When We Love started, back in April 2008, the world was on the brink of a recession, there were thousands of creative agencies all saying the same thing and people were still disgusted at the London 2012 logo… Remember all that hoo-ha? It seems so insignificant now doesn’t it?
Our motives of starting an agency were questioned, but we believed in a better creative world – where an agency got back to its routes and produced great work without charging (let’s face it) the inflated and greed orientated fees of others. Work that benefited the intended audience, not purely the agency.
Our sense of timing was questioned, but we welcomed the recession, I know that sounds misguided, but in our industry great agencies are born out of recessions – There is a flick of the reset switch, the fat is removed – we remember it’s about great creative, marketing and communications. Simple.
So what has been the secret to our last 4 years? Well, I won’t give it all away, but…
An individual who can be responsible for innovative, well conceptualised and well developed multi-platform solutions for projects within the tech / creative department. You will be supported by a dynamic team in delivering high-quality end requirements for International clients.
For our recent Sprout Christmas competition, the development team were tasked with the creation of a 360 degree spinning representation of our prize jar of sprouts.
Having some keen photographers within the team, we jumped at the chance to bring our gear in, and convert the kitchen area in the manor into a quick photo studio.
First we decided upon how many photographs / angles we wanted to have, which came down to every 10 degrees (36 shots). To ensure we got it right, we marked down every 10 degrees around a template that the jar would sit on – unfortunately we didn’t have a turn table available so we relied on our calm and collected coding hands for the movement.
Armed with a roll of brown paper, we covered the kitchen table and wall to remove any items which may cause post production an issue.
Consistency was key for making this work seamlessly, so we setup our DSLR on a tripod, with a nice fast 85mm 1.4 lens and used a remote to fire the shutter. We did a couple of test shots for lighting and reflection testing, then our photo studio was complete!
We focus locked the camera, and carefully rotated the sprout jar whilst taking the 36 photographs needed. The design team then did all of the post processing and beautification necessary, and handed us back the files.
As we were going to use a sprite sheet method involving just one image file, we had to collate them all together in a row – thankfully stitching them together was nice and easy due to Photoshop’s distribution alignment tool.
The HTML was nice and easy, just needed a div container with the correct dimensions, with the background of our sprite sheet set.
Next was to setup the JavaScript, using the jQuery library we were able to quickly track mouse movements when the jar had been clicked, to determine which direction the user would be panning around.
A little logic to decide what frame number should be next displayed, and/or if it should loop back around to the beginning, the background position on the sprite sheet that sprite number relates to and we were there! A HTML only method of creating a controllable spinning sprout jar.
We all know that everyone was eager to win our extra special Christmas competition prize. But there could be only one winner…
Matthew Pierce was nominated to win, with the correct guess that there were 127 sprouts jammed in the jar. He is now the proud owner of an awful lot of sprouts:
(Look at his happy face at winning.)
Congratulations go out to Matthew – we hope you will look after them well!
This month, .net magazine asked our development team the big question. Maybe the biggest question everyone is asking at the beginning of a new year. What will be the most significant trend of 2012? Some believe it will be the end of the world but not our two senior developers…
So what will it be? Both Joe and Stefan believe there will be continued boom in the mobile and tablet device market, more standardisation and inventions around HTML5 and mobile apps… And we will be really excited to bring these great technologies to our clients this year.
See what we have to say in Issue 224, which is out now!
Last Friday, we all took a day out of the office for The Christmas Thing; a celebration of another wonderful year at We Love. Each year a different member of staff is challenged with the task of planning a surprise Christmas treat, and this year Nikolas whisked us off for a (rather long) day in Paris.
Arriving at the office at 5am was a small struggle, but excitement prevailed. Arriving in Paris, we spent a short while navigating (getting lost) the Metro, but once we had our bearings, were in for a great day of hot chocolate, art galleries, delicious cocktails, Christmas markets, mulled wine, and crazy Parisian weather (see windswept and interesting photographs).
We were too busy having a marvellous time to do any shopping, resulting in most of us buying last minute cheese as souvenirs, so I apologise to fellow Eurostar travellers for the strong fromage odour, but when in France…!
Time for a little Xmas cheer and the Secret Santa. This year we have dressed our tree with extra care and attention. Check out the crafted (ahem) baubles
Happy Christmas to you all. Have a good one from all of us at We Love…
It is once again that time of year when the festive fun can begin, and what better way to start then by taking part in our perfectly rotten competition.
The humble sprout – affectionately known as the vegetable of Christmas, is largely overlooked the other 364 days of the year. So, we decided to give them their moment to shine…
We don’t want to give anything else away. So don’t delay – check out the humble sprout now.
