Numiko, an award winning Leeds based digital creative agency

Everyone loves a good picnic, and what better excuse than a nice sunny day and our 11th birthday? So a load of us gathered snacks, barbecues, tennis balls, Frisbees, children and a big stack of meat products (and some Quorn for the veggies) and headed out to a field in Meanwood.

More words (and photos) after the jump…

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I’ve come across a few really nice blogs and suchlike this week, and have found myself with a rare free five minutes in which to blog about them! So here goes:

First is a fashion photographer who makes use of that most old-school of internet technologies, animated GIFs. Most people out there will associate animated GIFs with the internet of old; a wasteland of bulletin boards and content portals illuminated only by the light from a million flaming, spinning skull GIFs. But I digress – these GIFs are beautiful.

There’s plenty of plain old fashion photography on there (not that it isn’t also lovely) but the really cool stuff is the ones like this. I’m not even really sure how she (I’m assuming Jamie is a she, for some reason…) does it – clever masking and comping of video or something, but the effect is lovely.

It’s subtle, and I think it adds a really interesting dimension to the images. It kind-of brings them to life, but it’s a strange, slightly creepy life. Like robots wearing nice clothes. A bit like most fashion, I suppose, but there you go.

Next is the clever application of prime numbers to textured web page backgrounds. This is a little bit more geeky, but bear with me. The human eye has an amazing ability to spot patterns, which is great when you’re stalking the savannah looking out for tigers but really annoying when you’re trying to create a realistic-looking textured background image for your web page.

The most common technique to create textured background images is to create a tile – that is, a small image that can repeat seamlessly. The problem is that the smaller you tile (and thus the more efficient your page load) the more obvious the repeating becomes, making your lovely realistic wooden background look more like crappy laminate flooring from Poundland.

Through a sneaky combination of multiple background images and the power of prime numbers, Alex creates randomish, organic-looking backgrounds that are easy on the page-load while fooling your eyes. Ha! Take that, eyes. It’s a semi-old technique, apparently, but this is the first I’d heard of it and it’s a well-written article.

Hope you found these as interesting as I did!

Our photos are up! You can also see a slideshow here.

“Gyles and Eleni gazed in awe at the wonder of Numiko.”

Thanks to all our guests and Numiko staff for making our party such a success and giving our shiny new brand a proper launch! More photos follow soon. Hope your hangovers are abating.