Not a web design agency

Internet Lab Studio is not a web design agency. It is the commercial limited company front for David Harris, a freelance web designer based in Devon.

A web design agency has many specialist employees: one takes care of the server, one the databases and scripting engines, graphic designers pass their work to a web developer who creates pages from them.

I am the Swiss-army knife of web designers — a multi-specialist. I run my own servers, configuring them to the exact needs of my clients. My educational background is in both graphic design and engineering, and I have been working with web technologies since the boom of the mid-90s.

My experience having worked for several agencies is that communication often gets in the way of creating a great website. As a designer and developer in an agency, you get to know a client's aims third or fourth hand. The client talks to the project manager who talks to the senior designer who talks to the design team.

Sometimes the client's ideas get lost. Sometimes the technical know-how never reaches the client. I work across all web disciplines, so there's no lengthy internal back-and-forth. It really is easier to deal person to person.

Clients shouldn't need to know a lot of technical terms, but they should know how design decisions will affect their business. In short, they should talk to the design team. The design team is me. As someone commissioning a website, you should stay informed but not overwhelmed — that is my aim.

I try to work transparently and to benefit your organisation as much as possible by using the best design and development practices available.