Pforzheim region

TYPO3 Agency Pforzheim

Pforzheim lives on precision: jewellery, watches, medical technology, supplier parts in small runs. Add a university that takes design seriously. Together that produces clients who look closely, at the work as well as at the result.

TYPO3 Association Silver Member

When the product is a matrix of variants

Precision manufacturers rarely have one product. They have a matrix: sizes, materials, finishes, tolerances. Presented as body text on a website, that turns into an unusable wall of type.

The better route runs through structured data. Variants sit as records in the system, the website filters and compares them, and they are maintained in exactly one place, usually not in the CMS but where the data originates anyway. How such a connection is built is set out under TYPO3 development.

Design that survives daily use

With a design university on the doorstep, expectations in the region are high, and that is pleasant. It does bring one question that should be asked early: does the design hold once the editorial team fills it?

Layouts that only work with a particular length of text break at the first longer title. So we check designs against real content rather than against placeholder text and name the places that will tip over in daily use, before implementation rather than after.

Between two economic areas

Pforzheim sits between Karlsruhe and Stuttgart and benefits from both. For us that means short distances: a meeting combines with others in the region, and the journey is manageable.

We have no office here and do not claim one. Our base is Stuttgart-Feuerbach.

Common questions

How far is Pforzheim from you?

A good forty minutes, by train or by car. Pforzheim sits between Stuttgart and Karlsruhe, so we are regularly heading that way.

We are glad to come over for a kick-off, a workshop or training. The daily project work still runs remotely, because that is faster.

We manufacture small runs with many variants. How do you represent that?

Not by creating a page for every variant. Variants belong in the system as structured data rather than in body text; then they can be filtered, compared and maintained from one source.

In TYPO3 that means a data model of your own, usually through Extbase, connected to the system the data originates in anyway. What needs settling is set out in the glossary under Extbase.

Design matters to us. Do you work with our design agency?

Gladly. We implement other people’s designs and say early where an idea will cause trouble in daily editorial work, for instance when a layout only works with exactly this length of text.

What we do not do: quietly bend a design out of shape. If something cannot be implemented, we discuss it rather than explaining it afterwards.

A project in the northern Black Forest?

Tell us what is on the table. Pforzheim is on our way; a meeting is not a travel plan.