The wonderful web
A lot’s changed in the past 25 years on the web. And it’s nice to see that some of it hasn’t. What we recognise as websites today are utterly different than in the late 90s. Good content and design that serves user needs, proper web standards that work across browsers, accessibility, security, data privacy, e-commerce, and a host of sophisticated tools to help us create websites. But many of the principles I started out with remain the same today.
Back in the hazy days of 1999, I was one year out from graduating (English Literature) and working in the historic Sinclair Building for the Computing Services department of Anglia Polytechnic University (now Anglia Ruskin).
I registered the domain studio24.net and started to design and build websites in my spare time. I had a very understanding employer who was happy to let me work part-time to support this goal. I’m very grateful to Nicky Morland and Thomas Rochford for helping me at the start.
My first experience building websites was designing the Anglia University website (built with a team of 3, it lasted around 5 years) and web work with a range of Cambridge University folk including working on the first Varsity student newspaper website (where I was also Film Editor), an interactive murder mystery called the Armadillo Agenda, and creative writing online magazine Spark. I also taught teachers at Anglia how to update web pages, using plain HTML and text editors. People seemed to pick it up pretty quickly!
In April 2000 I registered the business and my work started properly. Our first company website (captured by the Web Archive in May 2000) states:
We believe in a world-wide-web available to all, with no barriers to entry into the industry and a wider understanding of the technologies underpinning the internet in an effort to increase trust and usage in the medium of the future.
In web design we believe a website should be accessible to all, not dependent on the latest browser or plug-in. To this end we design sites that are fast-loading, compatible with all the major browsers including text-to-speech browsers used by the disabled and new innovations such as WebTV.
Slightly clunky phrasing aside, my belief in an open and accessible web has remained constant. Our current website says:
Building a better web, together
Studio 24 is a thriving digital design and technology agency in the heart of Cambridge. We work with arts, education, charity and public sector organisations to make websites and web apps that work for everyone.
We’re building a more accessible, sustainable web – one impactful project at a time.
The technology may have changed, but the values and vision remain the same.
The early days of Studio 24
At the start of my career, I worked with a variety of clients, from tech education firm Logotron in Cambridge Science Park to the investor relations arm of John Menzies Plc in Edinburgh.
I also had a spell of teaching at Anglia, between 2000 and 2003 working with Bill Jenks teaching Communication Studies students how to build websites in Macromedia Dreamweaver and Photoshop.
2003 saw Studio 24 turn into a team and a proper business. Our first office at Hope Street and our first employee. I have fond memories of me and my business partner Jonathan Woods putting in the laminate flooring and painting the walls to get the office ready!
Hope Street, off Mill Road, was a rather eclectic yard full of antique sellers and other creative companies. It was a fun introduction to office life.
We started our relationship with the Erasmus scheme, with Roberta Volani working on an internship with us for 6 months. We continued working with talented Erasmus students from Europe, many coming from Howest University of Applied Sciences in Belgium.
Building our team
After I met Isaac at my first public talk (on XML at a Cambridge Usability event) he first joined us as a web designer in 2007. He left in 2011 for a stint at local tech firm Redgate but then rejoined in 2015 which was a fantastic example of a good member of staff believing in Studio 24 enough to return!
He’s now Design Director and helps bridge the gap between strategy, design, and build.
This is the only job I’ve ever returned to. It’s simply because of Simon’s passion for the web and how the agency works in a considerate and ethical way for both our clients and the Studio 24 team.
Building our skills
We started working on more complex projects, building membership systems for arts organisations, database systems for the University of London (UKAT: The UK Archival Thesaurus), and building a CMS for the Arts Council.
We recently continued our work with the University of London on a web app for Mapping the Humanities.
I’ve always been a film fan, as well as being a film editor of Varsity I worked in the old Cambridge Arts Cinema as a student. In 2007 we started our relationship with the Cambridge Film Festival by working on the festival website. Cambridge has always been important to us and we play an active part in the local community.
This relationship has gone from strength to strength and in 2016 I became a trustee of the charity.
Growing the agency
By 2008 we were a team of 10 and looking to expand offices. We moved to St. Stephen’s Place a year later; our first ‘grown-up’ office.
In 2009 we won a contract with Crossrail, the start of our public sector journey. I still remember the pitch meeting, around half a dozen agency folk squashed into a room high up in Canary Wharf answering questions on how we’d support Crossrail with their digital journey.
We went on to work on the digital side of the Crossrail project for 13 years until the Elizabeth Line opened in 2022. It was a great experience, with a fantastic team to work with at Crossrail, and two fascinating site tours of the tunnels and the stations.
A change of structure
After 11 years working together my vision for the company was no longer the same as Jonathan’s and I decided to part ways, taking on the helm by myself.
This proved a good, healthy decision and the agency grew to a team of 18 working more with national clients, often in the charity and public sector. During this time we started working with UK Parliament, Crown Commercial Service, and London Heathrow Airport.
Winning W3C
In 2019 we tendered for one of the largest projects of our history, redesigning the industry web standards body W3C (founded by the inventor of the web)! We won the project and started it in March 2020, a time that also saw the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The W3C project was a pleasure to work on and the team felt a big responsibility to be working with the custodians of the web. We documented our work in the open and we released the HTML/CSS starter kit we used on the project open source. We are happy to continue to work with W3C to this day.
Settled and excited for the future
The COVID times were tough, but we supported the team through what was a difficult time and came out stronger.
Now, we have a wonderful team full of supportive, talented individuals who work together to do their best work for our clients. We’re currently based in the heart of Cambridge, at Guildhall on Market Square, though we all work remote-first and come together when we need to.
I hope the future brings us more impact-led projects where our team can bring our expertise to make a difference in the world. I also hope we can share more knowledge and tools with the community, sharing some of what we’ve learnt and supporting the open web community we’re all a part of.
Final thoughts
We’ve worked with over 300 clients on many, many website projects! Over the years our work has spanned strategy, user research, design, development, building custom web apps, building two CMS platforms, using lots of other established CMSs, e-Commerce apps, membership systems, architectural competition websites for the Guggenheim Museum, and even CD-ROMs for Cambridge University Press.
It’s been a varied and interesting career!
We’ve built up a huge amount of knowledge on building websites and web apps, helping our clients navigate the often complex and confusing world of digital.
I’ve run community groups Refresh Cambridge and PHP Cambridge. I’ve contributed to open source projects (including Zend Framework and the Web Standards Project).
I’m currently on the BIMA Sustainability Council (a topic that is close to my heart) and I help host digital strategy events with Boye & Co.
I’ve talked at many community and business events, some highlights being DotAll, the Craft CMS conference in Barcelona, and Web Summer Camp in Croatia.
While the landscape of the internet and the web has much changed since the turn of the millennium, the importance of accessibility and building websites using established web standards has never gone away – indeed it’s more important than ever.
In a world of increasing complexity, we believe in a simple approach with clean, accessible code based on established web standards which is more reliable, easier to work on, and results in better-performing websites.
In the words of the 24-year-old me, we believe in building a web that is accessible to all.
I hope that’s something we can continue to do for a long time…
