Design Collective

About Us

The Oblong Design collective is a new group established to provide all manner of multimedia services to the local community. The service is free and we will try and help any community group but priority is given to groups without paid staff. From a complete design service to help developing things yourself, we can facilitate a whole range of involvement depending on your needs.

What we can do

Collectively we have experience in a large range of media forms, including but not limited to;

• video editing
• animation
• web design
• print design
• graphic design
• illustration
• photography
• copywriting
• subediting
• proofreading

Examples

Generally, if you need any multimedia or design related service, the chances are we can provide it! As a few examples of our work, all the following were either aided or entirely developed by the design collective:

• The Oblong Website, designed for accessibility using XHTML and CSS. PHP & mySQL are used to provide a site database allowing easy updates, and everything was developed using Bluefish, an open source development tool. Other members of the collective have also designed websites using Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks.
• Printed Circuit, local electronic musicians, have edited a video for their new single here using Adobe Premier and the video capture facilities.
• We helped Breakers Unify create and author a street art DVD.
• We do the print layout and design for Arise using QuarkXpress, a newsletter by Leeds Women
  Together.
• We produced publicity in the form of posters and flyers for BAD with Photoshop and CorelDraw as well as materials for Raise the Roof, a one day community festival.
• Hurley Burley, a magazine for Burley and Hyde Park is entirely produced by the design collective, from print layout, design and illustration to photography and proof reading.

Other Stuff

LOpSCoSuG, Oblong's in house Linux/open source advocates design all their publicity using other open source, free tools such as The GIMP (for image editing), Scribus (for DTP) and Inkscape (vector illustration) - so you don't need to worry about buying expensive packages if you want to use them at home! And last but not least, the new Oblong Logo was designed by our skilled team of illustrators and designers - although we've been saying that for months...As we are a volunteer collective, we always need new people to get involved. Don't worry if you think you are lacking in skills, the collective is a fantastic place to learn existing skills and develop
new ones! As a case in point, I'd never used QuarkXpress before Tuesday and with the willing in house support I'm using it to design this report that's sitting in your hands!

You also don't worry about being out of pocket as Oblong can pay your lunch and travel expenses in return for a day's work. We have meetings every Tuesday at 1pm for all who wish to join or find out more.