Why new media is the modern internet

The web has changed. What used to be a medium based on static text and graphics now has video (YouTube, BBC's iPlayer, film rental on iTunes) at its very heart, and the potential for new audiences to be engaged through the use of animated interactive elements. On the other hand, intelligent and accessible information architecture still depends on razor-sharp command of the written word and the graphical image.

A new type of online expertise is now required, which matches perfectly with Johannes Factotum's philosophy of inter-disciplinary work. Our compact, efficient teams of multi-skilled media experts means that the overall concept, technical implementation and use of video, graphics, text and interactive elements and social networking will always be tightly integrated.

Our TRACK RECORD

In his work for the National Theatre, Harold Raitt (aka Johannes) established himself as one of the leading players in arts-based new media in the UK. This reputation was gained as a result of 'punching above the weight' of the small but extremely innovative in-house team he assembled for his work there.

We believe that excellent filmmaking can – and should – be accessible to all types of client:

• If you're a major national or international organisation looking for 100% perfection with high-production values which will compete with the very best in the industry, our expertise, enthusiasm and efficiency means our quote is likely to be the best both in terms of quality and price. We assemble our teams from our wide network of Friends on a project-by-project basis to ensure best fit with your intended market.
• If you're price-constrained (like many of our clients in the arts, cultural and education sectors) we can still provide you with inspirational solutions which will impress, delight and inform your audiences; economies will be necessary, but we will carefully guide you through the ways in which we challenge bloated 'industry-standard' practices in order to provide you with a tailored solutions that can get you 95% of the way to perfection at 30-50% of the cost.

collaboration

We don't pretend to have every single answer; after all, you've got a lot of the knowledge we need to complete the job.

We listen, and we don't try to confuse you with lots of technobabble. You've got the right to expect simple, no-nonsense explanations of our new media work, no matter what the complexity of the situation.

Our network of Friends (and Johannes' polymathic grasp of many different disciplines) makes us extremely flexible in the kind of work we carry out for the corporate sector, but here's a sample of what we can provide:

• INTERACTIVE, MULTIMEDIA-RICH WEBSITES
  Is your website looking like something from 2000 rather than 2010? Send us a brief, or invite us in for a chat and we guarantee to come up with ways to represent your products and services in ways which will excite your customers, reduce your ongoing costs and provide your staff with an inspirational reference point for why they're working for you.
• Product documentation
  If you're launching a new product, you already know that simply providing written documentation is so last year. Customers don't want to spend ages wading through pages of text when they know you could have provided them with, at the very least, an easy-to-understand training video and, at best, an interactive online learning package for more technically complex product lines.
• CONFERENCE SERVICES
  We can provide online platforms to provide a hugely improved experience for your attendees at every stage: marketing, enrolment, pre-attendance, services for the event itself (including mobile device support, Twitter coverage and live web-streaming) and follow-up video and interactive media solutions which can make what happened at your conference available to attendees who missed a session or want a replay ... not to speak of the huge potential audiences who never attended the physical conference in the first place. (By the way, if you're nervous about your big conference speech, check out our special communications skills training for the corporate sector).

Our background in work at the National Theatre was one of the primary impetuses for the foundation of Johannes Factotum and Friends.

We love creating websites and interactive experiences for arts, cultural and charitable clients, because we know from experience how enjoyable the content is to work with and, as all artists know, any creative endeavour can stall right at the start without really great content.

However, we also know that arts, cultural and charitable organisations lack the funding to enable them to commission cutting-edge interactive work from traditional agencies. Over Johannes's three years at the National, he worked hard to develop new ways of working which are particularly efficient and well-suited to the kinds of budgets, timescales and ongoing requirements of the arts and cultural sector; the Online Tour of the National was created for less than 10% of the cost of similar outputs on Stagework, the NT's previous online educational resource. Similarly, when producing the cinema-quality trailer for War Horse, Mike and Harold delivered a perfect product for less than 30% of any other quote.

We would encourage arts and cultural organisations and charities to contact us for a no-obligation discussion of your multimedia potential.

At Johannes Factotum we enjoy working with people, particularly artists and creative individuals. For us, creating an artist's personal website is a special creative opportunity; we enjoy the challenge of trying to rapidly get a feel for your personality so we can come out with a website which really represents you as an individual and your work as a unique body of art.

HOW WE WORK, aND WHAT WE CAN DO

We appreciate that cost is a major factor for individuals, so you'll be provided with our special individual website project pack at our first face-to-face consultation; it gives you the information you need (whatever your technical ability) to assemble all the information and assets that we'll need to create your bespoke website in 1-2 days. Our second face-to-face consultation will give you the opportunity to see your finished site and give you

If you've got the budget, we can take slightly longer to create your website and make available our filmmaking and interactive media expertise; if you're a musician, we can create music videos of you performing ... if you're an actor, we can create showreel for you (whether or not you have any existing film or TV appearances) ... if you're a visual artist we can make a documentary about your working practices and themes underlying your work.

WHY WE'RE DIFFERENT

You might have seen adverts for, or received recommendations about, other companies offering affordable web design for artists. To be entirely honest, many of them pitch for work in that area because they're short of other work to do ... ask yourself:

• What's the rest of their portfolio like ... what work do they do besides small websites for individuals ... do they have a BAFTA nomination for work with a major national arts organisation?
• Why are they interested in working with artists? Is it because they are really passionate about art and the people who make it?
• Do they really make the effort to tailor-make each website so that it really reflects the personality of each of their clients?

Making friends

One of the reasons we like producing websites for artists is that we're also an artistic producing company; we like keeping in touch with the arts world and what's going on in it. We also hope that some of our clients will become Friends who we can work with on some of our artistic and educational projects.