The client

HP wanted its printers to earn their keep beyond the office document. The proposition was simple and ahead of its time: give small businesses templates and online tools, let them customise marketing collateral in software they already owned, and print it in-house on an HP colour printer. HP's own materials from the period made the promise explicit: brochures, fliers, presentations and postcards, created without a design agency or a print shop.

We delivered this work at Agilisys between 2000 and 2005, through the Customer Experience Design department that Jonathan went on to head: a dedicated team of business analysts, user experience professionals and testers.

The challenge

Small businesses needed credible marketing materials, but professional design and print were expensive, slow and often intimidating. HP's opportunity was to make collateral creation feel accessible and guided, and to tie it to hardware customers already owned. The hard part was bridging two worlds that did not naturally connect: web-based discovery and template selection on one side, offline editing and physical printing on the other. And it all had to work for people who were emphatically not designers.

What we did

UI design and usability testing for HP's design-and-print web experience: the destination where a small-business owner browsed template categories, chose a collateral type, and was guided through to a printable result. The work sat at the intersection of template discovery, small-business brand identity, desktop publishing and printer marketing, and every one of those seams had to be invisible to the user.

Our approach

We built the information architecture around small-business tasks rather than HP's product lines, designed the interfaces for template discovery and selection, and then tested the whole journey relentlessly with the people it was for: non-designers who needed professional results without professional tools.

That testing ran in our own usability labs in Hammersmith, kitted out with the cutting-edge tools of the day: eye-tracking software, a one-way mirror for observing users, and an early interactive TV suite for demos and testing. The same lab supported a run of early interactive TV work for clients including Sky and TUI Travel. We designed within the honest constraints of the era: downloadable files, desktop publishing formats and early browsers, all shaped into a journey a busy business owner could actually finish.

Outcome

The work formed part of a wider HP move toward self-service marketing creation for small businesses, and HP kept investing in the model. It became the publicly named HP Creative Studio and HP Creative Studio for Business (the same product line), expanding internationally, including into the UK, with in-house design-and-print positioned as a clear cost saving against traditional print.

Why it still matters

This is, in effect, an early version of today's design-to-print economy. The pattern we helped shape (browse a template, customise it, print or order it) is now the default, mainstreamed by tools like Canva. Useful proof that the people behind New Brand Media were designing and lab-testing self-service design systems two decades before the category had a name.

Context & coverage

The proposition we worked on is well documented in its later public form. HP Creative Studio and HP Creative Studio for Business gave consumers and small businesses a single entry point to free templates, identity and presentation kits, royalty-free imagery and online classes, partnering names like Martha Stewart Living, Disney and DreamWorks on the consumer side and StockLayouts, iStockphoto, Corel and Intuit for small business. The pitch was explicit: create professional marketing materials in-house without hiring a design agency.

• HP Creative Studio (StockLayouts), HP introduces small business marketing tools (Duct Tape Marketing), and DIY small business marketing materials (Small Business Computing): the design-and-print proposition and its partner ecosystem.

The client

Channel 5 is one of the UK's major broadcasters. In 2012, with audiences spending their time inside Facebook rather than on brand websites, Channel 5 wanted a social campaign that lived where the conversation was actually happening. New Brand Media designed and built it.

The challenge

Running a social campaign on Facebook in this era meant more than posting to a page. It meant building a custom branded experience inside Facebook's own app framework: an environment with its own rules, its own user behaviour and no room for a traditional website mindset. The campaign also had to bring Channel 5's YouTube video into the experience itself, so audiences could watch without being sent away from the platform.

What we did

We delivered the social media campaign, UX design, Facebook development and YouTube channel integration for Channel 5: a branded campaign experience built natively inside Facebook, with video at its heart.

Our approach

We designed for the platform, not against it. The experience was built inside Facebook's framework and shaped around how people actually behave in a social feed: short attention, instant payoff, everything one tap away. Integrating the YouTube channel meant Channel 5's video content played within the campaign itself, keeping audiences engaged with the brand rather than bouncing between platforms.

Outcome

Channel 5 got a branded Facebook campaign with integrated YouTube video, designed and built by New Brand Media as a direct engagement in social campaign design and in-platform UX.

Context & coverage

This work sits in the brief window when Facebook brand pages and app-canvas experiences were the centre of social marketing, before the platform wound that format down.

The client

McDonald's needs no introduction. From late 1999 through 2007 we were the sole digital delivery team for McDonald's UK at NetDecisions → Agilisys. That covered the main UK website, every campaign microsite, and the digital infrastructure that carried each monthly Happy Meal partnership online. The Marketing Store led the offline campaign creative and packaging; we owned everything that shipped on the web. Jonathan left Agilisys in 2007 to found New Brand Media.

Jonathan joined NetDecisions in late 1999 under John Stevens as Head of Design. As those blue-chip accounts moved properly online, the design team matured into a full Customer Experience Design department, pioneering some of the earliest web usability labs in their Hammersmith offices. Parents from McDonald's focus groups tested prototypes under eye tracking while analysts watched from behind a one-way mirror: the research kit the stakes now demanded. When John left to pursue a doctorate at Cambridge on design as a strategic tool, Jonathan took over as Head of Customer Experience Design.

The challenge

In 2000 most companies still treated the web as a sideshow. McDonald's needed the opposite. The site had to work as an extension of the marketing armoury, aligned with every offline agency and campaign. It had to build loyalty, refresh often enough to reward return visits, and hold up under very high concurrent traffic. At this scale, one weak page is a brand story, not a bug report.

What we did

We delivered art direction, design, and the technical build for the McDonald's UK website and its campaign programme. Consumer focus groups shaped the strategy from branding through to launch. Families sat at the centre: promotions, Happy Meals, company information, and community.

Almost every month brought a new Happy Meal partnership. The Marketing Store (working from Disney and other licensors) led packaging redesign and in-store creative. We built the digital half that made those promotions run. That meant competition mechanics, technical infrastructure for cup peel-offs and other in-store entry routes, and full campaign microsites where the brief needed a standalone experience.

Named work from the period includes Text-a-Monster for Disney·Pixar's Monsters, Inc., Popstars and POP & TXT, Lilo & Stitch, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, The Muppet Show, Mac Premier, Mr Men, The Beano Online, Hot Wheels, and Barbie. We also delivered the FIFA World Cup 2002 UK microsite, including animation created for the Piccadilly Circus McDonald's screen. Several of those promotions, including POP & TXT and The Incredibles, used cup tear-off mechanics that depended on the web and SMS infrastructure we shipped.

The same account also shipped the Eat Smart information architecture, a nutrition calculator, and the Salads Plus site. That was the first digital presentation of McDonald's healthier brand story.

The delivery detail mattered as much as the design. A content management system let non-technical McDonald's staff update pages themselves. Look-and-feel stayed rigid. Performance testing was rigorous before every go-live.

Our approach

Integrated, not isolated. The site had to carry core brand values across every offline touchpoint, not chase design awards in a vacuum. Kids Zone extended each month's Happy Meal partnership onto the web, because for McDonald's the repeat visit mattered as much as the first one.

Outcome

Nearly eight years of sustained McDonald's UK web work, on an account where the client itself recognised a step change in its digital thinking:

And from the agency side of the account:

Context & coverage

This was the period when McDonald's was building a serious digital presence. The UK site as it looked in 2000 is preserved in the Web Design Museum. "I'm lovin' it" (2003) became its first global multichannel campaign with coordinated digital rollout. The UK web and microsite work sat at the front of that shift.

NetDecisions named McDonald's among its board-level, blue-chip clients in its July 2000 corporate brochure, alongside Marconi, Thomson Travel Group, and the AA.

• McDonald’s UK history: official timeline for the UK digital relationship (built from 1999, live from 2000).
• McDonald’s in 2000 (Web Design Museum): snapshot of the UK site from the period.

The client

The NSPCC is one of the UK's best-known children's charities, and its website works harder than most. It is where people come to donate, to join campaigns, to find advice, and to reach safeguarding information, often at moments that matter. Every one of those visitors has to trust what they see.

We worked on the account at NetDecisions / Agilisys. Jonathan was senior designer on the engagement (distinct from later New Brand Media work such as ChildLine Gringtones advertising with Disney).

The challenge

A national charity site serves many audiences at once: supporters, parents, children, and professionals, each arriving with different needs and different levels of urgency. The design had to keep the brand clear and the path to support obvious for all of them. For an organisation like the NSPCC, clarity and trust matter more than visual flourish.

What we did

We designed the NSPCC's full corporate web presence: corporate website design for the charity's main site.

Our approach

We designed for breadth and trust. A clear hierarchy guides each audience to what they need, the routes to give and to get help are unmissable, and the presentation stays calm and dependable, in keeping with the NSPCC brand. Nothing competes with the content, because on a site like this the content is the point.

Outcome

A corporate website design delivered for one of the UK's most recognised children's charities, as design work under NetDecisions / Agilisys rather than a New Brand Media client engagement.