Following a triple win at the 2011 Big Chip Awards, Ampersand Commerce – the leading UK Magento ecommerce agency – was approached by Manchester Digital to re-design the Big Chip website for the 2012 awards.

The new designs were implemented by Bit Fusion, the Manchester based software development house that manages the back-end CMS for the Big Chip Awards website.

The Big Chip Awards are the most significant digital awards ceremony in the North West, providing an authoritative snapshot of the highly competitive region’s best digital agencies and freelancers.

In the co-operative tradition of the creative and digital community in the North West, Manchester Digital approached Ampersand Commerce to re-design the Big Chip Website for the 2012 Awards because of Ampersand Commerce’s triple win at the 2011 Big Chip Awards for development of online furniture retailer, Made.com.

With a deadline that overlapped the Christmas retail rush and 10 years of content on the Big Chip website to keep visually consistent, Ampersand had a challenge on its hands. The final solution includes abundant white space, bold colours and multiple typographic treatments for the several levels of headers needed to support the website’s content. After design approval, Bit Fusion turned around the designs in a little over a week and the new website was live well before the Christmas deadline.

“I love the Ampersand re-design. It’s given the site a fresh new look – stylish and uncluttered – and it works beautifully with the existing content,” says Shaun Fensom of Manchester Digital about the quality of work from Ampersand Commerce and Bit Fusion.

“Ampersand is very excited to have been asked to partner with Manchester Digital on this re-design,” says Rachel Tonner, in-house graphic designer at Ampersand Commerce, of the partnership. “Winning three Big Chip Awards last year was the beginning of a very busy year for our agency and finishing off 2011 with a cooperative project like this one seemed a fitting close to the year. It was a great pleasure working with Manchester Digital and Bit Fusion and Ampersand looks forward to what the 2012 Big Chip Awards will bring.”