TinK Positive

Its not only mega bands like the Rolling Stones who are making a big noise on the web.'TinK' channels his musical artistry into Web design, as Bruce Tober discovers.

When Andy Tinker, AKA 'TinK', started a Web page design company back in May he little suspected that by September, he would be providing City NetGates with a Web design and consultancy service for its NEW cybercafe.

TinK's company, quirkily dubbed Slightly Miffed, now boasts an impressive roster of clients, including United Artists.

As well as being a Web entrepreneur, the 25 year old musician from Trowbridge, Wiltshire is manager and promoter of a band (also called Slightly Miffed, or SM for short) for which he also strums rhythm guitar. Although SM is as yet unsigned, TinK stresses "We're good... Lots and lots of people have said so. We're just in a position where we either need to sign a deal or find a way of producing our own stuff".

Not A Suit In Site

According to TinK, the reason for his rapid success is "not being the corporate type and having a slightly different approach to it all. The Web is 90% design, 10% programming. Most programmers are hopeless artists and vice versa, but we're lucky - everyone in the band has some skill that they can contribute to our site.

The NetGates cafe site is scheduled to open in Bristol at http://www.netgates.co.uk/.

"Slightly Miffed will be designing and maintaining the site. And more important, we have first refusal on any of their future operations. The contract is for us to provide technical support in all Internet related matters." In addition, NetGates is working with United Artists in Bristol to provide UA with a Web site and technical support. "The plan is for all the other UA regions to follow suit. It all means that we will be starting our own business.We will use the Cybercafe as our business address and phone numbers, but will work 99% from home, designing pages for our own and their customers," TinK explained.

What's really fascinating about TinK's pages is the way they reflect his personality.Although brief, they're enlivened by blocks of snappy, exuberant, in-your-face text and lots of colour, especially day-glo.This boy is glorying in his toy, and he's going to pump it for all it's worth.

Other top TinK sites:

Rock Around the World A US based radio show that runs a huge entertainment site. "I've never met Danny Lipman, the LA-based owner of RATW. But he was so impressed with the Miffed site that he just had to have us do his. All our discussions with him also have been via e-mail or IRC.

Slightly Miffed - The Band The one that started it all. I really only set the site up to promote the band, but seems like I did a pretty good job. Opening soon will be MIFFED.COM and MIFFED.CO.UK. After reserving the miffed domain TinK discovered that Slightly Miffed is amongst the first bands in the world to have its own domain.

City NetGates, United Artists and more to come....

Published in WebMaster Magazine - No. 2 November 1995.
Copyright © 1995 T. Bruce Tober - All Rights Reserved.
Not for republication, in whole or in part without the prior permission of the author except in commonly accepted fair use situations.

[Home] [Design] [Programming] [3D] [Music] [CD-Rom] [Printing] [Customers] [Awards] [E-Mail]