News Archive - complete 2006

The fragrance of oriental spices with a hint of musk is pervading the Nothing rocket. What is going on? Rumours have it that Blop is adding the final touches to his baffling programming framework 'ray'. This framework, matured in 15 months of high-gastro cuisine, allows Nothing to parboil and pressure-cook the applications in the coming months. Be amazed, first results emerging very soon!

As a sales promotion for the tennis shop matchball.ch, Nothing has integrated an advent calendar, offering scorching hot promotions for shopping addicts. Amazing discounts - a must for tennis players and whoever has tennis playing friends.

We are delighted, our client list is growing faster than ever: Welcome Nike Switzerland, Areeba Cyprus, the Swiss Parliamentary Services, Nedjma Algeria and many more! If you would like to be listed among our exclusive clients, too - get in contact with Nothing. Still hesitating? Order our corporate brochure.

An Indian saying goes 'The guest is God'. Our webdesign is based on this principle, too: 'The visitor is God'. On our websites we respect the visitors and make them as comfortable as possible. To further strengthen our focus on user-centered design, Zen has been appointed usability evangelist of Nothing. His mission is to relentlessly expurgate all remaining vices of technology-driven design, and to lead the virtues of consistency, clarity and ease-of-use to triumph and glory.

At the end of the year, the Nothing heads traditionally undertake something ludicrous such as chanting love songs to a horde of Groox (although it doesn't seem likely that the brutish Groox are capable of any amorous sentiment). This year, we decided to prove ourselves in a Wii competition. See the pictures of this sweat-inducing and tennis elbow provoking experience!

SWISS TXT wants to push two content channels of their Teletext: 'astrology' and 'meeting people'. Nothing has been selected to create a convincing message that will be broadcast on Swiss television at prime times. Watch the TV-spots 'meeting people' and 'astrology' from mid-November to mid-December and see the two stars acting at day-time and at night-time. Exclusive: Have a look at the sketches of the TV-spots in our blog!

Nothing has created and successfully launched a contest for Cornèrcard to win a million frequent-flyer miles. The application is based on OpenCMS and ready to receive your lucky entry now.

We have proposed Hurk Snotitch as Sportsbeing of the Year. Hurk is an exceptionally gifted potato thrower and six time world champion. Unfortunately, his nomination was denied on grounds of lacking the Swiss nationality (Hurk is Saturnian). Ah, red tape! At least, for the third year running, Nothing has been invited to produce the website for the great gala event of the Credit Suisse Sports Awards.

Since 2000, the annual Web Design Index has developed into one of the most important publications in its field. Every edition contains 1002 outstanding websites. This year again, you will find Nothing.ch among them.

Our blog is now perfectly readable on any mobile phone equipped with a decent browser like Opera or Explorer Mobile. So, if you want to read the latest posts of our blog while nonchalantly steering your spaceship through a meteorite storm, or if you need the latest tips and tricks about camping on water planets - this is the way to go.

We have designed a relaunch for Cyon, the charming young hosting provider. The relaunch is an evolutionary development of their well-proven website. Reading the enthusiastic reactions was a real treat!

This year's Amnesty Rock'n'rights, the concert night that raises awareness and funds, has taken place on 21 October. Nothing has sponsored this important event again.

Shnit, the short movie festival in Bern, has been a great success. For the third consecutive time the number of visitors doubled. The public's price went to pizza amore, while the jury selected Dachau bei München. Nothing intends to support this notable cultural highlight in the Swiss capital next year again with an unusual web presence.

Tres logos is a state-of-the-art visual encyclopedia of the current state and evolution of logo design. Just like in the two preceding books of this series, logos by Nothing are featured this edition, too.

Another illustrated report of the incredibly dangerous encounters that Nothing has to weather in far-away spiralling galaxies is available in our blog.

Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 are getting ready for launch this month. According to the latest news and rumours, IE7 will be distributed by automatic update starting from 1 November. We have included the latest release candidates of both browsers in our compatibility programme. All websites of Nothing are tested before delivery for correct functioning in the browsers of the compatibility program. Minor adjustments to a few existing websites have already been made in coordination with the site owners.

Edel*flash, Swiss flash design award, selects the best Flash productions of this country. We are proud that our Website Shnit.ch has made it! Edel*flash particularly liked our graphic design, 3D-animation, sound effects and, of course, the trailers.

Germans are interested in Nothing, too. Visualx, a German magazine about crossmedia production, has just published an interview with Spot, titled "Guarantee against Stiffness". The interview took place in a padded zero-gravity room to preclude any undesired stiffness. Order the entire magazine online, or download the interview (offline) from Nothing.

Nothing is one of the principal sponsors of this year's short film festival Shnit, taking place from 19 to 22 October at the Progr in Bern. Shnit is an open platform that allows young cineasts to present their works in public. Acknowledging the mind-expanding, inspirational effects of Shnit on the Bernese population, Nothing has offered the festival's unusual Flash website with 3D-elements.

Nothing was named one of Europe's best design companies and selected among nearly 1000 entries from 36 European countries. Eulda, the European logo design annual, is a high-profile graphic design award endorsed by the pan-European brand design association (PDS) and 40 other design associations. Our legendary "winged heart" logo for the dating portal Swissflirt convinced a three-tiered jury, comprised of designers, client companies and members of the public.

The World Cup is over, but the Swiss Football Card remains. On the new website (offline), we present a hip flash intro, featuring K.K. (Köbi Kuhn), Swiss national hero of the lawn, promoting this very particular red card.

Once more, Netzwoche, the independent IT-weekly of Switzerland, features a made-by-nothing website on its pages. The journalists found interest in the site www.the-body-shop.ch, the first site to be launched with the new corporate identity of the Body Shop International, concurrent with the site of the Body Shop Singapore. (See Netzwoche, no. 33, 13 September 2006, printed edition, in German.)

Following the fanclub for football aficionados here comes a second restricted website for swisscard: the platinum boutique is reserved for holders of a Mastercard platinum credit card. On these pages those few select earthlings find the most exquisite premiums and services to please their extravagant taste.

Nothing features again in Netzwoche, the wide-circulation Swiss IT-weekly. The Netzwoche-journalists have evaluated the tennis shop matchball.ch and have noticed that the shop carries the collections of Federer, Nadal and other champions. They are "positively surprised by the visual impression of the site and by its speed". The speed of the site is due not only to our use of ajax-technology, but also to the excellent hosting service of our partner webstyle. And the visual impression ­- well, that must be the little extra from outer space that we bring to websites! (See Netzwoche, no. 31, 30 August 2006, printed edition, in German.)

A great brand with world-wide commitment! We have designed the Swiss website of The Body Shop, in accordance with the detailed corporate design guidelines, and implemented it technically with our own framework ray. It is untrue that our bathrooms are full of body lotion as a consequence of this project; it is, however, true that our rocket smells of peaches and olives now.

More kudos from Netzwoche, the independent IT-weekly of Switzerland. This time, the Netzwoche reporters analyze the online music-magazine 78s.ch that we created as a Wordpress blog, extended with some custom-programmed plugins. In the judgement of Netzwoche, the site is "clearly structured, which is underlined by an appropriate but tidy graphic design". By all means, messiness would be disastrous out here in space, wouldn't it? (See Netzwoche, no. 30, 23 August 2006, printed edition, in German.)

Brilliant spirits from all over the Galaxy express their ideas with Draw-O-Matic. Now, with Draw-O-Saver you can view recent Draw-O-Matic productions in the format of an elegant screensaver. Be part of the artistic community, share your genius and enjoy the work of the like-minded! Get the installer here.

We are proud to present our latest shop matchball.ch. Its speed, clearly structured display and visual design has earned us kudos from satisfied customers. On the technical side, we have combined Flash and Ajax with a sophisticated tag-system, which allows us to present, for example, the same search results for the synonyms “Frauen” and “Damen”. Most regrettably, the store doesn’t carry any lead balls, indispensable for playing tennis under micro gravity conditions, yet. A full fashion collection for Spacefoxes, however, is expected soon.

Witty, nifty and brief – that’s the new music magazine 78s.ch (German only). Nothing has set up the site as a blog, taking advantage of the word-by-mouse propagation in the blogosphere that is more efficient than a costly advertisement campaign. We enhanced Wordpress, the popular open source blog software, with many new plugins to get all new features we wanted. David Bauer of Das Schreiblabor, owner of the site, is enthusiastic about the sky rocket start of his site. (78 words in this article)

Our new screen and Flash designer is called Raiden. He will bring urgently needed support to the design section at Nothing. Raiden tells us in his own words how he met Nothing at a barbecue party. In the updated team picture you might note that Raiden has three eyes, which obviously enables him to see in four dimensions.

The second release of Fluffy, our Flash video player, is very popular and a lot of people download it from our website. Streaming videos can be saved locally with the new version. Here you can download the installer or get directly the exe-file. We welcome further feature requests. please enter them as comments to the blog post about Fluffy.

Somnia is a Studio for 2D and 3D animations. We have created the somnia brand as a world that reflects the power of sleep and dream. In the realm of somnia everything loses its usual appearance, things turn upside down, form new connections amongst themselves - and furnish the inspiration that we urgently need on the other side, the 'reality' above the surface of the mystifying subconscious.

Index Book of Barcelona has published a new Around Europe design book. This time they focus on editorial design. They are on a journey through Europe "looking for the most interesting graphic works from a huge variety of studios standing out by their high quality output." And once again they stop over at Nothing where they enjoy our comics caracters beepfreak, killer goblin, ninja allstar and some gateone flyers.

Two new highlights on our customer list: for The Body Shop Switzerland we take charge of the full gamut of communication from post cards to exhibition booths, survey applications and - of course - the corporate website that will go online shortly. Wmode is a Canadian provider of solutions bringing content to mobile phones. We are currently building the new corporate website of Wmode.

Online Tennis Shop matchball.ch is going to open in a few days. In the meanwhile, you might participate at the matchball opening contest and win two tickets for the Davidoff Swiss Indoors, the third largest indoors tournament worldwide. Try your luck at matchball.ch.

The lucky winner of the Draw-O-contest is Rui Carvalho from Portugal. Rui has created a very nifty and cute goodie called Draw-O-quote. The task in this contest was to program a presenter software to display the drawings generated in the continuous drawonet-project. Get some inspiration from a daily Draw-O-quote!

Brimming with breaking news as always, this edition brings you captivating accounts about Blop and Loop joining up with Nothing, and heartrending, tragic losses in remote places. Witness the courage and determination of those incredible guys in their flying carrot!

Let’s get down to earth! Dolly, the joyful and Nothing-designed mascot of the rock band ‘Caller ID’, is available in retail stores now. To emphasize her cuteness, Spot made her a nice package.

With a little luck you might win a weekend in a first-class wellness hotel if you play the latest online quiz of Cornèr Bank. Thanks to our quiz module, the marketing team of Cornèr was able to easily integrate the wellness quiz design into their website and publish the quiz without involving our agency. We still provided the pictures of radioactive pebbles from planet Plouff, though. The quiz is technically based on the open-source content management system OpenCms.

Dolly is on the move. After being the eye-catcher at the 'New York Toy Fair', the cheerful mascot of the Californian band 'Caller ID' hits the shelves in the shops now. She comes complete with a mini-CD and translation of her song in Hindi, Arabic and Chinese, and is promoted in the Clutter Magazine with a colourful ad 'made by Nothing'.

Nothing is currently developing the new Swiss online shop for tennis apparel and accessories. The corporate identity of matchball.ch features the friendly green of lawn tennis and represents the high quality of the shop’s products and services. The logo captures the dynamics of the tennis game within the stylized circle of the tennis ball. The name 'matchball' can be used in all national languages of Switzerland and stands for a favourable chance in a decisive moment. Expect the opening of matchball by mid-July!

This year again Nothing has produced the website for the Swatch-FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour on behalf of Swatch. The site takes full advantage of Flash technology and displays surprising animation effects. Find the dynamic calendar with the tournaments of this year's tour, portrait and action photos, clips, the impressive score boards of the swatch proteam players, daily updated result lists, the complete history of beach volleyball, and much more.

Walking through a spaceship of the no-class is fascinating enough, but this blog offers even more: Have an insight into the mental working of the extraterrestrial Nothing crew or get the latest news about webdesign, open source, advergames and online advertising.

On drawonet.com anybody can create drawings and publish them on the Internet. Art becomes open-source and escapes into the public domain. More than 1500 drawings have been recorded so far. They are all available as XML-feed for anybody who wants to display them in a self-made Draw-O-Presenter.

Our latest crew members are both experienced engineers. Fitz is usually to be found at Blop’s side, enticing the photon-propulsion (php) engine to deliver even more hyper-performance. Key keeps a firm grip on the network. No fishy data package will ever slip through his zircon-encrusted claws.

In the past year, we have implemented three online contests for Cornèr Bank that proved very successful. Now we have created a module to publish further contests easily and efficiently. In addition to the quiz, the module enables participants to increase their chances by recommending the contest to their friends. Technically, the module is based on the open-source content management system OpenCms. When Cornèr Bank wants to publish a new contest, their marketing staff enters independently all questions, answers, online help, prizes, etc. In the current contest you might win a trip to the Football World Cup 2006.

Football fever is about to break out ­– a very serious condition characterized by 22 men running around in short trousers, while hundreds of millions of other earthlings watch them. As a measure of disaster preparedness, Nothing has set up two sites in co-operation with our valued customer Swisscard: At swissfootballcard.ch you can get a glimpse of the effects of football and request the Swiss Football Card, an infective device for increased enthusiasm; and at www.pointup.ch/fanclub those who own such a football card will find all kinds of special offers. A comfortable backend enables the Swisscard staff to keep the offers up-to-date with ease.

The moving force behind the characters Dolly and Mr. Pill, both created by Nothing and presented at this year's 'New York Toy Fair', is Medfed, a music label based in Los Angeles. Now Nothing has designed the logo of Medfed, a cure for your eyes, soaring from the serpentine to winged realms. See for yourself!

Our loyal and preferred customer Sicap has freshened up their corporate site sicap.com. Keeping abreast with recent developments in design, the site sports a professional and appealing look. The CMS was extended with the administration of job vacancies.

Embedded systems are all those computers that control your coffee machine, your car, your medical support - in short, your life. NetModule is a Swiss company that engineers such embedded systems. And Nothing is the one who just gave NetModule a new face and a new website.

"The navigation is clear, and visitors find their way easily among the robots, frogs and foxes from outer space." Such is the verdict of Netzwoche, the 10'000-circulation IT-weekly of Switzerland about Nothing.ch. Netzwoche was delighted with the abundance of services, products and solutions presented on our site. The design was described as "very colourful, but neither gaudy nor overloaded". And a little test showed that our pagerank in Google has gone up too. We scratch our heads: Have we become completely mainstream to deserve so many kudos? (See Netzwoche, no. 4, 01 Feb 2006, printed edition, German language)