About DigitalFlare

Before DigitalFlare existed, David and Barry, who had worked together years before incorporation, were building websites in our early teens / twenties (respectively). Both were avid online Kingpin players, a first-person shooter running on the Quake 2 engine (back when ISDN ruled over 56k modems!). Each independently started building game clan sites and tournament pages to go with it; they also built gaming maps using the 3D mapping software QE Radient. It was Barry who first dived into PHP, even running his own PHP tutorial website where he taught others to write the open-source language. The two first collaborated on a website for an online-gaming tournament, and that first project planted the seeds for everything that followed.

In 2021, David attended the University of Hertfordshire and undertook a course titled "Software Systems for the Arts and Media”. It was an innovative, interdisciplinary program combining technical computer skills with creative arts. David left university having attained a 1st Class with Honours BSc and learned packages including Premiere, Final Cut Pro, QuarkXPress, Cubase, Illustrator, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash (including Actionscript) and HTML. It was a very diverse course. During the course, David also began learning PHP and CSS independently.

With Internet Explorer 5 dominating the browser market and CSS layout barely a concept, building websites meant building HTML tables, nested, deeply, and painstakingly. Rounded corners were achieved by including handcrafted transparent GIFs at each corner. Gradients were rasterised in Photoshop and sliced into grids. Anything that looked visually impressive on the web back then was, almost without exception, an image. We spent countless hours in Photoshop slicing and compositing designs, then reconstructing them pixel-by-pixel in HTML. It was laborious — but it taught us discipline and an eye for detail that still informs how we work today.

DigitalFlare was founded and our first professional project was the R-Tec Auto Design website – a vehicle styling and customisation company. This marked the start of a client relationship that has now lasted more than two decades, something we’re incredibly proud of. Barry and David worked on the website together, evolving and refining it over many years. The build taught us a great deal about e-commerce and web development — and, unexpectedly, quite a bit about alloy wheels and tyres too. Selling wheel and tyre packages online proved to be a real challenge, so the entire website was built as a fully bespoke solution from the ground up.

In 2006, David worked part-time as a runner on TV sets and as a production assistant on Big Brother at Elstree for Endemol UK, working alongside Dermot O’Leary and Davina McCall during the show’s prime years. He also supported the Endemol team by creating web graphics for the official Big Brother website and remembers spending many hours working from a portakabin inside the George Lucas Stage 1

We launched the Revere London website, built entirely in Macromedia Flash (later Adobe Flash) — complete with ActionScript animations and interactive transitions. At the time, Flash was the go-to tool for creating immersive, visually rich web experiences, and David had spent considerable time mastering it. The Revere site was a genuine showcase of what Flash could do. Sadly, the entire skillset became redundant as HTML5 emerged and Steve Jobs famously refused to support Flash on the iPhone. It was a lesson in how quickly the web moves - and why we stay ahead of it.

David spent a year as a freelance designer at Rockabox Media in London, working on high-profile campaigns including the launch of the SEAT Altea XL family car and projects for Ann Summers, meeting both clients directly at their London offices. Memorable and formative work. That same year, we also began our long-running partnership with DK Engineering, one of the world's foremost classic and supercar specialists, a relationship that continues and deepens to this day.

We developed the Radius Contract Flooring website — a client we still work with today, hosting their emails on our servers for nearly 20 years and supporting their IT infrastructure throughout. On the technical front, CSS Floats became our primary layout tool, finally freeing us from tables. We also adopted jQuery as a standard, because at the time, plain JavaScript behaved unpredictably across different browsers - jQuery smoothed out those inconsistencies and gave us reliable, cross-platform interactivity. In 2009 we also incorporated as a limited company.

Client communications, project discussions, and quick-fire decisions were all happening over BlackBerry Messenger. Before WhatsApp, the BlackBerry was the professional's device of choice. It feels like a lifetime ago.

We launched the DK Engineering website and its custom CMS, and produced the first of many magazine advertisements across titles, including Top Gear Magazine and Top Marques. We also developed the Gateway Films website for actor and producer Terry Stone, and launched L-Guess — a fashion brand with a high street store in Whitton, West London — a website we've since rebuilt twice and still maintain today.

We launched Swim Oakleigh Park's website - a swim school operating multiple pools across North London, offering courses from toddler swimming to adult lessons. The platform included a full online booking system and recurring payment infrastructure, and we still maintain it today. We also expanded our advertising work for DK Engineering into new prestige titles, including Octane Magazine, Classic & Sports Car, and the internationally respected Cavallino Magazine.

We began our ongoing relationship with Europlants, developing their website and marketing materials — a partnership that continues to this day. We also set up the Yiannimize website and logo for the car customisation entrepreneur Yianni Charalambous, we also got Yianni setup on social media and setup his first Twitter and Instagram account. He now has a YouTube channel with over 2.26 million subscribers!

We created a website for Jada Pollock’s fashion boutique on the King's Road in Chelsea, aptly named 'Jada Styles' - a fashion store she launched in partnership with Chelsea FC and Ivory Coast legend Didier Drogba. It was an exciting project in one of London’s most glamorous locations and led to introductions to other high-profile clients, including Lethal Bizzle and Ozwald Boateng. Jada later moved to California to manage artists such as Chris Brown, Britney Spears, and John Legend, among others.

HTTP/2 was officially released in May 2015, dramatically improving web performance through multiplexing and header compression — we embraced it early. That year we also developed microsites for high street jeweller H.Samuel, and launched the website for artist Tina Tsang — a client whose website and emails we still host and maintain to this day.

A busy year. We created a microsite for Casio’s Edifice range with an F1-inspired design, and launched the A1 BMW website - complete with online booking for vehicle servicing and MOTs, a platform we still maintain today. We also built a website for Bacary Sagna to promote his charity work ahead of his international campaign with the France national football team at UEFA Euro 2016. During this time, we also began integrating live chatbots into client websites, giving businesses a new way to engage with visitors in real time.

We developed websites for Jake Livermore (former England and Tottenham Hotspur player) and several other Premier League footballers. We launched Stay Dench, an online fashion store for Lethal Bizzle — a site that's still running and counts Ed Sheeran, Wiley, and Jack Whitehall among its customers. We designed large-format ads that ran on London Underground platforms and billboards. A year after launch, Lethal Bizzle secured a viral interview with Dame Judi Dench. On the technical side, we adopted CSS Flexbox and Vanilla JavaScript as our standards, dropping our jQuery dependency as browser consistency finally became a reality and began integrating Stripe into our e-commerce builds. We also launched the R-Tec Auto Design CRM platform to handle enquiries, quotes, and job/order status tracking.

We launched USkip.com — a fully bespoke skip hire and waste management platform with real-time booking, route management, and an integrated CRM. We also began developing the brand identity, product packaging, and marketing materials for Saltcoats Salt. Towards the end of 2018 we also launched 'Gasket Guy' - a website selling commercial freezer and fridge seal replacement parts.

We delivered the full DK Engineering CRM - a powerful, bespoke platform linking enquiries, vehicles, clients, and live website listings. Across the industry, GDPR compliance kept us exceptionally busy through the summer; every marketing email list had to be audited, reconfirmed, or rebuilt from scratch, and we helped numerous clients navigate the new data protection landscape. We also built our first website that accepts cryptocurrency payments via the CoinPayments API and began integrating VRM look-up tools into automotive client platforms.

When the world went into lockdown, demand for our services surged. Businesses rapidly pivoted to e-commerce, click-and-collect, and online booking almost overnight. With many business owners suddenly finding themselves with more time to invest in their digital presence, we struggled at times to keep pace with the volume of incoming work. It was an intense period, but one that underlined just how essential a strong digital foundation is for every business.

CSS Grid was formally introduced as a specification a few years ago but this was the year we would incorporate it into our workflow alongside Flexbox.

We began integrating AI APIs directly into client websites and internal tools - from intelligent enquiry handling and automated content workflows to data enrichment. The pace of AI development was and remains extraordinary, and we moved quickly to understand, evaluate, and put it to practical use for our clients.

We launched the Unbranded Capital website, a financial platform that funds real estate-backed investment opportunities with flexible, creative capital solutions across each stage of the investment journey. A significant project that combined sophisticated design with a clear, confident message for a demanding professional audience.

We delivered our most ambitious property technology build to date, a full-stack platform for Maysa Property, combining a polished client-facing website with a powerful bespoke back-end management system. We also formally adopted Claude Code as part of our development workflow, using AI-assisted tooling to identify bugs and vulnerabilities, improve code structure, and accelerate testing. After 25 years of riding every wave the web has thrown at us, we're as energised about what comes next as we were when we built that first tournament website in a bedroom in 2000.