It’s the start of a new year and that time of the month when we like to give you a glimpse of what we’ve been working on here at Fanatic HQ. The team’s back in the office after the Christmas break, two stone heavier we have lots of exciting projects to jump back into and some great work to share.
Studio News
Compass Group Diversity Video
We were really excited to be asked to work with Compass to produce a video showcasing the diversity and inclusive nature of the 80 000 nationwide workforce. We wanted to create a video that was impactful and created an emotional reaction.
We storyboarded the concept, wrote the script collaboratively with the client, and set to casting and hiring 13 actors that reflected the exact diversity mix within the company. We did the filming in the Tobacco Factory Theatre which is inside our building, with the help of Hannah Pereira’s fantastic filming and lighting skills, and all editing and post-production was completed by our inhouse creative team. Here are some behind the scenes shots.
It was a great day with the cast and crew, and we love the final product. You can see the film here:
Feedstock
It was great to welcome Feedstock back into the Fanatic Studio. We created their website last year and they were now looking for some additional animations to showcase their products. Animation and film is a great way to show functionality and ease of use, as well as the benefits, without having to resort to pages and pages of text and explanations.
The design needed to stay on brand and sitting seamlessly on the newly updated home page. We think Sam absolutely hit the nail on the head with his animation. Take a look – we’d love your feedback.
Lime Venue Portfolio Food Report
As one of the UK’s largest venue and catering companies Lime Venue Portfolio put a lot of time and effort into being industry leaders. Their food waste report came off the back of their own research where they found that the average event wastes between 15% and 20% of the food it produces.
We wanted to create a report that did this research and topic justice while staying on brand. We needed bold, eye-catching imagery, graphs and data, and plenty of content clearly laid out, making it easy to digest.
Fanatical About Christmas
Our design team loves the chance to show off and flex their creative muscles. This year they really pushed the boat out with a virtual reality Christmas Tree. Taking advantage of our expert tech team they brought their creation to life, allowing you to project our Fanatic tree anywhere using your phone. Our team had great fun screenshotting the tree all over Bristol and if you get a chance we’d love to see some of your Christmas scenes.
ERT
European Competitiveness and Industry Benchmarking Report 2019
2019 saw the Fanatic machine go international with a number of European clients and projects. ERT (The European Round Table of Industry) were one of our main overseas clients, with a new website design and build.
With their new revamped site they wanted their reports and whitepaper to have a similar feel. As you might have picked up from this Scrapbook we love the challenge of taking a report and its raw data and turning it into something visual, vibrant and engaging. The team certainly rose to the challenge…
A quick focus on code…
Flexbox!
Each week we have a stand up where a member of the Fanatic team shares their knowledge and latest project. The pick from last month was by Radek, one of our web developers, who gave us some great reasons why we are already using Flexbox to code our web designs.
What’s Flexbox? Most web pages are written in a combination of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). In short, HTML specifies the content and logical structure of the page, while the CSS specifies how it looks: its colours, fonts, formatting, layout, and styling.
CSS flexbox layout is a particular way to specify the layout of HTML pages.
What’s so good about Flexbox?
One of the most defining features of the flex layout is its ability to form-fit, based on its viewing environment. Flex boxes can adjust in size—either decreasing, to avoid unnecessarily monopolizing space, or increasing to make room for the contents to be constrained within its boundaries. Moreover, the flex layout is less restrictive in terms of content flow than those, for example, of the block and inline display types, which are generally uni-directional. Not only can flex directional flow be specified, at the style level, as right-aligned, left-aligned, up or down; individual items within a flex container may also be automatically reordered and rearranged to suit the available layout space.
Some more reasons to start using Flexbox…
8 Reasons to Start Using Flexbox
- It’s not a CSS framework / doesn’t need any extra dependencies in your project.
- It’s easy to use
- There’s great documentation
- It simplifies complexity
- Flexbox is giving us much more freedom with a building project, and much fewer possibilities for breaking layout.
- You can finally centre elements – Without position absolute 50%, 50%
- It’s supported in all major browsers
- You can build almost everything with this technique if not everything.
Still not sure about Flexbox and its benefits? Don’t worry we’ll be publishing a blog post about it this month.
New Additions…
We’ve welcomed another talented new addition to the team this month. We would like to introduce you to Dave who joins our graphic design team.
How have you found life at Fanatic so far?
Really good, everyone’s been very welcoming. It’s an amazing team with lots of talent so I look forward to the new year
What were you doing before Fanatic and what made you get into design?
I was a Designer at Mathew Clark. I’ve always had a creative streak so I wanted to find a job in which I could do that every day.
What made you choose Fanatic?
I knew Ian before coming and when he asked if I was interested – it was a no brainer. I knew I could learn a lot from working here.
What have you enjoyed most so far?
The excellent office space and good coffee shop selection 🙂
What are you looking forward to learning more about?
Obviously, we are heavily involved with web design and I’m looking forward to learning from Ian, Ryan, and Sam.
Tell us an interesting fact about yourself?
I played ice hockey for my country (Australia) and played at the university I went to in NY, USA.
Out and About
We dusted off our Christmas jumpers and sequin glad rags and headed to the Severnshed for our Christmas party. Beforehand, we had some drinks in the studio and played the Secret Santa Snatch game, it’s always a lot of fun and a Fanatic tradition we all look forward to! Well, that’s as much as we can tell you I’m afraid – what happens at the Fanatic Christmas Party stays at the Fanatic Christmas Party!
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