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.
online app and website
Book & Bill is an online app to help appointment-based businesses schedule their clients and take the strain out of invoicing.
As well as designing and developing the app, I also created its associated marketing website. Responsive design was essential here, as the app needed to be usable on portable devices above all others.
Firmly founded on PHP, the app was built using Codeigniter, and the marketing website built using Perch CMS. HTML5, CSS, JavaScript/jQuery came as standard.
The site hooks into a number of third-parties, including PayPal, TextLocal and Mailgun.
Early 2014
Offline.
website design and development
A responsive brochure site for the indefatigable motivational speaker Nick Saunders, capturing his energy and personality.
Perch CMS, PHP, HTML5, CSS, JavaScript/jQuery
2013
website development
Specialising in luxury South American travel, new travel operator Miraviva needed a responsive website to kick-start their business.
The site was designed by the brilliant Sian Jones.
Perch CMS, PHP, HTML5, CSS, JavaScript/jQuery
Mid 2013
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 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
Offline
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
Offline
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.
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
Offline
Book & Bill | 
Nick Saunders | 
Miraviva travel | 
Meta | 
Blue Hive | 
Stanton Marris | 
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#, SQL, XML, Codeigniter.
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.