One of my first graphic design jobs was at Plum Creative, a small studio in East Boldre in the New Forest. My desk had a view directly onto open forest over ‘Main Road’ which was little more than a country track. Each Friday the whole studio would repair to the Turfcutters Arms for a lamb shank and a couple of pints. Lovely jubbly.
Unbeknownst to me, tucked away down a track just behind our studio was The New Forest Fruit Company. What surprised me on arrival at our first meeting was the shear scale of the operation.
With a huge workforce recruited from all over Europe, The New Forest Fruit Company produces very early strawberries, asparagus and a variety of other produce in vast amounts, supplying supermarkets as well as small local shops.
Tinstar Design was approached to design and build a new website for the company which would better reflect the highly professional, environmentally responsible and multicultural nature of the business.
The content managed website is multilingual and makes use of an excellent, on-the-fly translation tool created by Google. A dropdown menu offers automatic translation into ten languages, which (whilst not always perfect), avoids the need for costly translation services.
A feed direct from the client’s Facebook page appears on the Home Page. This is a good way to keep the site’s content up-to-date without having to maintain a dedicated blog.
The New Forest Fruit Company from the air - it’s vast.
