Hello. My name’s Jonathan Brain, and I’m a web designer & developer based in Brighton, UK.
I create great websites for businesses, and work freelance for design and marketing agencies. If this sounds of interest to you, please get in touch.
Hello. My name’s Jonathan Brain, and I’m a web designer & developer based in Brighton, UK.
I create great websites for businesses, and work freelance for design and marketing agencies. If this sounds of interest to you, please get in touch.
website design and development
A relatively simple design and front-end build for psychometric profiling company Meta.
HTML5, CSS3, jQuery.
I built the blog using WordPress, while the remainder of the back-end was built in ASP.NET by a third party.
Spring 2012
Live. Visit the Meta website
website design & development
Early Years Childcare needed a new website to replace an existing site that poorly reflected the brand.
The new site was designed so that it could be viewed as a single entity, representing the company as a whole, or as individual sites representing EYC’s nine nurseries. Where possible, content was shared between the individual sites, in order to simplify website management.
WordPress/PHP, HTML5, CSS3, jQuery
Mid-late 2011
interface design & development
I was asked to add some design polish to new functionality added to this music discovery site, building on existing designs by Sian Jones
A minor re-development of the front-end followed, taking advantage of recent additions to CSS, such as transitions, and replacing some inefficient JavaScript to speed up page rendering.
ASP.NET, XHTML 1.0, CSS3, jQuery
Late 2011
Private beta.
website development
When Blue Hive – the European marketing agency for car giant Ford – asked me to design and build their website, I pulled out all the stops to make sure they ended up with a site they could be proud of.
Timing was tight, so I employed long-time collaborator Alex Giorgi-Coll to design while I programmed.
Wordpress/PHP, HTML5, jQuery
March 2011
website design & development
A new Stanton Marris website was designed and developed to incorporate a blog and better position their existing content for SEO.
WordPress (blog) and Perch (everything else)/PHP, XHTML 1.0, CSS, jQuery
Mid 2010
website design & development
Construction company Blakedown asked me to create a new website, bringing together their two distinct wings – Landscapes and Sport & Play – into one entity.
Perch/PHP, XHTML 1.0, CSS3, jQuery
Summer 2010
e-commerce website development
It was a pleasure to work with illusionist Derren Brown on two websites: his blog and Derren Brown Art – a site dedicated to displaying his amazing caracatures of stars and celebrities.
The Derren Brown Art website was highly sophisticated, featuring it’s own custom-built CMS and shopping cart.
Technically, the blog was a simple affair, but proved enormously popular and, along with a quirky Twitter presence, gained Derren thousands of new online followers.
Both sites were designed by Alex Giorgi-Coll and managed by Michelle Carr.
Blog: WordPress/PHP, XHTML 1.0
Derren Brown Art: custom-built CMS/PHP, XHTML 1.0, jQuery
2008
Blog: Live, but now incorporated into Derren Brown’s main site. Visit the Derren Brown blog
Derren Brown Art: offline.
multiple development projects
As Senior Creative Developer at ILN I built the first edition of the East Midlands Trains site in three weeks, capitalising on techniques I’d used to develop the GNER and South West Trains site before it.
I stayed with the site for another two years, seeing it through two re-skins and the addition of plenty of new functionality, including the ground-breaking personalisation feature, My Journeys.
ASP.NET/Microsoft CMS, XHTML 1.0, CSS, jQuery
Autumn 2007 – 2010
Live. The site has recently been ported to Microsft Sharepoint, and has suffered from some unsympathetic front-end re-work, but retains much of its original features. Visit the East Midlands Trains website
Meta | 
Early Years Childcare | 
Mi-ID | 
Blue Hive | 
Stanton Marris | 
Blakedown | 
Derren Brown | 
East Midlands Trains | I design websites to help you achieve your business objectives, whether that’s helping your customers complete an online purchase, register for your mailing list, or simply to send you an email.
Already have a designer? No worries – I can work with them (or their designs) to build your website.
I am both a skilled front-end and back-end developer, with abilities in multiple programming languages and technologies, including: HTML, CSS, JavaScript/jQuery, AJAX, PHP, ASP.NET, C#, XML, SQL, ActionScript/Flash.
No website is complete is without a Content Management System (CMS) to allow its owner to add/edit/remove content.
I have extensive experience of building websites using popular CMSs such as Perch, WordPress and Drupal, and have also built custom CMSs to cater to specific needs.
I build websites for accessibility, and – if required – sites that are designed to be responsive to different device sizes – smartphones, tablets, etc. as well as desktops.
The websites I build come complete with the technical structures in place to assist SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
However, successful SEO is not purely a technical exercise, it requires a cohesive content (“key phrase”) strategy. I’m happy to work with your SEO strategist, or alternatively my affiliate company Bad Apple Marketing can assist you with your strategies for SEO, PPC (Pay Per Click advertising) and social media marketing.
I can assist with finding hosting for your website, purchasing/managing your domain names, and setting up email accounts.