One of the reasons we started Icelab is that we wanted to spend more time designing and less time decorating.
The question is not ‘how can this look better?’ The question is ‘how can this work better?’
That requires deeper thinking. It means asking more questions. What is it for? What should it do? For whom? What assumptions do we need to unpack and discard? Which ones do we recognise as valuable and keep?
We design beautiful websites, then build them to last with standards-based, accessible HTML/CSS, and pair them up with solid backends. Our JavaScript mojo is second to none, and all your Web 2.0 needs are accommodated. We can take your existing identity and build a great online presence, or start from scratch and build your brand across all media.
It’s one thing building a pretty website: it’s quite something else to build a working web application. We’re experienced at understanding business processes and finding ways make them faster, easier, and more robust. We favour open-source development using Ruby on Rails: we’re also experts in the Symphony content management framework.
We love building informative, engaging interactives for museums, galleries and other cultural institutions. It gives us an opportunity to explore ways of telling those stories in new ways. It’s even better when we combine digital design with lighting, sound and spatial design to create an immersive experience.
We like to take our designs out into the world, building permanent and temporary exhibition spaces which integrate interactive and traditional media with industrial and interior design. We can handle all aspects of the process from concepts and specification through to development and production logistics.
People hire designers for different reasons. Design for selling a product. Design for selling the designer. Design for its own sake. We like doing design for thinking. We like finding graceful, intelligent and sometimes beautiful ways to present information and tell a story.
It’s about telling the truth, not trying to hide it behind a glossy facade.
It’s about making complex ideas understandable without dumbing them down. That’s why we like working with people who put considerable effort into what’s being said—not just how to say it.
We’re media-agnostic: rather than come to a problem with a solution in mind, we work with you to find the right way to tell your story.
The best answer to a given problem might be any (or a combination) of a number of different approaches: print, video, interactive, online, environmental.
Want to chat? Call us on (02) 6162 0241 (03) 9416 3198or send us an email via hello@icelab.com.au
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As part of our process, we call on a wide range of skills, including design, development, writing, strategy and project management.