Below is a rather interesting video which mentions another company adopting this approach. Fascinating stuff!

As you may not have know already we always hire freelancers – fitting the right person to the right job. Not only is this cheaper than hiring a team of full time web designers and developers, a saving that gets past on to the client, it also means we can hire for specific tasks. For example a client may ask for a flash website. This is not a request we get often as we prefer sites that perform well in search engines, however if a client does specify this we can pool together an ad-hoc team geared towards flash development. For the one or two projects that require flash in a year, we could never justify the £30K salary of a flash developer since the earning potential would be so low. What other companies do is try to make their designers and developers do a bit of everything: jack of all trades, master of none. This is far from ideal and you really should be hiring experts to developer websites on a bespoke basis.

The logo that hasn’t changed since the site was founded back in 2002 now sports a funky little portfolio icon. The change is so minor but as soon as we saw it our reaction was disbelief that we had not spotted it ourselves.

We asked Steve some questions about the new logo:

Please tell me a little bit about yourself.

I am an artist and designer. I graduated from Pratt Institute with a BFA in ‘91. I have worked in different design and production roles ever since. I worked in vinyl graphics for an exhibit company, as a signmaker, digitizing corporate embroidery, as a business owner, and freelance design. I am the father of three talented children and live in Vermont, USA.

What made you think of the changes for the logo and of approaching us with them?

I saw that you were making changes to the homepage (as noted in the newsfeed) with an invitation for comments and suggestions. I wanted to lend a hand. I looked it over and thought I could contribute by making some suggestions to modify the logo.

Can you tell me a little bit about the process involved in modifying the logo.

I imported the website gif into Adobe Illustrator. I needed to created a high resolution file. I vectorized the logo using “live trace”. I redrew the portfolio element adding a handle and slightly rotated counter-clockwise for more visual movement. I then worked with the “Voodoochilli” element. I used the “tweak” filter at vertical 1% to slightly roughen the design. I manually manipulated points in the element while maintaining the definition and strength of the original design. I then replaced the type with a similar but slightly bolder sans-serif font scaled horizontally 110% and manually kerned.

Anything else you would like to add.

VoodooChilli is an excellent site. Having a website to share artwork and communicate is great. I am proud to be part of the online community.

We said a little thank you to Steve by giving him a years free pro membership to the website.

Voodoochilli.net is an online portfolio for artist’s run by Voodoochilli Design Ltd. If you are interested in joining, check it out!

Although there are other free website services available on the net – most of them are extremely unsightly and barely function. We hope to rectify this.

The site will be funded mostly by advertising but there will also be a premium service for those that wish to have a website at an affordable price.

It’s all very hush hush at the moment, so I can’t reveal too many details except that we hope to have the system completed soon.

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome.

“NME provide a national electrical and building maintenance service custom-built for the foodservice industry. The service portfolio encompasses a range of services from leaking taps to electrical safety testing, all available in one place within a controlled budget.”

AGGORA have some really big clients under their belt including BT, Vodafone, Sainsbury’s, Goodwood Race Course, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and Oxford University to name but a few.

I am really pleased with how the site has turned out, no small part of down to our designer Dave who has done some great work for us lately.

There is a lot more movement and advertisements on the site than we usually like to deal with but betting is a very particular field with certain requirements. Once the site was designed the client was given full reign and is fully responsible for the content. All in all the process was a steep learning curve for Voodoochilli, a difficult but very rewarding challenge.

Richard of course is accustomed to being in the lime light, he’s been to the south pole, appeared on a host of TV programs, and of course he’s won the Grand National twice!

Sites we have built have appeared on the TV before as well as in a host of magazines and papers, but it’s always great to see one of your sites or clients in the media. Web designers and developers are not given much praise generally and we tend to work in the shadows so we like to see our cutomers doing well.

One thing that I don’t yet understand on Twitter is why people follow me that I have never met and have no interest in. I think that people must just go though people’s lists and press the follow button without giving it a seconds thought. I guess it’s one way of promoting their own accounts. If someone follows me I do check them out and if I find what they have to offer an interest I will add them, I will not do it however just to promote my own Twitter account.

Still the whole thing was very stressful and I hope it doesn’t happen again!