+44 (0)20 3393 7223
+44 (0)20 3393 7223
David Crane, Rob Blake and Greg Plumbly formed NooMedia, in the autumn of 1995, making the company one of the first web design agencies in Europe. This was when domains were £400 a pop, a new Apple laptop cost about the same as a good second-hand car and the fastest speed most people could download at was 14.4k a second. Good old days these were not.
We have created or redesigned over 250 sites in the fifteen years we’ve been in existence. We have a great range of experience, a deep understanding of, and appreciation for, the medium, an ability to work to budget and a firm dedication to hitting deadlines. We’ve got the history, the expertise and the passion to build great web sites. Let us build one for you.
Our initial idea was to create NooTopia, an online shopping centre themed around products cool young things might buy: snowboarding gear, hip-hop CDs, street fashion, graffiti posters, tickets to raves and the like. Probably pretty ambitious when Amazon had only just launched and was still focussing on books.
To earn the money needed to develop NooTopia we started building web sites for other people. Cypress Hill were our first client, the site was their first and also the first Sony Music UK had built. In recognition of all these firsts we charged £250 to build the entire thing; the last time we did that.
Whilst never a great earner, the job was notable for the instant immersion into one of the web’s driving forces. We put a message board on the Cypress Hill site and despite no publicity, not a great many people online (and the best search engine being Altavista) forty messages were posted on it one day after going live. Clearly this was a medium people wanted to contribute to.
Message boards worked particularly well for pop clients like Ant and Dec, Billy Bragg and Sophie Ellis Bextor but even organisations such as the German Car Company benefitted because any community of interest wants to talk amongst itself and wants its peer leaders, in this case the people selling the car parts, to join the conversation.
We sold NooMedia in 1999 and 23 Ltd was born shortly after. At the time the web was exploding in popularity and the range of clients coming to us varied enormously. We built sites for businesses that sold pocket watches, rented houses, helped categorise mushrooms and sold photocopiers or books. We helped nightclubs, pr companies, production houses and even entire streets get online. We worked for hotels, design agencies, scenery makers, financial organisations, campaigning groups, hi-fi retailers, filmmakers, doctors, accountants and fashion designers; amongst others.
We’ve worked with Endemol, the UK government, Avis Europe, Sony Music, Arsenal FC, ITN, the DTi, BMG and the BBC. We’ve provided design, consultancy, hosting, scripting, programming, animation, database, marketing, forum feedback and search engine services. We’ve built sites from scratch, redesigned sites, added elements to sites and recommended ways to make the most of this most wonderful of mediums.
Our skill lies not in building sites for one particular type of business but for a range of small and medium-sized businesses, no matter what that business is. We specialise is good, clean, elegant and purposeful web sites for growing companies with limited budgets.
