About Us

Archipelago UK Ltd is a full-service creative agency with a diverse range of clients. Over the years we have both grown and contracted, typically with 3-4 permanent staff and 5 or 6 freelances. We have always been focussed on cultivating strong, long-term relationships with our clients, and delivering meaningful results for their organisation.

Explanimation.net

Explanimation.net is a sub-brand (or trading style) of Archipelago, supplying Video Explainers in the renewable energy sector.

Our Story

My first job in the creative industries was as Marketing Assistant at a Tour Operator - working on design of brochures back when ‘Photoshop’ wasn’t a verb, and images had to be moved around on a cartridge. I taught myself to hand-build websites to W3C Web Standards and learnt all about accessibility and how using tables for layout was tantamount to evil. In between I travelled to North America, the Caribbean, Turkey, and Egypt as a tour guide which was an incredible experience.

Working closely with Marketing Manager Jo Tyler, we created new brand positioning for the companies ‘Learn to Dive’ holiday programme, resulting in company revenue growth from £800k to £3M over three years. We pioneered Sharm El Sheikh as a destination for UK Learner divers, eventually training 300-400 new divers every week. I lived in Sharm for one year to oversee the opening of Ocean College Dive Centre and co-managed the build of two company-owned hotels.

On return to UK I co-founded Archipelago Creative with my then partner, now wife Jo Tyler. Yes, we're both called Jo/e Jones - but it's only confusing for other people.

Initially producing brochures and websites in the travel & tourism sector, we soon progressed to brand identity and then to helping small businesses identify and articulate their offering and develop their positioning.

We have always kept the team small and prioritised working with interesting clients, where our input could make a big difference. We developed specialisms in subjects we loved: innovation, clean energy and marine science & conservation.

Initially as a personal project, we created an animated e-card website (Joandjoe.com) where users could send and schedule personalised greetings, before Facebook was around to remind people when their friends' birthdays were.

I trained in Flash to hardcore maths-nerd level, creating algorithms to dynamically generate natural-looking plankton swarms, for example.

The ecard site brought us many marine conservation customers including Australian Government, The Shark Trust, PEW, PADI, SEALIFE, The Wildlife Trusts and others.

We also founded Explanimation.net - a subscription-based Explainer video service for clean energy businesses that need to explain complex government tariffs/schemes to laypeople.

The unique business model made customised high-quality explainers affordable for small customers, and convenient for large ones - including DECC, British Gas, EDF, Carillion, Saint Gobain, Wolseley/Plumb Centre. The videos were watched individually by around 11 million people.

With a long history of branding & digital projects (starting in 2004) for UK client ‘The Tube & Bracket Company’, Archipelago was approached in the summer of 2014 for a major project at the client's new parent company, TRILOGIQ group.

We took charge of 18 regional websites and around 40 social channels in 12 different languages, rebuilding them to reflect group branding, and championing Best Practice for Inbound content and social engagement.

The project scope expanded, and we developed and co-ordinated strategy and tactics for a team of 25 perm + 11 freelance/contractors worldwide, managing the group's marketing budget of approx £1.8M. Over three years we helped build a company-wide consensus around brand values and market offering, and implemented a complete visual rebrand.

We also managed a digital start-up within the main company, with a project budget of £1.2M over two years. We assembled a team of 5 specialised coders and UX designers based in London. The project used cutting-edge WebGL/React to allow users to visualise, configure, cost and purchase their own bespoke solutions using the 'tube & bracket' system. The platform was launched in November 2017 to widespread acclaim.

Currently we are working on projects in Product Innovation, Clean Energy Technology, Manufacturing, Luxury Furniture Design, and Psychological Services.

We'd love to hear about your organisation, and see what we can offer.