Cornwell Internet is a website design and maintenance consultancy, based in the City of Durham, specialising in personally designed sites for individuals and small organisations: authors, publishers, performers, visual artists and community groups. Following twenty-five years we are not now accepting new customers and looking forward to retirement.
Jean Rogers and Roger Cornwell have been designing websites since 1996 (and the World Wide Web has only been a reality since 1995). In that time we have designed and built over a hundred sites of all shapes and sizes, from one page to hundreds, and from the very simple to the highly complex. We are unusual among web design companies, because we also offer a comprehensive maintenance service, for clients who don't have the skills or the time to make updates themselves.
Our customers seem to like what we do; in April 2011, at the Crime Writers' Association conference, Tom Harper, retiring Chair of the CWA, presented us with a Red Herring, the award which the CWA reserves for special service to the organisation. It's less well known than their Dagger awards, but we couldn't have been more pleased if we'd won one of those!
Read more about the award in the blog.
All our sites are designed individually, in consultation with the client. We believe web sites should be content-driven, displaying your message in a way that grabs the attention without being gimmicky. It's not a place to show off our skills, it's a place to show off yours.
We also offer a maintenance service, keeping your site fresh and up to date with all your news; and we will advise you about how to start small and expand your site as you go, if that is the most suitable solution for your project. Our customers seem to like the results: and so do their customers, the people who visit the sites we build.
Thank you for your keen and active interest. It's good that you care.
Pete Challoner, The New Rope String Band
Other comments from customers can be seen on our Portfolio page.
We sponsored the Durham Literature Festival
We are delighted to find a home on our own site for the art works we commissioned in 2004 as part of our association with Durham Literature Festival. We were funded to commission work which would promote both Cornwell Internet and the Festival, and the result was a wonderful range of material, from a short story written in hyperfiction to a unique bookplate. Read more about the project - and the work it produced - here.
Accessible web sites
Cornwell Internet specialise in accessible web sites: sites that are easy on the eye but that also work for people with restricted vision who use voice only browsers. Not only is this good practice, and - since the since the Disability Discrimination Act - in many cases a legal obligation, it produces sites which are functional, and which score well with search engines.
In 2005, we won a Visionary Design Award for the website we run for Anne Fine, the second Children's Laureate (www.annefine.co.uk). Another of our sites - designed for Newcastle Quaker Meeting was shortlisted in the Voluntary Organisations category.
We are delighted with our success; to win in one category and have a second site shortlisted is a real feather in our cap. Our commitment to accessibility is a central element of our approach to website design; we do not regard design as an end in itself, we think its purpose is to convey information to anyone who visits a site. The award confirms that we are on the right track.
Read more about accessible web sites.
