Each user is notified randomly throughout the day to post a selfie of themselves and their surroundings. What happens if you miss the notification? Not to worry! You will be able to post late, but your post will be time stamped with how long it took you to post. The reason behind this was to create authenticity. We want to see what you are doing at the moment. Don’t wait to put makeup on or to make it ‘appear you actually have a social life’. Be you. If you're asleep at 2pm POST THAT PICTURE!

BeReal gives users the opportunity to not over think what they post. Social media is for communication and for seeing what everyone is up to. The app is full of photo dumps, which collates into random snapshots and a log keeping up with friends. It’s uncontrollable, stripped back and no BS is allowed.

Let’s live in the moment but on our phones. Far too often we see posed models promoting skinny tea. With Be Real, you are looking to be an influencer best to stick with what you know. BeReal can’t be monetized, meaning no brand deals, no collabs and no story swipe ups!

First made popular in France, Spain and now globally! You can see on the discovery page who has posted and have a peak around the world what everyone is up to. For those in long distance relationships, friends in different countries or even to just entertain acquaintances.

Remember — it’s not about being perfect, it’s about being real

This is the first social media app to display real life just as it is. No ads, no influencers … just you and your best friends being your truest selves. BeReal is a chance to be honest online once again.

Plugin:Follow our Digital media marketer on BeReal @mslibbykhooper

Be Real Trailer

Instagram is boring, TikTok is too busy and is anyone still on facebook? It feels like every social media platform is over polluted with influencer wannabes. 
For those who like a stripped back approach to posting images this is where Be Real has covered. No more filters and brand deals. BeReal, was created by Alexis Barreyat  in 2020- Alexis describes the app as having unprecedented levels of engagement. ‘It's the closest to reality a social app can get’.


BeReal: Hate social media? This is the app for you!

Instagram is boring, TikTok is too busy and is anyone still on facebook? BeReal is the anti social media app you need!



Be Real:The app for people who hate social media

The cost of having a website developed can vary greatly depending on the websites' features and extra services you require.

Let's take a look at what affects the pricing so you can gauge how much to budget for.

Here's what we explore in this guide to website development costs.


A simple table displaying estimates for different types of websites.


Costs of each step of the web development process

Why such a large variation in website development prices?


Exploring the reasons between low and high price estimates


There are other expenses you need to be aware of.

1. The average costs for website development.

The table below highlights the average cost to get various types of websites developed.

These prices are the general average range you will find within the IT / Media industries. The figures are based on my own observations of the industry.

how there can be such a vast difference in prices?

First, we need to explore the breakdown of website development costs, which will give you more of an understanding of how much a website will cost.

2. A breakdown of website development costs

Having a website developed isn't one single process. There are many individual processes which make up the final product.


This section is split into 8 sub-sections:

Depending on whether you require a new site or a redesign of a current site will have a large effect on the cost and time of the planning stage.

Generally, for a brand new site, this stage will incorporate planning the entire development process, producing a proposal and laying out milestones to keep track of the projects progress.

For any site, be it a brand new one or a redesign, during the planning stage is where the technology stack will be determined.

Think of the technology stack as building a house. Each part of the stack will play a specific role to build the complete house.

At NPK Media, we utilise a variety of technology combinations (stacks):

Amazon Web Services, Express, Next.JS and Node.  

The MERN stack: MongoDB, Express, React and Node.

A tech stack basically describes the underlying technologies behind the functionality of your website. I did write a few paragraphs about development tech stacks but deleted it as it will probably sound like I'm talking gibberish to the majority.

If the above went straight over your head, don't worry! You don't need to know the ins and outs of the technology behind your website. Our web development team will utilise the latest technologies.

If you're having a website redesigned, planning will also consist of crawling and mapping out your current website structure in order to setup redirects, ensuring that no SEO ranking is lost, along with downloading your database so that any articles, products etc can be transferred over to the new site.

Branding is not my forte, so this is a very brief section.

If you've already had a business logo designed, have all your brand guidelines sorted and would like to stick to your current branding, this stage will be super fast and simple.

However, if your current branding looks like it could use a facelift, we'll make some recommendations.

Branding for your business is highly important - it's the face of your company and first impressions can be made by simply viewing your logo. Read more about the 

A successful business and engaging website design go hand in hand.

It is highly unlikely you will ever find a successful business with a poorly designed website.

This stage of the process begins by designing wireframes for your website.

A wireframe is essentially a basic design which will allow web designers to visualise the website to ensure that each page is structured in a way that is simple yet effective and most importantly - that the page does the job it is intended for.

The UI stage incorporates making the visual design appealing and engaging, while the UX portion deals with ensuring that the website produces a pleasing user experience.

Once the wireframes are complete, the UI/UX designer will create a prototype website, which will be handed over to the frontend developer.

UI - User Interface (What you see - colours, button animations etc)

UX - User Experience (How the page "feels" for a user)

UI/UX design estimate (industry observed)

: £10 - £100,000+ depending on complexity and intricacies.

Frontend development is where the prototype design is coded into a visual website using frontend frameworks such as React, Angular, Vue, Next.JS, Gatsby.JS etc, or pure vanilla HTML and CSS. Some sites will also require the frontend to interact with various third party services through the use of APIs.

On various sections of our website, such as the projects page, elements on the page are animated - that's a part of frontend development - it's basically everything you see and interact with on a website in your browser. 

As with the technology stack section, I won't bore you with any more details of frontend web development.

How much will the frontend website development cost? (industry observed)

: £10 - £100,000+ again depending on the complexity and functionality required.

So up until this point, you may think that if the frontend developer has finished making the website work in a browser that the website should be complete?

In some cases, this is partially true - some websites don't have a database and are literally just static HTML, CSS and Javascript.

However, the website won't yet function properly, especially if you need contact forms, payment processing or any other features.

Basically, backend development incorporates the communication between the frontend of the website (in the browser), the server and database.

Where the frontend of the website is boiled down to HTML, CSS and Javascript, backend development can incorporate a vast amount of software, services, APIs and programming languages.

Without backend development, if you tried submitting a form on the website, you'd see the animation of a button click on the frontend (on your browser), but nothing will actually happen behind the scenes as there won't be a backend server (or serverless function) to send the request to.

I could go on about backend web development but again, I won't bore you with more information as you're probably here to learn more about the cost of having a website built for your business.

How much will backend web development cost? (industry observed)

: Highly dependent on the end functionality required of the website. Ranges between £10- £100,000+

You now have a website which is visible in the browser 

But what if you need to make some changes to a page's content, add a product, remove a product, upload a blog post etc?

 (You have no CMS) - The developer will have to edit the codebase to make the changes.

3. Why so much variation in the costs of website design and development?

As you've probably noticed while reading through this, prices range from one extreme to the other within the software/media industry.

There are a number of reasons that cause the large variation in pricing of website development.

When getting your website developed, you need to decide which route you'd like to take.

If you're just starting out in your business, the DIY route may seem attractive due to the low cost - as a starting point, this 

be ok, however we'd highly recommend that you get your website professionally built by a media/software agency.


What's the difference between each route?

DIY speaks for itself - you need to work everything out yourself. It's the cheapest option but 

. Namely performance, scalability, security risks and poor user engagement.

If you're building your own brand, DIY solutions such as Shopify can help you start out for a small monthly price. However the majority of businesses will hire an agency.. those who don't hire a web design and development agency are highly likely to regret the DIY route down the line.

With DIY solutions, you need an eye for design and user experience and should be clued up on the latest programming vulnerabilities - who's going to wade through your botched website to correct any damages done by hackers? (or just damage from simply having a DIY site). 

Further to this, DIY solutions are not optimised for performance, SEO or user engagement, which are all important factors to consider when it comes to turning a profit online.

An agency dedicated to your requirements will ensure your website is unique, engaging and completely optimised toward your businesses goals and direction, so that people actually buy your product/services or fill in a contact form.

At NPK Media, we develop custom built websites from the ground up, meaning a highly scalable, secure and performant end product for you.

Should you choose a freelancer or an agency?

When it comes to choosing a freelancer or agency, it comes down to your own preference. However an agency does provide a full service solution which will encorporate branding, website development, marketing and videography, like us :) 

A freelancer will cost you less than an agency, however they may not;

Have the ability to rigerously test and critisie their own work

Take accountability for their own requirements

If we track back a little, the reason for the large variation in price between DIY, freelance or agency comes down to the quality, performance and security of your website along with the return on investment which the website will bring.

As the saying goes - it costs money to make money. This is entirely valid in the web development space - if you only want to pay £50 for a website, 

. This also goes for anything less than a few thousand pounds. 

If you want the cheapest route possible, don't care what your brand comes across to users as and don't mind that you won't be maximising your opportunity and success, go the DIY route. 

If you're serious about your business, want to minimise stress, headaches and want the best chance for success, hire an agency who know their way around everything web, branding and marketing related.

A professionally built website will pay for itself 10x over by accelerating business growth and generating revenue.

Once you've factored in the cost of website development, there are various other expenses you must account for:

Let's quickly highlight the main costs of each of these points.

There are hundreds of hosting companies - some of the larger ones you should stay clear of (won't be naming and shaming here, but if you want a hint they start with: G, H, and B).

Popular routes are shared cloud hosting providers. Private cloud hosting is more expensive but is more secure than shared. Or if you want to be old school, build your own server.

For a low level shared plan, you can expect to pay anywhere between £1.99 - £45 per month.

Dedicated cloud hosting can get expensive with a large database - think £1000s+ per month (it's highly unlikely you'll need this level of hosting right away).

This is the address of your website. Ours is npk.media

Depending on the word(s) and whether it's .co.uk, .com, .io etc will determine the price.


You can pick up a domain for as little as £0.99.. or for a popular name multiple millions, 

If you go for a popular open source CMS, such as WordPress, you pay nothing each month (excluding hosting costs) - but as mentioned previously, these have security and performance issues.

An intermediate level is the headless website approach. Examples of these are Storyblok, Sanity, Prismic and (sigh, of course..) Wordpress.

Then you have large Ecommerce CMS solutions, such as BigCommerce or Oracle, where pricing ranges anywhere from around £25 to £10k+ per month.

Depending on what you'd like covered in your maintenance plan, the costs can vary. Some companies charge as little as £30 per month (how this is profitable I do not know), while others can be cost upwards of £500,000 per month (a large-scale, dedicated development team would be working on your site/application 100% of the time).

The majority of our clients take out retainer plans with us which cover not only website upgrades and changes but also marketing, social media management and videography services.

A website alone doesn't drive traffic. You'll need to either market your business through organic traffic or paid marketing.


SEO is a specialist field - any company claiming to get you to page 1 of Google for under £150 per month will not be doing a great job - they may actually cause harm to your domains reputation.

Expect a reliable SEO service to cost anywhere between £2500 p/m and £50,000+ p/m (depending on the competition).


SEO takes time to see results. If you want instant results, paid marketing is your best bet.

Pay per click marketing, also known as PPC are marketing services such as Google Ads, LinkedIn ads, Facebook etc.

PPC specialists will charge either a fixed monthly fee or a fixed monthly fee + a percentage of monthly ad spend.

As you will be paying the balance due on the advertising account, this cost entirely depends on your industry and the cost per keyword. 

Keywords cost vary depending on their competitiveness - "red carpets that go with yellow walls" would be an example of a low competition keyword and would cost pennies, whereas "

Professional copywriters produce blog content, news articles, product descriptions or landing page copy.

Copywriters charge per word or per article/project. Expect to pay anywhere from £100 - £5000.

What you can take away from this article:

You shouldn't compromise on your website or online presence

Prices range from extreme lows to extreme highs

A professional, reliable and modern solution will pay for itself 10x over

In this guide we explore the question of 'how much does a website cost?'   


Exploring the costs of website design and development

An in depth guide exploring the various costs associated with having a website designed and developed for your business.

A guide to how much a website will cost

Establishing your brand is a vital part of running a business in modern Britain, as it’s no longer enough to have great products or services, your customer is loyal and having a crest your army of loyal supporters can stand behind is a sure fire way to keep them loyal. Don’t get me wrong, If the British Gas (BG) logo was just plain text printed on a document, people would still be customers, they would still be loyal and even though having gas provided by BG is more expensive than their competitors, people still choose them. Why? Because British Gas is a brand, nationalistic by name, but it stands for stability and longevity, holding the term British/Britain, it holds the company accountable as a national brand. It says, this is the best Britain can offer. The product is no different from what you would get from a competitor, their current service offering isn’t any different, yet they still hold 27% of the market share, double that of even the second largest provider.

2 comparative British Gas logos. One with design and one without

Establishing what you stand for early on helps you to find and retain loyal team members and customers. So what happens when a company rethinks it’s brand in the public sphere. This happens in with a higher frequency than you may think.

There are a number of reasons why a company may change its logo, but a full rebrand can be down to a merger or the design itself is tired and needs invigorating, other reasons such as to stand out from a competitor or when your brand jars culturally with a customer touch-point. Again, there are lots of reasons why a brand design might become tired, some examples…

The final design was a response to a current trend, now that the trend is over, it makes the brand look old.

When the company began, the brand design was representative, but now the company is much more, they need visuals that represent this.

A company goes in a different direction and it wants to represent this

The brand was designed by people with no design knowledge and it is unable to perform in modern situations.

These are just a few examples and no company is immune to environmental impact on brand design.

Sometimes a company gets it right from the start. They do this by following the rules.

If it doesn’t work in Black and White, it doesn’t work

An example of getting it right is the US Network abc, in their 150 years their logo has changed 9 times, and only 2 designs could be considered different by comparison. Contrast that with a company who should know better; Apple, since 1976 have had 6 logos and only 1 major change or Google, who’ve had 8 major redesigns since 1997. The changes or lack of changes happen as a result of not following the above rules, which eventually all companies capitulate to.

A series of a b c logos from 1952 to 2013, a simple circle with a geometric font inside "abc"

Google and Apple logos over time show a trend from complexity to simplicity.

NPK Media have had only 1 logo design change and are in the process of a colour palette change. The initial change was the result of a non-designer being tasked with the job and meeting a business owner brief. This logo didn’t spend much time in the wild and is only visible on one video. By the time we fully launched the company at expo, our new visual brand was born and adopted.

the old NPK Media logo N P(with a playback button) K M E D (with a playback button) I A, on a black background.

Knowing about the common mistakes most companies make when choosing a design to represent their brand is to throw the kitchen sink at it, I’m no different, I wanted to represent all of the facets of the company in one design, knowing we would offer a few services and that the company would need ways to express this at brand level. I wanted to make sure all bases were covered, and knew the only way to do this effectively was to simplify the design and represent services another way.

Creating the anatomy of our logo (our viewfinder symbol/insignia), I started by asking what do all of our services have in common at the fundamental level; composition, light and sound. Whether video, web, design, much of what we do is on a screen. I’d remembered a beautiful brand concept Sony had made for the VIO range of products. The symbol takes the sine wave (analogue sound) and IO for digital to make up the original acronym Video Audio Integrated Operation and breaking it up into something simple and pleasurable when you’re in-the-know. I wanted a piece of this for NPK Media.

So I started with the sine wave (∿) for sound, the diode for light(), the play button for playback and the circle to represent composition.

 The simple circle is an all-encompassing symbol that shows our inclusivity. At the start of creating the logo, we used the golden ratio (a universal depiction of beauty in its most simple form) to compose the circle. This allows versatility down the line.



 We chose the diode, as it represents everything modern in current light technology; efficient, bright and long lasting. We use light for video, it permeates every part of our work process.

 We adopted the analogue sound wave, also known as sine wave. Chosen for its relationship to music and audio, it’s an obvious fit.

showing development of new NPK Media logo, a technical drawing of a diode in a circuit and a sine wave to represent light and sound respectively

 The play button is a synonymous symbol of the action of audio and video playback. It also happens to be the symbol for a diode in an electrical diagram when you take the horizon line into account.


Technical drawings from the development of NPK Media new logo. A playback button and viewfinder elements.

 This comes as a result of a childhood memory (somewhat skewed by time), using the Disney ViewMaster™. A device that let you take a circular disc of photographic negatives, and view them in full colour through the eyepieces on the back of the device. This is our element of playfulness and takes us back to our first interactions with media as a child.


Construction of the logo was a difficult task. Taking all of those elements and hiding them in plain sight. We went through a number of iterations before we hit on the final composition. As anybody finds out working with geometry, what’s perfectly geometric, isn’t optically perfect. So we had to jig a few things around to make things fit. But in the end, we were left with a symbol of identity. It says who we are, It’s simple, works in black and white, understandable/legible came with font choice (that’s another blog post entirely).

This explains how we came up with a visual representation of our identity. So how was it future proofed. The simplicity of the logo meant that it was adopted immediately, splashed over clothing and giveaways, and posted en masse in our social streams. In order to show versatility, we chose a colour palette that represented diversity and decide that colour would play a big role in helping people to identify an aspect of the company that represented them. We had colours for Public interactions, B2B and internal. We allowed the content to drive colour choice and it just worked. Whether we were truly wedded to the colour palette, only time would tell. That time was 3 years in.

We’ve recently initiated a brand revitalisation, changing our primary business colours to a new set, with rationale. We took colour theory and decided that employees can self-identify the right logo for the right content. We’ve reserved a certain set for Public and Internal, but essentially want people to be as expressive as they can. As long as we keep things simple, the brand will always convey the right message.

The NPK MEDIA colour palette is shown as 12 blocks filled with colour and a corresponding outline.

As an overview, the brand looks complex. In order to provide an array of functions, we’ve had to ensure the brand can be quickly accessed as a task is being complete. We have a design system, known as a brand identity document that helps users of the logo to quickly assess what goes where in a 3 step process that asks where the logo will go (public/Internal), and which medium (screen or print) it will appear on.

One thing is for sure, we have a strong brand that can consistently represent our identity and culture in a way that can stand the test of time.


If you would like to get in touch about any part of your brand strategy. Use the contact form below. 

When it comes to your brand you want your audience to see your logo and envisage who you are, your service and ethos. If you don't know what your brand says about you we think it's time for a think...

Why brand identity should be your priority

Brand identity is essential for businesses in order to succeed, your logo should tell your story. Here are our tips for small businesses.

Why it's important to establish brand identity

The Golden Lines, a documentary about: addiction, art and success. 

We wanted to produce a documentary in 2021 with the goal of ‘Changing the view’ on a taboo subject. A mutual friend of John Charles’ put us in touch, we pitched the idea, concept and timeframe to John and his wife Jen, who accepted the proposal and the project began... 

The start of a good project comes from planning and research. We quickly took to YouTube and instagram to find out more about John. This in turn meant we could structure how we wanted the documentary to start, what happens in the middle and the end. After finding various podcasts of John talking about his troubled past, we knew what things were important to his story and key for us to include. Stephen started writing down questions from the back of this research ready for when we interviewed John on the filming days. 

Now for the fun part. We started filming for the documentary back in July. We wanted a wide range of shots in our library to choose from in the edit so we followed John around capturing his day to day life. This included filming his art techniques, picking up art supplies, his open exhibition at the St Helens world of glass. We even filmed parts of his day which weren’t related to his art such as getting his haircut or getting his nails painted. We knew if we had a wide selection of shots, we could be really picky within the edit, meaning the quality of the Documentary would be great throughout. In-between filming the cutaways we interviewed John with two cameras to help keep the viewer engaged. 

After 6 months of filming John, we ended up with a whopping 3.4 terabytes of footage. We found the best approach when you have lots of footage is to organise it into sections and then cut down all the best parts within these sections. This left us with a library of usable footage we could easily access once editing. Another technique we found useful was breaking the documentary down into parts, such as the title sequence, the start, middle, end and finally the credits. This meant we could focus on each section and get it perfect without overwhelming ourselves. To try do this in one chunk would of been stressful! After perfecting each section we stitched them all together leaving us with a feature length documentary with a grand total of 78 minutes of running time. 

To finish off a great project, we decided to have two premiere’s at a local cinema called ‘FACT Liverpool’. We had an open bar and a banner we created with the NPK Media logo, The Golden Lines logo and John Charle’s logo. People could get their picture taken in front of the banner with our in house photographer Michael. Both of the events went really well and we had some great feedback from the people who attended. It truly was a two nights to remember! We have now released the documentary on our YouTube channel which you can find below. We are also entering it into various film festivals this year, so keep an eye out!


Thank you to Fact Cinema for hosting the Premiere.

 Watch John Charles' powerful story of addiction, art, and redemption in this thought-provoking documentary.

#TheGoldenLines #JohnCharles #ChangingTheView #Documentary

Written by Luke Sparrowhawk, Head of Videography. 

 A documentary about: addiction, art and success. 

The Golden Lines

This stirring documentary follows John Charles as he documents his struggles with addiction and how art became his salvation.

The Golden Lines: A documentary about addiction 

   Happy New Year! Who else is feeling a little groggy after the long break? At NPK Media, we have so many plans set up to ensure 2022 is our year! 

Last year, we premiered our documentary “ The Golden Lines”. The premiere reception was filled with positive praise from viewers, which sparked some plans for our team to create insightful and touching films in the new year. The premiere reception was filled with positive praise from viewers, which sparked some plans for our company. 

Our team faced the challenge of making this documentary head on and we welcome more challenges that push our creative abilities.   

   So how do NPK plan to change the view for 2022? Here are a few resolutions we plan to stick to help grow and make our client’s businesses thrive.

   Our team of 10 with a combined 75 years of experience, have a mixed bag of creative talents already, which is why we have challenged them to take on a new skill in their field they have yet to master. We believe that with an industry that is always evolving it’s never too late to learn something new that can add to a member’s toolkit. 

For example, our Marketing Manager has set up the task to learn more about Copyright by taking courses in her spare time. She has also recently joined female lead marketing groups to help uplift and learn more workshops from other young women in the marketing field.

   We have also invited our team members to interact on Linkedin with other workers in their field. We believe connecting with others has become crucial to establishing a relationship with fellow creatives and influencing other workers. 

Linkedin is a platform that allows working individuals to share exciting news in their field, express their opinions on upcoming projects or to even network with potential clients.

   We are proud to be announcing new opportunities are on the rise and we will be using our platforms to welcome independent businesses we believe deserve more recognition.

We want to help kickstart their 2022 which is why we will be delivering £10K worth of work to help them promote themselves and boost their business. The competition will run for 2 weeks from 17th Jan - 17th February.

For more information follow us on Instagram @npk_media for more information about our competition.

   2022 will be the year where we change the view as a media agency by educating the masses, providing engaging and thought provoking content and giving back to a community.  

2022- NPK Media

Happy New Year!  At NPK Media, we have so many plans set up to ensure 2022 is our year! 
Want to hear what our agency is up to? Check out our weekly blog!

NPK Media Blog

Be Real:The app for people who hate social media

A guide to how much a website will cost

Why it's important to establish brand identity

The Golden Lines: A documentary about addiction

Happy New Year from NPK Media

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