Welcome to Flame Academy. We're here to try and help you achieve your dreams. That is of course if your dream is to hone your web design skills through work experience at the world's greatest digital marketing agency*.
* patent pending.
But we're not just going to snap you up straight away; first we need to see what you're capable of.
Flame Academy is an initiative to give a few talented web designers an opportunity not many of us had. Okay, okay, put your hankies away! Basically we'd like to give you the opportunity to join us in the Northern Quarter of Manchester and work with us over a few weeks.
Here, you'll be able to hone your web design skills, learn a few things about the industry and most importantly have fun*! You'll get experience responding to live briefs, working to deadlines and using your talents to help our clients surpass their objectives.
But first we've got a little challenge for you. We'd like you to apply your natural genius in CSS to style this page and make it look real pretty. Think you can do that? Good, then have at it!
* for legal reasons we cannot guarantee fun
We know it's not always easy getting your foot in the door because we've all been in your position. That's why we came up with Flame Academy - a chance for you to show the world what you can do and see first hand what life is like at a digital marketing agency.
So whether you want to gain experience, make contacts or just add it to your CV, we want to give you as much as possible to start you on the road to a glowing career in web design.
We worked on our first project in 2004. Since then we've grown in size and stature but we're still the same personable company, based in the centre of Manchester, employing talented individuals who love creating gorgeous designs.
This has helped us land an enviable roster of clients from every area of business, which in turn keeps the work varied and gives us plenty of expertise, which we're hoping to share, you lucky people...
Use your CSS prowess to transform this webpage into your own creation without stepping foot near the HTML. We're looking for accessible, practical CSS that can be seen by everyone, so don't get carried away with CSS3 and fancy pseudo-classes; stick to the solid basics and ensure that it validates.
We understand that cross-browser compatibility is still the bane of all web designers, but please try to check your design in as many different browsers as possible and aim to make your design render well in at least IE6, 7 and Firefox. If your site doesn't work for a large percentage of the population - it won't work for us.
Suffice to say, please ensure that all artwork and imagery is either your own or you own the rights to it. No-one wants to get into any trouble over copyrights. Any work you do submit will remain your own and we will not claim to take ownership. The Flame Academy is designed to teach and pass on knowledge to others, not to steal your work.
And that's all. We don't ask for much. So get creating - let's see what you've got!