Modern Art Oxford have chosen TAK! to be their print & digital marketing agency for the next year. This coincides with a gallery re-opening and new website — which we are currently working on.

We're excited to be working with Modern Art Oxford across all aspects of their marketing; we will work with them to develop a new identity reflecting the gallery's new vision, print and digital marketing and a new social media strategy.

It's a great opportunity for TAK! to showcase out abilities across the board with a unique client who has a rich heritage.

Modern Art Oxford is one of the UK's leading galleries for the presentation of modern and contemporary art. Past exhibitions have featured Stella Vine, Tracy Emin, Jake and Dinos Chapman (check their current video - woah) and Yoko Ono amongst others.

The gallery is closed during March and re-opens early April. Follow their activities via Twitter @weloveoxford

Way, way back in August we presented a pitch to the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists (RBSA) for a new company website and brand strategy. Just before Christmas we were asked to further develop the idea and in January we presented our vision.

We're extremely pleased to announce we won the work and will be working with them on a new website, graphical identity and print marketing.

This is great news as this full service offering is something we have pushed for many years. Our recent acquisitions suggest our combined abilities across print and digital are now being recognised.

Some new work announcements. Before Christmas we pitched for the redesign of the Midlands Architecture and the Designed Environment's (MADE) website. We recently found out we won and have started working on delivering the project.

MADE champion creativity and best practice within the West Midlands region in the fields of Architecture and the Environment placing themselves strategically between architects, clients and the public.

Our proposal was two-fold. The first part stuck to the brief and outlined our ideas for the new site. The second part outlined a future digital vision for the company with the focus on a unique idea for their industry. MADE bought into this thinking and are currently taking this strategy to the Arts Council for funding. The funding will be used to trial the idea and should it work then we will be heavily involved in the development of the future project.

Exciting stuff. Expect things soon.

If you want this kind of approach to your project, product or company, contact us.
 

Last year we won a pitch to redesign the Musuems, Libraries and Archives Council's (MLA) website.

The MLA promotes best practice in museums, libraries and archives, to inspire innovative, integrated and sustainable services for all. MLA are a Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB), sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) launched in April 2000.

The MLA have been involved in many national arts projects and we are both honoured and excited to be redesigning their website.

This time we will only supplying design and pass the development work to the super fantastic Codehouse.

Just before Christmas when everyone was snowed in, we headed down to the New Forest to Artsway — a small gallery with a strong reputation. After an in-depth conversation and credentials presentation we headed back to Birmingham with some new work in our pockets.

We're currently defining the new Artsway website and digital brand identity. Artsway are well known for recognising the best new talent and showcasing new artists before the move on to bigger world domination.

We're very excited to work with Artsway to offer them a new strong online presence. Website due Spring 2010.

Last year we worked with Thomas Tallis to produce a new brand identity for the school. This project is now complete and you can see the results over in our portfolio.

Moving in the opposite direction of that last blog post, we have some great news to announce!

Last night, the Pre-Raphelite Online Resource pipping Channel 4 and Teachers TV to win a highly covetted BETT Award for best Digital Collection and Resource Banks.

The BETT Awards is an annual scheme that highlights exemplar digital products intended for the education marketplace. The BETT Awards is produced by Emap Connect, the organisers of the largest educational technology show in the world - BETT. The BETT Awards is made possible by working in association with Becta, the Government's lead agency for ICT in education, and BESA, the trade association representing the educational supply industry.

The site was primarliy designed for use in education, so to be recognised and awarded by BETT is a massive, honorable achievement.

We've said it before, but we'll say it again, this is soley the result of trust by the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery's project team in our ideas and decisions.

It is very rewarding to know that the site will be used for a worthwhile educational purpose.

Well done all.

(l-r: @neiltak, @lspurdle, @petetak, @domtak)

We published this on our Twitter feed as it happened last week so Flim Flam is playing catch up this time (lost my camera's USB cable).

Anyway, the news — last Thursday we attended the British Interactive Media Association (BIMA) Awards representing our goodselves, BMAG and the wonderful Pre-Raphaelites. We were honored to be shortlisted for the Best Arts & Culture Website category.

The competition was pretty fierce and we really weren't expecting a win; making the shortlist was good enough for us humble folk. So, we were incredibly excited when our name was announced as the winner.

Someone in the crowd yelled "YEAH TAK!!!" as we headed to the stage to collect the award. It's fantastic our project which was up against others ten times the value won. Well done to everyone involved.

The rest of the evening was a blurry drunken mess

 Fresh from the BIMA Awards win in London we arrived back to Birmingham to find an email from Microsoft waiting for us to say that the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery's http://www.preraphaelites.org website is featured on their cutting edge Live Lab's Seadragon showcase.

We'd like to thank Microsoft for all the support they are giving us - the showcase on the Silverlight site sent a whole lot of folks over to the multi-award-winning site and we are hoping that this one will create a lot more fans of Birmingham's stunning Pre-Raphaelite collection in the weeks to come.

Last night played host to this year's Drum Awards for the Digital Industries aka the DADI's.

We're delighted to announce that we came first in the Best Use Of Technical Innovation category for the Pre-Raphaelite Online Resource.

Fantastic stuffs!

Well done to everyone at TAK! for the hard work that went into creating that site and for Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery for trusting us completely throughout. 

The Pre-Raphaelite Online Resource is at it again having been shortlisted for a BETT Award.

“The BETT Awards is an annual scheme that highlights exemplar digital products intended for the education marketplace.  The BETT Awards is produced by Emap Connect, the organisers of the largest educational technology show in the world – BETT.  The BETT Awards is made possible by working in association with Becta, the Government's lead agency for ICT in education, and BESA, the trade association representing the educational supply industry.

The BETT Awards define exemplar products as those which are fit for imitation, or a model. The awards also recognise outstanding education sector products and learning solutions. Judges review the entries based on these criteria, including design, cost-effectiveness, support of higher order skills and effective learning and teaching styles. For the technical evaluation, focus is on the robustness and resilience of each product, and its accessibility for those with specific needs.”

We're delighted to be shortlisted for such a prestigous award. The Pre-Raphaelite Online Resource was primarily designed for use in education and offers a suite of tools for use by students and tutors alike; from a unique search engine to in-depth .

This is the 5th time the site has been shortlisted in as many submissions and confirms our aspiration to produce innovative work within the arts, education & cultural sectors.

Wow — the Pre-Raphaelite Online Resource has been shortlisted for a BIMA in the Arts & Culture sector — fantastic! We're very chuffed to have the work recognised as being good enough to make the shortlist alongside some other fantastic projects and talented companies.

We're winners already!

Check out the rest of the shortlisted entries

More new work annonucements. We're also super excited to be working with Capsule on their Home of Metal project.

“For too long Birmingham and the Black Country have failed to celebrate what is rightfully theirs, to claim the city and the region as the birth place of “heavy metal”.  Its time to start celebrating!!!

The 'Home Of Metal' project aims to create a digital archive of everything heavy metal from the 60s to now. An online library of images, interviews, stories and various pieces of memorabila dedicated to telling the story of Metal and its unique birthplace. Focusing on the innovators of the genre and those that continued to develop it: Black Sabbath , Led Zeppelin , Judas Priest , Napalm Death and Godflesh.”

Our task is to redevelop the site to allow metal fans to upload their personal archive of metal memrobellia. Ultimately this giant archive will form the basis of a permanent exhibition in Birmingham, no doubt a shrine to future metal heads.

Awesome!!

PS: The image above has no connection to metal music. Instead it's from airbrush artist Hajime Sorayama who worked on Heavy Metal magazine. More pics from the magazine here.

We're very excited to be working with the hugely influential Ian Emes on his new personal website and forthcoming film. For those who didn't get the memo, Ian worked with Pink Floyd to create visuals for Dark Side of the Moon as well as cresating masterpieces such as The Beard and the Tubular Bells film.

Ian is also an accomplished commercials and sitcom director, the site will present this work also.

For more inspiration visit Ian's YouTube channel.

We have been commissioned by Modern Art Oxford to redesign their entire online presence. The commission will update the Modern Art Oxford offering to include a wealth of new engaging features including a comprehensive online store to support the gallery shop.

Modern Art Oxford is an art gallery established in 1965 in Oxford, England. From 1965 to 2002, it was known as The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. The gallery has played host to a wide range of unique artists includin; Yoko Ono, The Chapmans and Tracy Emin.

We're very excited to work with such an established gallery and intend to turn out something extra special. Watch this space.