Sothis are a startup company offering practical, high quality human resources, IT, people and process solutions. Our work with Sothis included creation of the branding, print collateral and online presence - a modern, crisp and unfussy website that oozes professionality, impact and ease of use. We think so, anyway!

Magali Pettier is a photographer and documentary film-maker who works mainly in the social arena exploring issues from homelessness through to migration, issues that in some respect show certain aspects of social exclusion. Her online portfolio both showcases her work and, in the case of her photography, makes it available to buy online.

School Sport Partnerships are families of schools that come together to enhance sports opportunities for all. The Sunderland Partnership is the collaboration of the three partnerships of Biddick, Farringdon and Houghton Kepier. Each is made up of a Specialist Sports College, between five and seven secondary schools with surrounding primary or special school clusters. Unsurprisingly, then, with so many schools to include, this was a big website and something of an administrational challenge!

HallRail is the UK's largest independent manufacturer and supplier of high quality switches and crossings to the railway industry. Now in their 60th year, the company thought the time was right for a website redesign and Azure were the company to provide it - fully content managed, clean, friendly and corporate.

Thanks to all of you who took the time to play, and register a score, in the Azure Christmas Game. For some reason, lots of you seemed to enjoy throwing things at the various members of Azure staff... we're not taking it personally! It was nice to show off some of the more fun things that we can do with websites, and it's interesting to see what a positive response the game elicited from clients and contacts. Flash games are a great way to market your website and give visitors a positive experience of your organisation... please feel free to contact us to see how we could add one for you.

How well up are you on royalty-based commercialisation of enzyme and protein-encoding recombinant plasmids from the global academic resource? Yeah, thought so. Us too. The lovely folk at Prozomix, however, are the real deal and needed a website as advanced and cutting edge as their products. This site does it all - it integrates BLAST database technology, handles online sales of enzymes and calculates and manages royalty payments to the creators of those enzymes... just take our word for it. It's very clever, just like them!

Waste Aware North East is a region-wide initiative developed by the North East Regional Waste Awareness Initiative (NERWAI), aimed at reducing household waste and landfill in the northeast of England. The project included development of branding and corporate ID, a content managed brochureware website, secure members' forum and newsletter facilities. Fittingly, we were able to recycle a bunch of ideas from old projects. Arf, arf.

Rat-owners nationwide breathe a sigh of relief as the long-awaited Cherry Tree Animal Feed Supplies website canters onto the internet. Cherry Tree are a unique company offering a personalised service to wholesale and bulk clients, and this colourful, bright and friendly online shop provides them with full shopping-cart and secure payment functionality.

Delivering Business Development Skills and Strategies solely to accountants and professional services providers, Liddell Dunbar approached Azure for a full rebrand and website redesign. The resulting site allows Liddell Dunbar staff to advertise an infinite range and number of courses, create maps and sell places online through a totally custom-built back end. Their range od specialist training courses are advertised through an advanced e-mailshot facility.

Manufacturing from three modern factory premises in Blaydon upon Tyne, United Kingdom, Zytronic PLC produce a range of touch interactive products used in electronic displays for information kiosks, ATMs, ticketing and gaming machines, as well as by military, computer, telecommunications and medical manufacturers. Zytronic's bespoke-designed website offers unprecedented levels of content management necessary to link a wide range of products, data-sheets and resources like driver downloads. Look out for the new Zytronic knowledge-base in 2009.

Witherslack Care & Education Initiatives provide high quality specialist residential care and education for young people experiencing a range of difficulties. This fully content-managed website project included tweaks to the branding and aims to create a professional but friendly online environment.

AQS Bathrooms source, design and install luxury bathrooms from two showrooms in County Durham. Seriously, we didn't know quite how beautiful bathrooms could be (and that you can buy a Porshe bath!) until the Lyons family engaged us to work on their new site. Flash-based for a slick high-end feel, but fully updatable and available in high-visibility format for the visually impaired, the all-new AQS bathroom hopefully conveys something of the quality AQS have gained a reputation for. Smooth!

Fleet Technique Driver Training provide all manner of fleet driving courses from Fleet Training, Fuel Saving, Risk Assessment and SAFED Van Drivers. Their lovely new website delivers up-to-the-minute weather and traffic reports, information on latest legislation and company news as well as an email newsletter system. Additionally Azure's content management system was extended for this project to include colour-picking functionality which allows the client to create and style sections with totally fresh colour schemes. How flash is that?

Sunderland Accommodation Service offer possibly the largest portfolio of rental properties in the Wearside area. Building a website that allows clients to search a database that can be easily updated by SAS staff was always going to be a huge challenge... as was translating the site for Sunderland's burgeoning Chinese population and working with the company's distinctive corporate image. Hopefully, the results are a simple, attractive and user-friendly website.

Biddick School Sports College based in Washington approached Azure Design with an ambitious online project. Including school information, a calendar that provides staff and pupils with separate information, news, community information and all manner of other features, the new school website packs it all in. After a couple of hours training, they now update it all in house as well.

Inspire Driver Training came to us in search of a company that could refresh their online presence and give them control over the updating of their site. Using our own purpose-built Content Management Sytem, we ticked both boxes. The Inspire site uses custom photography and all manner of cheeky back end functionality - ask us to take a look at how easy it is to update a website!

Images On are a collective of highly skilled designers, printers and photographers who have come together to pool their considerable talents. This entirely bespoke site allows users to upload a photo or select from an online catalogue of thousands, pay online and receive a professional quality print or canvas.

In2Blinds offer an extensive range of made-to-measure blinds at extremely attractive prices, all of which means lots of work for them and all manner of planning headaches for us! This completely bespoke e-commerce engine uses Google Checkout to process an almost infinite number of permutations and combinations. After lunch, we invaded Poland.

The Football Supporters International network (FSI) is an independent union of various football fan-related organisations that have taken up football supporters' interests and provided and developed “fans’ embassy” services for football supporters travelling abroad for more than 15 years. This is their website, translated into six different languages, if you please.

People keep asking us why we didn't do anything in March - for the record, folks, we did plenty in March, thank you very much. in early 2008 we were involved as subcontractors in the design and build of two complex and ambitious web design projects, neither of which we can show here for contractual reasons. So you'll just have to believe us when we say they are by far the best work we've ever done.

"The boy whose skin fell off" is the Emmy award-winning documentary about Jonny Kennedy. It is most watched documentary in history of television. Jonny died from a rare condition called Recessive Dystrophic Epidermolysis Bullosa (or EB), aged 36, and his legacy is a charity that informs and helps fellow EB sufferers in his name.

While you lot have been scoffing mince pies it's been another busy month here at Azure. First finished this month we have the magnificently dramatic Dreambox Theatre Company - a super-slick brochureware website with some great back end features, nice animation and even sound... so don't try it at work!

Back in the dark ages of 2004, when the world wide web was a lawless wasteland, two plucky photographers, Dave and Paul, became Azure Design's fifth ever website client. With the attention span of three year olds, the pair were adamant that "it needs to go whizz and bang and make people go 'ooooooh'". It did. So much so, in fact, that they've come back to us to update it and showcase their award-winning photography skills.

Here at Azure Design, we aren't prejudiced. No, we'll take money off any fly-by-night cowboy operation. Sadly cowboys don't tend to need websites, but those cheeky, chirpy, southern Cockerneys at the Arsenal Supporters' Trust do. This is theirs. Nice, isn't it!? Too good for a bunch of southerners, bah!

Andrew Blunt is the PGA golf professional at Seaham Golf Club. Bargain Golf Equipment is the online shop that Andrew runs selling, um, golf equipment at bargain prices. Two years ago, Andrew was a knuckle-dragging neanderthal when it came to computers, today he's an internet super-geek on the brink of taking over the world. Yay for him!

Nucom aims to become the preferred supplier of managed services, mobile and fixed telecommunications to the UK business market. Formerly Northern Utilities, Azure Design worked with the Nucom team on the re-naming, re-branding and re-launching of the company, a process that has tangible benefits to their bottom line; just ring them and ask!

One word - Pacman! Yes, at the bottom of Buttercup Nursery's colourful new homepage, you'll find a link to a Pacman game we did for them and it's great. Honestly, nothing got done in the office while this site was in the workflow... and with three nurseries under the Buttercup banner, each with its own minisite, mailing list, parents' area etc. that was quite a while. Did you make the high score list then?

Sunderland-based solicitors Longden Walker & Renney approached Azure Design to develop two mini-sites targeting specific sectors of their market. As a result, we've created a website for Clinical Negligence and one for Personal Injury that appeal to a demographic that is completely different from their core market at www.longdens.co.uk.

"Fillworth UK spezialisiert sich als mittelständisches Unternehmen seit mehr als 25 Jahren auf die Entwicklung und Fertigung von Misch." How do we know this? Because we clicked on the German translation at the top of the Fillworth UK brochureware website. Wie komme ich am bestem zum Bahnhoff? Who cares? If you want to buy industrial mixing equipment, Fillworth are your fellas!

Cater Recon Limited has been providing quality new and reconditioned catering equipment to the North East of England since the year 2000 and has steadily built an enviable reputation for customer satisfaction... or at least that's what it says on their fantastic new website built to showcase their range of new and reconditioned catering equipment. We fiddled with the griddles and put some lovin' into the ovens, creating this simple to navigate site in the process.

East Durham Business Service is the Enterprise Agency for the District of Easington. Part of the National Federation of Enterprise Agencies (NFEA) it offers small and medium sized businesses and those wishing to start their own business the support needed. This wide-ranging and expansive site incorporates a commercial property database, business directory and apprenticeship information, full content management and mailshot facilities. Phew! What a whopper!

County Durham-based Altec Engineering are an engineering company changing rapidly. Since their original website launched in November 2005, the company have added a precision engineering department and broken into the aerospace industry. This brochure site has been overhauled to reflect Altec's transition.

Quality Discount Furniture is the on-line arm of a northeast-based furniture retailer. The company began selling some of their range on E-Bay last year and within six months had doubled its turnover. The QDF website is its new permanent on-line home with full e-commerce capabilities and more fantastic products than you can shake a suede-brush at.

Tipple Associates are a product design and engineering consultancy working with established companies to develop their products and source funding. Incorporating 3D modeling of their baseball logo, their visually simple brochure site is easy to use, search engine friendly and accessible.

Alan Hillary Events needed a slick web presence to showcase the wide range of high profile events they organise. This brochure site uses XHTML with CSS to produce an up-to-date, search engine friendly and accessible site. Ooooooh, and doesn't it look fresh?

Reprotec are Specialist Contractors with a respected pedigree in resin flooring. Their wide range of expertise after twenty years in the business made this brochure website extremely broad-reaching.

A full e-commerce site offering Gems and Fossils' customers a wide range of unique, one-off gems and fossils in raw form and as jewelry. The site uses a standard shopping cart with secure credit card capture, maintaining a friendly and fun feel.

Look2Move is a website that allows its visitors to buy, sell or rent a home themselves. This complex site was programmed in its entirety in house at Azure Design and includes a number of advanced features from searches to favourite property lists, 360-degree virtual tours to Pay pal payments.

Crackerjax combines indoor adventure play facilities with a childrens' nursery in Crook, County Durham. This challenging site has two distinct sections representing the two very different sides to the company.

An e-commerce website selling machinery and consumables to the welding industry, this complex site mixes a standard secure shopping cart with bespoke programming to produce a stunning and visually exciting online shop.

This brand new, purpose-built Durham nursery needed a professional, eye-catching and fully updatable website built and launched before the nursery building was even completed.

Tax-dodging, daytime TV-watching layabout mummy's boys need somewhere to play their Maximo Park CDs and a well-established Durham property website chose us to design a fully content managed brochure website with database-driven search facilities. Over 90% of their properties were rented out 4 weeks after the site went live.

Brand development, logo design and an animation led brochure website were the cornerstones of this project for an electronics-based product development company. The unique colour scheme and quirky design make the company stand out from the crowd.

The Venerable Bede Church of England Secondary School wanted a complex brochure website to carry a vast range and depth of information. The site contains provision for a message board, restricted staff only area an updatable news area and an email distribution list.

Option C is a brand new, Durham-based car sharing club. They approached Azure Design to help develop their online presence, linked to a third party software developer.

The website of Sunderland's fastest-growing Estate Agents, Goodlife Homes combines our strongly branded front end with an integrated third party property search facility. There's even a spot of animation to boot!

Technical Food experts CSJ Management required a simple brochure website, accessible to AAA standard that utilised flash animation to reinforce the company's new brand ID. We were engaged to provide the lot, and are delighted with the simple, striking and high quality feel the company decided upon employing.

Anni Fentiman and Dave Webber are renowned folk singers promoting their own unique material and as well as the work of other artists. Their new website required a distinctive atmospheric design as well as full content management, including the ability to upload MP3 music clips and song lyrics.

They may well be the poshest spuds on the planet and their home, Tiptoe Farm may well have won the Beautiful Farm award, but Carroll’s Heritage Potatoes are right up there when it comes to a marketing strategy. Their new online shop is entirely managed in-house (or even in-farm!), and incorporates flash animation and a host of clever back end jiggery-pokery.

As a well established local sign-maker and advertising specialist, Vasey Signs required a friendly, colourful and fully updatable website. Like all sites we now produce, the website conforms to AA accessibility standards using CSS layout. Flash is also used to add a little movement.

Sckill 4 Sport required an online shop through which to sell their superior quality cricket and sporting equipment with a front end that organised and promoted the coaching arm of the company.

Durham and Newcaslte-based counseling and training service, The Road Centre, required a warm and inviting web presence through which to attract new clients and communicate to existing ones. Note the inclusion of a client mailing list in this serene online environment.

An entirely bespoke system comprising of a front end design for customers and an elaborate back end system with full management control over stock, enquiries and staff.

Please Note: Links to this site take you to a copy of the original version on our servers and not the live site which has been modified by the company

The North's largest indoor adventure playground needed an online presence to extend their brand identity and complement their TV advertising campaign.