Black Square is proud to announce a new value-added service offering: full content management services for our clients. From basic website content to newsletters, blogs and social media, we can handle it all for our clients at very reasonable rates. Our research and writing team are experienced at writing in various styles and for many […]

The new website of fine artist Bronwen Vaughan-Evans was launched recently. Black Square did a complete overhaul of her previous design, and created a new CMS that gives her far greater control over her image galleries. This was Bronwen’s response: “I think it looks amazing and it is so simple to use. Their design enables […]

During January, Black Square launched the Guest House Pack and the Photographer’s Pack. These low-cost website packages are ideal for small businesses, allowing owners to take full control of their website content and update quickly and easily. Simple, clean design is included in the package cost, so this isn’t just your standard ‘populate the template’ […]

We held our Black Square end-of-year party a little early this year, as we were afraid if we left it too late the youngest member of our team might make an early appearance. Our supremely capable office manager, Clare, has now gone on maternity leave, and we all eagerly await the arrival of Leila Marais […]

Black Square has a great relationship with the Durban branch of Vega. We visit a couple of times each year with the multimedia students to see what they have planned and give feedback. Those sessions are always hugely interesting – the students have great ideas, and the lecturers are good at getting them to articulate those ideas. At the annual showcase, Black Square gives an award to the student whose work we find most promising and exciting.

This is a post for designers – it’s a primer on what you need to know when you start designing an email invitation or newsletter, looking at the differences between designing for print & email, and a case study to show how an email design gets put together.

We developed the African Micro Mills site in 2009. The business has undergone a restructure so we’ve shifted the focus on the site to show their updated offering. Visit the African Micro Mills website.

Most of the time, we get asked for web design. This is fine – we do very nice web design – but describing the creation of a website as “web design” misses out some fundamental considerations that go into creating a successful website. We’re going to look at the first step in the grand process of “web design” which is known as: Wireframes.

You see it all over: A really neat virtual book or magazine where you can simply click & drag to page through. It’s one of the best pieces of interaction on the web, mainly because it effectively re-creates a real-world experience – no plugins or experience needed. We cover how to set it up, and discuss issues and solutions.

Some websites need a search facility – on a complex site with lots of pages, it can be a quick and simple way for a user to find what they’re looking for. One of the best search facilities we’ve found is Google’s Custom Search facility. Simply put, it is a Google search that is restricted to searching for stuff on your website.