News & Blog

Kylie.com home page

Just in time for the holidays, Kleber launched the new site for Kylie Minogue - or just Kylie for the fans. Quite the massive and high profile job that we turned around in less than a month after to-ing and fro-ing on the design (’it has to be neutral’, ‘its too neutral, use album artwork’, ‘don’t make it too album specific’,…) we created a modular and highly customisable site that is loaded with content, and we now know the lyrics to all her songs by heart. Extra massive big-up to Mr Ben Wise and his 1337 coding!

Just added a new project to the site - ‘S01-Rev/Pulse’, an ambient animation I did for ‘The Colour Rooms’, a new concept space by Sony to promote its BRAVIA product line. The Colour Rooms are what you can call ‘exclusive art/event spaces’ - if I can believe the tabloids Kate Moss likes to hang out there - and shows off Sony’s ‘colour.like.no.other’ strapline while you drink your trendy Mojito.

Kleber was one of the agencies approached to create an installation for it around the aforementioned strap line as part of the permanent Colour Rooms collection. Apparently loads of agencies submitted work, but somehow the powers that be at Sony picked mine to adorn the entrance. Very nice.

The idea behind the installation was to literally create and audio-visual pulse. Inspired partly by my love of 60s and 70s Sci-Fi films and an abandoned idea from a few years ago.

The piece was showcased for 4 months at the Colour Rooms in London and Berlin.

We launched 3 new sites this week:
– Nest gets a nip & tuck
– Brand new site for Novation Music
– A redesign for Pressure Sounds

We (that would be Kleber) are looking for experienced, self-motivated freelance web developers to help us on a bunch of interesting new projects in the coming months.

PLEASE ONLY SEND US YOUR DETAILS IF YOU HAVE THE SKILLS REQUIRED - WE ARE NOT CURRENTLY LOOKING TO FILL ANY OTHER POSITIONS

Ideally you will have:

• excellent XHTML/CSS skills
• excellent PHP skills
• excellent MySQL skills
• a good understanding of Flash and Actionscript
• an eye for good design
• ability to work to a strict deadline
• ability to manage your own time
• common sense

Location is not an issue for us as you would be expected to work remotely.

Please send 3 examples of your work (stating your input on the projects) to workwithus@kleber.net

Almost 2 years in the making, we finally launched the brand new site for World Music Network last month.

When WMN got in touch with us, it was primarily to jump on the digital bandwagon - they were familiar with our work on Bleep (the award-winning digital download store from Warp Records) - and sell their goods online, as well as physical goods (CD’s). It became clear quite fast that in order to fascilitate the online store, a complete site revision was in order.

During the design process WMN updated their look, so this needed to be reflected online as well.
So, under strict design guidelines we designed the new site from the ground up, and built them a state of the art shopping system that allows them to sell their releases in a variety of formats - part of a site wide CMS powering the rest of the site. An interesting detail is that the label staff in addition to the CMS access the HTML files as well to tweak and add banners and advertising to the site.

So, after roughly two years of digitising their catalog, you can now order world music from your lazy chair.

The nominations for the BT digital music awards are announced…
and our work has been short listed for a couple of them:

– Cinematic Orchestra - ‘Best Electronic Artist or DJ’
– Wiley - ‘Best Urban Artist’
and last years winner:
– Bleep.com - ‘Best Music Store’

If you want to vote for them then head over here

So from time to time I get email requests from all over the world asking me a ton of questions.
Usually different people tend to ask the same, so in an attempt to avoid possible dissapointment from you, dear questioner, some generic answers from me.

1. I’m a student visiting London, can I visit your studio?
No. Because I don’t have a studio. I work from home. Only friends, family and cats are allowed here.

2. I’m a student, can I intern at your company?
No. I’m not a company, helloMuller is my portfolio. I work at Kleber (which is a full time job).
Whatever work you see on this site (except Kleber work of course) is done by me alone or with Liz.

Who’s Liz?
My lovely wife.

2B. Will you consider hiring me instead?
Nope. See above.

3. So can I intern at Kleber?
That’s a tricky one. Kleber is a small company, and since 2005 we converted to what they call a “virtual company”, which means you won’t find an office to intern at. So again, no.

4. Can I work for Kleber then?
If and when we need someone, it will be announced on our site and probably on a bunch of design portals, if you keep your eyes open you won’t miss it. Besides that, no, we’re not hiring.

5. I’m a student at XXXX working on my XXXX project, can you help me?
This is one of the more popular requests. Sorry, but I will not / can not help you with your project.
I don’t have the time for that, and I’m no robot that you can task for student work.

6. You’re the subject of my project at school, can I ask you some questions?
Sure, fire them over. Keep in mind that I won’t answer “How would you solve my assignment?” questions.

7. You arrogant bastard, why don’t you reply to me?!
Because a) I get a lot of emails, and sometimes something slips through the net. b) I’m busy and I forget. c) I didn’t like your email (when you ask for something a short introduction and a please would be appreciated) d) because I like to reply properly instead of the generic “No I’m sorry, best of luck!” and therefore have no time to write a proper reply. See b.

8. Hey, I just graduated, give me a job!
See answers 1, 2, 4 and 7C.

9. Hey, I just graduated, do you know where I can get a job?
To be honest, I know as much as you probably. Yes, I know a lot of people who know people but that doesn’t equal to me knowing whats happening at their companies at any given time. If I know someone is hiring I’ll be the first to post it around. Besides that, don’t ask me because I don’t know.

10. I like your work! Let’s collaborate!
Thank you very much! But no thank you. I’m usually busy with work and my own stuff, I like to have a little life away from my desk, and I’m really, really picky when it comes to people I’ll collaborate with (yea I’m anal that way). Sorry.

So there you go.

The 2005 version of Sony BMG Music UK

In 2005 we redesigned the site for Sony BMG Music UK. When we started on the project, I did a series of designs, all quite neutral, seeing that a label as big and diverse as Sony BMG can’t really be pigeon-holed in one visual style related to a specific music genre. However, during the design process it became clear the label wanted (or needed) a very “Pop” approach - so after a few weeks the result was a compromise between my original idea and a candy coloured alternative. It did the job, but in my personal opinion I always felt it lacked something - being neither this or that.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago and Sony BMG decided to focus more on the label itself than being a 100% customer-facing site. Enter our original design concept, some cleanup, and voila.

The 2007 version, based on the original design concept

Today I managed to squeeze out 3 different design proposals for one of our clients. Not bad for a day’s work.
They said they were happy with rough ideas and sketches to get a feel for it, but me being me I need to have *everything* in there - the little RSS icon, the nice dropdown, nice dummy text… . I can’t help it. Oh well.

I think I’m going to lie down now and let my brains pour out of my ears.

Dazed & confused is looking at the 50 individuals and groups behind the most eye-popping, mind-blowing creative endeavours on the web today - and we’re happy to spot Bleep amongst the list.