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Sheffield Adventure Film Festival

The greatest adventures online - proper planning and preparation prevents **** poor performance.

The Client

ShAFF organises the best line up of adventure films anywhere, over a single weekend, every year. It takes place in the biggest independent cinema outside of London, recently voted best cultural venue in the region. Wow.

The Brief

To redesign the website and integrate a film selection tool that allows thousands and thousands of festival visitors to choose films and an itinerary.
To create a thoroughly modern media experience where films can be easily previewed and reviewed if necessary.
To redesign festival promotional literature.

The Process and Challenges

• To design and create a new look and feel to festival programme and other print marketing material
• Redesign of existing look and feel of the website while retaining festival branding as and where appropriate
• To completely rebuild and redevelop the whole website prior to porting previous archive material across
• To build a website that receives an enormous number of hits just prior to and over the festivals weekend
• The whole project required a dedicated team of 6 individuals and some careful planning to prevent a disaster over the weekend

The Skills

Design, Graphic Design and Website Design
Coding and Development
CMS (Content Management System)
SEO consultancy
Hosting services and database optimisation for the weekend's spike of hits

The Requirements

Website Design, development and hosting
• Fast turnaround - the whole proect was carried out in under 4 weeks.

Website Social Networking and Media
• Vimeo / YouTube - Feeds to specific pages
• Vimeo / YouTube - Feeds to the home page
• News - Onsite news feed to the home page
• Twitter - Main tweets to feed to the home page
• Facebook - Specific feeds to the home page

Website film and events calendarised pages
• Pages required date management as multiple viewing of the same event required concurrent publishing

Website downloads and Media Area
• To create a dedicated area for media resources incorporating popular social media websites and online storage

Website onsite search
• Extended onsite 'smart search' algorithm that presents a quick search onsite with a series of prioritised results

Online advertising
Banner advert design

Print Media
On page advertising
Outdoor banner advertising
Bus stop posters
Flyer design
Festival brochure and timetable design
Indoor banners and signage

The Outcome

Huge numbers of festival visitors were able to visit and use the website without any slowing down of server services.
The festival was a success with more visitors than ever before.
The printed material was reported as being clearer and more easily understood than previously.

Testimonial

'It’s always been a pleasure working with the guys at Hammer. They deliver a very good end result with an absolute minimum of fuss, and are very down to earth and approachable to boot.'
Matt Heason.