via the Youth Unlimited site, which promotes positive activities for young people, in and around South Gloucestershire.

She said: “I've always been very passionate about young people's health. Just because I've got an MBE doesn't mean I'm going to stop the good work I am currently involved with at South Gloucestershire Council. Teenage pregnancy rates are falling nationally but there is still a lot of work to do to give young people the sex education, clinics and services they need to make informed choices.”

The No Worries site will soon be updated with a tailored search of information from 1 Big Database. Rhiannon will be able to login to the directory and flag which records she would like to be available via the No Worries site – ensuring that only the most relevant information is returned.

A different flavour Focus...
...still the same great taste!

We’re starting 2010 with a bang here at Focus. A bang and a whole new name, brand and website! We love it and hope you will too.

2009 was a busy year for us. There were new business wins, additions to the team and we added a number of services to our portfolio. We also took some time to talk about who we were and what we wanted Focus to be for our clients, and we decided what was really important was to be up-front, no fuss and honest, as well as delivering cracking personal service. A sort of 'back to basics' – a change reflected in our change of name. The wonderful world of digital can still be scary at times and we want to strip all that away. We create fantastic websites for lovely clients. Simple. Who said digital had to be complicated?

So 2010 will see us ramping up our digital marketing services and getting knee deep in SEO, AdWord campaigns, newsletter management as well as giving our clients first rate advice and consultancy on the new world of social media. All this as well as our bread and butter – creative and accessible web design and build. It’s all stuff we were doing before, but with a bigger team, we’re really able to go for it! And go for it is what we fully intend to do!

The changes also mean there will soon be a new 'arm' to the Focus group, solely concentrating on the development of large scale bespoke web applications for businesses. More on this exciting development later.

So in the meantime, we hope you’ll enjoy the new Focus site. It’s got some new features, lots of new content and of course a new look. Have a click around and let us know what you think! Suggestions are always welcome.

This is Focus!