The Workshop recently designed and built the relaunched ‘Services for business’ section of Sheffield Hallam University’s website.

The site aims to challenge the assumption that a university can only offer training and development. It features news and case studies about the range of technologies, services, facilities and resources that Sheffield Hallam offers.

All content, including text and video, was created for the University’s business audiences. The University’s enterprise team manages relationships between businesses and academics, so we created a site that offered valuable, filterable content alongside clear contact information.

There are three paths through the site, each providing clear routes to a specific type of content. We also developed a bespoke tagging system that allows staff from across the University to tag content and keep it organised as the site grows. The system also allows users to filter and personalise content.

The site is built with Drupal, an open-source content management system. After training from The Workshop’s team, University staff can now create and refine their content based on feedback from customers and as the University develops new services and technologies.

Roadmap 2025 marketing materials match the look and feel of the new website

Recently we’ve been working with the Office for Disability Issues (ODI) to create a website and marketing materials for their Roadmap 2025 campaign.

Roadmap 2025 sets out complex information about the ODI’s strategy for achieving disability equality by 2025.

We developed a look and feel that works well for both web and print-based materials – it’s clean and simple, yet engaging for government departments and a wider audience. Information is conveyed in a way that’s user-friendly, easy-to-read and accessible in both mediums.

The website includes a handy search facility to help users find specific information. It also features updatable data that measures progress towards disability equality, including clear graphs and accessible tables. The site is designed to meet WCAG 2.0 AAA accessibility standards.

Roadmap 2025 is now being used by ODI staff as an exemplar of how to develop a suite of materials, online and offline, which maintains an engaging look and feel while achieving the highest levels of accessibility.

We're developing Mission:Explore for the iPhone

The Workshop has teamed up with the Geography Collective to take missions from their interactive book and create a website and iPhone application called Mission:Explore.

Misson:Explore aims to get young people out and about, engaging with geography and learning about places. Through a series of playful missions, users get to explore new locations in novel and exciting ways, and see the world from a different perspective.

The missions are designed to get young people using and exercising their skills, often without even realising it. One mission asks the user to try and cross Trafalgar Square without scaring a pigeon – think of all the risk assessment and planning required!

We’re working on Mission:Explore at the moment, so look out for more information soon.

The Pass IT on campaign has attracted some high-profile supporters

Well, they’re all partners of Pass IT on, a new nationwide digital inclusion initiative from UK online centres and the government’s Digital Champion Martha Lane Fox.

What is Pass IT on?

There are 10 million people in the UK who still don’t or can’t access the internet. Pass IT on asks web users to pass on their enthusiasm for the internet to their friends, relatives or colleagues who are offline.

What’s that got to do with The Workshop?

We’ve been working closely with UK online centres over the past few months developing the Pass IT on offer, strategy, and websites, which went live last weekend.

As well as helping forge the strategy behind the initiative, our creative team has developed, designed and written two websites for Pass IT on and UK online centres – one for individuals and one for partners. Cleanly designed and user-centred, the websites give individuals and companies a toolkit of resources to help get more people online.

Helping get one million online

Pass IT on is aiming high: UK online centres along with partner Race Online 2012 hope to get one million people online in two years. We’re hopeful that the websites we’ve lovingly created attract the right kind of visitors who will in turn Pass IT on to as many people as they can.

Vinyl strips promote the campaign and help create 'real' space for innovation

The Workshop recently designed and built a website about innovation in the public sector for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. We also created a series of printed materials as part of their ‘Create the Space to Innovate’ campaign, which encourages public sector employees to get their thinking caps on and share their marvellous ideas.

We had a couple of specific challenges with the website. We had to take many pages of printed content and turn them into a usable site with appropriate information architecture. Its design had to be colourful and engaging, but without using any images. What’s more, we had to do all this on a pretty short timescale.

While the website was being developed, we also put together a suite of printed materials to promote the campaign to public sector staff. Items included posters, banners and branded vinyl strips to put up around public sector offices to, quite literally, create the space to innovate.

For extra impact, we displayed all these materials in places you wouldn’t typically expect them to be, including on tables and inside toilets and lifts. We did it overnight too, so that when staff arrived in the morning, they’d have their own little ‘Crikey!’ moment.

You can check out the website now: www.hmg.gov.uk/publicsectorinnovation

We turned part of our Sheffield offices into a working film set to create content for The Rehearsal Room

We’re currently working with Sheffield Theatres to engage non-traditional audiences in theatre productions.

We’re creating The Rehearsal Room to promote plays before, during and after performances. Potential theatre-goers will be able to use this virtual space to find out how plays are produced. The site’s content will be filmed here at The Workshop: we’re currently building a set in our offices. Users will also be able to explore the work of Sheffield Theatres through video, photos and interactive elements and add their own contributions.

The first production to receive this treatment, Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, is showing at the newly-refurbished Crucible Theatre in spring 2010. To get the setting right, we researched the play thoroughly and identified three core ideas that resonate with today’s political intrigues.

We’ve used phrases from the play in a trailer now showing on YouTube. It’s attracting a lot of interest – you may be one of the 3000+ viewers! Next, we’re planning an all-out poster and advertising campaign around the region. Meanwhile, we’ll keep treading the boards.

* With apologies to William Shakespeare.

Our design work had to illustrate the thinking behind both collections, but still work as a single suite of materials.

The Workshop has worked with John Smedley for almost 20 years.

Recently they asked us to design and produce press materials and sales team tools for their Autumn/Winter 2010 menswear and womenswear collections. We began by spending some quality time with their design team to understand the thinking behind each collection.

That time helped us draw on the ethos behind the knitwear: layering. For both collections, we produced a spiral-bound presenter featuring fashion photography of the key pieces and sample fabric swatches.

Each presenter included an accompanying lookbook, which outlined the inspiration behind each collection. We also included the designer’s original sketches to illustrate layering and accessorising techniques. A special lookbook-sized pocket in each presenter’s back cover continued the layering theme.

Throughout the press packs, photography captured the essence and spirit of each collection. The ‘archivist’ theme for the menswear collection was shot on location at Tissington Hall, Derbyshire by Jamie Rowan.

Sarah Cresswell chose to emphasise the silhouette of the womenswear collection by taking studio-based images against a dreamlike London background.

Our interactive games bring the relationship between animals and plants to life

The Royal Institution is dedicated to connecting people with the world of science through research and events. We’ve been working with them for the last five years to support their annual Christmas lectures which have been going since 1825.

The events are filmed every year and broadcast on UK television. To support them, we’ve designed a series of interactive games, which are now live over at the Christmas lectures site. We’re also producing a DVD that will be sent to around 2,500 secondary schools across the UK in the New Year.

The Christmas lectures feature scientific demonstrations designed to bring science to life for children and adults. This year’s series is called ‘The 300 Million Year War’ and will be presented by Professor Sue Hartley, an ecologist who specialises in the study of interactions between plants and animals.

We’ve created 10 interactive games, two for each lecture theme, to teach youngsters aged 11-17 about plants and the amazing ways they have adapted to survive alongside animals:
Plant wars
The animals strike back
Talking trees
Dangerous to delicious
Weapons of the future

Once you’ve had a play of the games, why not tune in to catch the lectures on More 4 every night this week, starting this evening, Monday 21 December at 7pm?

Earlier this year, The Workshop designed and built a giant ‘AidPod’ for the ColaLife campaign. Watch the video above to see how we did it.

The concept behind the campaign was dreamt up by Simon Berry and submitted to Google’s 10^100 project. It’s an absolute corker too.

The idea is to send aid to developing countries in specially shaped AidPods that slot nicely into crates of Coca Cola (whose distribution network happens to be more wide-reaching than any aid or health organisation).

Transported inside each AidPod will be health and hygiene products, including rehydration salts, vitamin tablets and condoms.

Our giant AidPod was built to promote the ColaLife campaign. We put the AidPod together on a not-for-profit basis and already it’s been on display at Nesta and on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square as part of the One & Other project.

Now the AidPod is heading to the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts (RSA), where it will be on display over Christmas and into January.

For more information about the campaign, you can visit the ColaLife website or get updates from the ColaLife team via Twitter.

Morrisons' Talent guide forms part of our consultancy work with their HR department

We’ve worked with Morrisons for more than three years now. In that time The Workshop has created internal marketing campaigns, promotional materials and digital products. We’ve provided design, copywriting and technical services – the whole caboodle!

This autumn, we’ve been providing communications consultancy, helping the company’s directors and company communications team reach out and speak to employees across the UK.

Making the most of Talent

Morrisons’ Talent guide outlines the company’s vision for developing employees’ skills and helping them to build a career in the organisation. The idea is that with talent and determination, staff can work their way up ‘from shop floor to top floor’.

Tiina Carr, one of our directors, is working alongside Morrisons’ Director of Human Resources to look at the philosophy behind their values, leadership, talent and performance. The result will be a set of guides that lie at the heart of Morrisons’ new HR philosophy and can be used by the company’s top 1000 senior managers.

The Talent guide ties in with the new Morrisons Academy, which develops staff and helps them to gain a nationally recognised qualification for carrying out their day-to-day work. It’s an enterprising initiative that’s caught the eye of Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, amongst others.

The Workshop on TV

Norman Pickavance, Morrisons’ Director of HR, also appeared on a special edition of ITV’s Tonight programme, ‘Make me an apprentice’, a couple of weeks ago to talk about Morrisons and their work on The Academy. It was great to see some of the communications we’d designed for The Academy scheme being beamed into households across the UK!

‘Make me an apprentice’ also featured Norman talking about Morrisons’ commitment to the government’s Backing Young Britain campaign, which encourages businesses to support young people into employment by offering work experience, apprenticeships and other opportunities. We were pleased twice over as The Workshop also developed the Backing Young Britain website just a couple of months ago.