Posts about !frappant

!frappant, a cross-media production company, was my employer between 2011 and spring 2017.

  • The desk at my third employer in Switzerland isn’t in as nice an office as the white-and-red-brick one at Burson-Marsteller, and the view – of a car park and dusty four-storey apartment block common to the Breitenrain district – isn’t a patch on the one I had of the lake and the mountains in Brienz. Nevertheless,…

  • The latest project we’ve launched at !frappant is for SBB (Swiss Railways): a microsite for the Rail Control System team, which promotes their work controlling the flow of rail traffic throughout the national network.

  • CSS Flexbox has been ready for mainstream use for a while now, and I’ve implemented it on a third client project for my employer.

  • My employer re-branded recently, which meant a new corporate identity and a new website using Zurb Foundation, CSS Flexbox and TYPO3.

  • We could do with a comprehensive, multilingual list of Swiss localities for work projects, so after a bit of digging and a suggestion from Habi, I came across a reference on which to base the list. After tidying it and converting it to tab-separated format (for optimal use in Excel), I’ve made it publicly accessible as…

  • Relaxed portraits with a shallow depth-of-field at a recent company event.

  • Finnenkerze

    The staple of an outdoor drinks party in Switzerland – mainly in winter, but also occasionally during other seasons – is the Finnenkerze (“Finnish Candle”).

  • My erstwhile mentor in Brienz taught me throughout our years working together that if a website functionality is worth creating, it’s worth creating so that it can be used in more than one project. Programme once, install many times. This is a credo I’ve maintained since I started programming for content management systems and one…

  • I’m not a fan of one-page websites, as a rule. But making sure that they load as quickly as possible goes a long way to making them acceptable.

  • When coming up with ideas for new websites or coming up with a use for a new design idea, the reason for the website or app is often on which slows the initial impetus for a designer or front-end coder. Sure, you have this great idea for a design, but what to use it for?

  • Using CSS pseudo elements to add diagonal borders and edges to the sides of block level elements.

  • “Aareböötle”

    I took part in our company day out yesterday, when we went down the river Aare from Schwellenmätteli in Bern, beneath the towering heights of Bern’s old city, to Eymatt, on the north western edge of the city suburbs. Although it sounds like a city-centre trip, the area around the river in and near Bern…

  • Back in 2011, the organizers of Bike To Work Switzerland approached my employer !frappant Webfactory to re-develop their website and the participants’ admin system. I worked with a third-party usability consultant to re-think and re-design the project, before I carried out the design work in Photoshop and the team and I subsequently produced the website on the base…

  • Flexible by default

    One of the great things about being responsible for the technical direction of a team of developers is that you get to bring your ideas to a project and, in many instances, try out new techniques which would otherwise only be seen on a personal website or blog. I wrote at the beginning of the…

  • After two and a half years with the Burson-Marsteller Crossmedia team in Bern, I’ve decided to return to my roots as a programmer and technical developer and I’m moving across town to work for web agency !frappant from 1st April 2011.

  • Both we at Burson-Marsteller Crossmedia and our client were delighted to find out earlier this week that the website gene-abc.ch, which we re-developed and re-launched during 2009, has received a place in the annual awards given by Anthrazit magazine here in Switzerland for the “Best 200 Swiss Websites of the Year”.

  • A small selection of my favourite photos from the Satzart/!frappant/book4you/flabs anniversary party, in Uptown on the hill at Gurten, on the outskirts of Bern.

  • SprainTV

    Manuel Reinhard (also known through his personal website and Twitter stream as “sprain”) has recently launched a regular video podcast in review of the week’s happenings in the Swiss internet scene.