Creative

Since the company was founded, Lightstone has worked with a broad range of customers and market sectors ranging from the financial services sector to household names such as the BBC and Nestlé.

Based upon the information discovered during the IA & Consultancy phase, our designers deliver creative concepts to meet the requirements set out.

Depending on the criteria set by our customers, the design team can deliver completely original ideas, or where necessary, deliver website designs according to specific corporate guidelines.  See Clients for examples.  

Working with the design team

Having received the design brief delivered following the IA/Consultancy phase, our designers deliver top-line creative concepts.  Through an iterative process, feedback is taken and the concepts are refined.  Finally the winning concept is selected, ready to be converted into website concepts which will be linked into the functional development of the site.  

Complying to build standards and ensuring Accessibility

As well as ensuring the creative elements of the concepts, the design team will also ensure that websites comply to the required levels of accessibility, and to the correct website build standards.  From an accessibility perspective, we ensure that web pages can be accessed by visitors using screen reader, and other, technologies.

These standards include:

Accessibility Level	Accessibility Level Explanation
WCAG Priority 1	A Web content developer must satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it impossible to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint is a basic requirement for some groups to be able to use Web documents.
WCAG Priority 2	A Web content developer should satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will remove significant barriers to accessing Web documents.
WCAG Priority 3	A Web content developer may address this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it somewhat difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will improve access to Web documents.
PAS 78	A guide to good practice in commissioning accessible websites' is for those responsible for commissioning or maintaining public-facing websites and web-based services.

From a build standards perspective, we ensure that pages conform to internationally agreed standards laid out by W3C*, and to the standards specific to the different industries we work in.  

Tools of the trade

Our creative team use a broad range of technologies and creative tools to deliver the designs our customers require.  These include Adobe Flash, Photoshop and Illustrator as well as a host of other tools that are relevant to the job in hand.

In terms of the languages that our design team use to build pages, these include:

Application/Language	Application/Language Example
HTML	View W3C's HTML Explanation
XHTML	View W3C's XHTML Explanation
CSS	View W3C's CSS Explanation
Flash Actionscript 2.0	ActionScript is a scripting language based on ECMAScript, and is associated with scripting behavior of Adobe Flash applications. With ActionScript, a flash application can provide a high level of interactivity, which is a necessary component of modern web design.

This is by no means a finite list, and we enjoy using a much wider range of tools and languages depending on our customers' requirements.

Once the Creative elements are finalised, and the website templates have been put together, we now move onto the Development & Implementation phase.  In some cases the Creative Design and Development & Implementation phases can run concurrently.