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A white background with an isometric pattern.

Ethical, straightforward website development.

Strategic design and layout to meet your needs.

Custom coded to meet your website needs.

User-friendly content management.

Privacy-first websites with no cookie banners.

Fast, sustainable, UK-based hosting.

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How we build your website

Our development process is battle-tested to deliver your website to our high standards of quality without any delays. No surprises, minimal effort from you.

Discovery

01

We’ll meet to discuss your website ambitions. This is where you can tell us all the amazing things you want your website to do!

Together, we’ll assess the scale and scope of the project and agree an appropriate timeline. There is no commitment at this stage.

Once everything is agreed, you’ll be asked to sign our Terms of Business, a 50% deposit of the agreed fee is made, and the website enters active development.

Development

02

Work begins on the website. We’ll build the site from top to bottom to the exact specification we agreed in the Discovery phase.

Work will be split between back-end sprints to implement requested features, and front-end design work.

A staging site will be live during this phase where you can view progress on the website. We’ll be available to chat throughout the process.

Review

03

Once the website is fully developed, we’ll submit it to you for review, where you can send us any and all additions, revisions, or corrections.

The number of review stages is agreed during the Discovery phase, any additional reviews incur an additional charge. Review periods are also time-limited to 48-hours.

This is done to ensure each review moves the project forward in a meaningful way.

Publication

04

Your website is published to the internet!

We’ll carry out acceptance tests on the published site to keep it speedy, secure and accessible.

You’ll get credentials to the content management system (secured with 2FA) and an induction on how to edit the copy and images on the site.

We’ll also discuss options for ongoing website hosting and maintenance.

*We know that numbered cards are the latest trend in AI generated websites. We promise that our numbered cards predate this trend, and were created with 100% human ingenuity.

About us

We’re a Chichester-based husband and wife team driven by creativity and quality.

Christopher Johnston

Director, Designer, Developer

A piano teacher for over ten years, I’ve always loved designing things. Finding excuses to exercise my designer muscle was always a huge source of joy in my role. The website I designed for my teaching practice brings in more enquiries than I can handle. Wanting to focus on a smaller group of students, I decided to offer my web design services to other small businesses, to help them carve out a little corner of the internet for themselves.

While I still keep a small, dedicated roster of students, I have pivoted into web development full-time since 2023. Having started at the back-end as a data engineer, I’ve slowly moved back to the front end (although, my Python knowledge still comes in useful!)

Before I started Black and White, I worked as a freelance developer building everything from apps to data pipelines. I finally settled on web development, simply because there were too many people who knew me that wouldn’t stop asking for websites.

I named the company Black and White partly as a nod to my background as a pianist, but mostly because I believe that regardless of which industry your expertise lies, the service you provide should be clear and transparent. It’s easy as a developer to hide our defects behind opaque technical explanations, so I started Black and White to serve clients who value clear deliverables over jargon.

A black and white headshot of a man with short hair and a short beard, smiling warmly at the camera while wearing rectangular dark-framed glasses. He wears a dark jumper over a white collared shirt. Behind him, a wall-mounted hexagonal shelving unit is visible alongside a trailing plant, set against a dark background.
A black and white photograph of a woman with shoulder-length hair sitting on a large wooden log, smiling as she looks down at a black and white shaggy-coated dog seated beside her. She wears a crew-neck sweatshirt, cropped trousers, and trainers. The setting is outdoors on grass, with dense trees and shrubbery forming the backdrop.

Katie Johnston

Content editor, acceptance tester

Having worked as a Key Stage 2 teacher for four years, I’ve developed a keen eye for detail. A change in leadership at my school in 2025 was the perfect opportunity to move from checking my students’ work to checking my husband’s!

While Chris handles the design and development, I keep a keen eye on the copy. I’m fully trained on the content management systems we use, and I handle most content updates after the sites are published.

I’ll also carry out the Acceptance Tests that take place in the Publication Phase. I’ve always been impatient with technology, and Chris knows if he gives me a website to test that is slow or awkward to use, it’s going to have a hard time passing. Nothing goes to Review stage without going through me first, and we’ve worked together to define a comprehensive suite of performance, security, accessibility tests to ensure the websites we ship are production-quality.

Outside of working with Chris, I have my own creative streak, running my custom doggy crochet business, Milo & Me. If you ever need to track me down for a content edit, just follow the trail of wool cuttings to wherever I’m working!

My professional services come as one of a pair with our dog, Milo, who has been unwittingly designated as the company mascot. Chris loves to use photos of him as placeholder images on sites he’s working on, so if you ever see Milo during the Development phase, now you know why!

Some of our work

We pride ourselves on our work. Below are some of the projects we’ve completed, which showcase the variety of work we undertake. We don’t stick to a single solution, because not every website wants to be an Elementor WordPress site!

A screenshot of the homepage of Sophie Robinson's photography website. The page opens with a hero banner reading "Uplifting and enduring photographs for life" followed by a section introducing Sophie, accompanied by a photograph of a woman with short dark hair and round tortoiseshell glasses wearing a red jumper, standing in a bright home office. Three service categories are presented: families, couples, and brands, each with a photograph and navigation buttons. A client logo strip and a section of three client testimonials appear below.

A screenshot of the Brands page on Sophie Robinson's photography website. The page features a hero section headed "Connecting community for brands with soul" with navigation buttons for Brand Services, Personal Brand Sessions, and Nurseries and Clubs. Below, a section on Brand Services describes the offering alongside two photographs, one showing a woman laughing in a gym setting and one showing a set of branded water bottles. A pricing section lists full-day, half-day, and quarter-day session rates with descriptions of what each includes.

A screenshot of the Forever Family Service page on Sophie Robinson's photography website. The page describes the photographer's family session offering alongside two photographs of young children outdoors. A pricing section lists off-peak and peak session fees, followed by a detailed list of what each booking includes. Further sections cover the gallery appointment experience, with an accompanying photograph of a framed portrait displayed in a home setting, and a bowl of popcorn suggesting the gallery viewing experience.

Sophie Robinson Photo

WordPress, Custom In-house theme

Sophie had a very clear mental model of her website, with licenced typefaces and six complementary brand colours already chosen.

As Sophie wanted maximum customisation and control, we built her website with our in-house WordPress theme, Graphite.

We developed Graphite from scratch to add powerful functionality and a coherent design system to WordPress, while retaining the look and feel of WordPress.

This means that, for those familiar with WordPress, the editing experiences is indistinguishable from a native WordPress site.

Much of the back-end work involved performance optimisations for this photo-heavy site, along with shipping some purpose-built custom blocks with the Graphite theme.

sophierobinson.photo

CFMDS

Strapi back-end Custom-coded front-end

Chichester Festival for Music, Dance and Speech wanted a fresh website that interacted with their entry management system, Play&Perform.

Play&Perform is the source of truth for all Festival data, including hundreds of entries on classes, sections, and adjudicators. All of this had to be typed out again on their old website.

We worked with the team from Play&Perform to establish a secure gateway between their festival management service and the CFMDS website.

Now, the CFMDS website automatically fetches the festival data from Play&Perform. No more duplication, half the work for the site editors, and the redesign was a bonus!

The website front-end uses the same SPA framework we developed for terenceallbright.com to keep it speedy.

cfmds.org.uk
A screenshot of the homepage for the Chichester Festival for Music, Dance and Speech. The page features a hero banner announcing the festival's 70th anniversary, a latest news section with three articles, and a chair's welcome message from the festival chair.

A screenshot of the homepage for the Chichester Festival for Music, Dance and Speech. The page features a grid of section tiles covering Strings, Choirs, Organ, Pianoforte, Woodwind, Dance, Classical Guitar, Speech and Drama, Orchestras Bands and Percussion, Brass, and Singing, each with class counts and dates.

A screenshot of the Dance section page for the Chichester Festival for Music, Dance and Speech. The page shows the section dates, venue, section leader, and adjudicator details, followed by a searchable grid of dance classes organised by age group and discipline, including ballet, tap, jazz, musical theatre, classical Greek, global, and narrative and character categories. Below the class listings is a biography of the adjudicator, Michelle Ballantyne.

A screenshot of the homepage of Thurton and Ashby St Mary Preschool's website. A hero banner shows a child reaching up to hang a coat on a wooden peg rail, with the preschool's name and a description of its child-led outdoor setting overlaid in white text. Three announcement banners below highlight available spaces, woodland sessions, and funding eligibility. A welcome section describes the setting's ethos and Forest School programme, and a testimonials section displays four parent reviews in card format.

A screenshot of the About Us page for Thurton and Ashby St Mary Preschool. The page covers the setting's approach to learning and development, collaboration with parents and professionals, the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum, outdoor learning and play, and the woodland area. A Meet the Team section features profile photographs and qualification listings for six named staff members. The page concludes with a committee section listing named volunteers in various roles.

A screenshot of the Contact page for Thurton and Ashby St Mary Preschool. The page includes a contact form with fields for full name, email, and message, alongside a contact information panel showing the email address, telephone number, and postal address. An opening times table lists hours for Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday as 9am to 3pm, with Wednesday shown as closed. The footer includes a site map, legal links, policies, and useful external links.

Thurton & Ashby St Mary Preschool

Strapi back-end Custom-coded front-end

Thurton & Ashby St Mary Preschool were seeking a new website. While they felt their existing would benefit from a refreshed look, their greater need was for a frictionless editing experience.

The preschool team is largely made up of volunteer parents, with fairly high churn due to the narrow age range. The site is frequently updated with term dates, school events and staff qualifications.

This meant the edits came thick and fast, and onboarding new staff members needed to be a smooth as possible.

We moved them from WordPress Elementor to Strapi, a modern content-management system designed from the ground-up to be a minimal and user-friendly editing experience.

The website front-end uses the same SPA framework we developed for an earlier site, terenceallbright.com, to keep it speedy.

thurtonpreschoo.org.uk

Terence Allbright, Composer

Custom-coded

Terence asked for a minimal website that would showcase his compositions. We wrote a custom search and sorted function so that compositions were only ever a couple of clicks away.

Computer literate, but non-technical, Terence asked that we handle all the content updates to the site. This meant we didn’t need to use WordPress, so we designed the code editor and deployed it as a static page. Lightweight, fast and secure.

Custom-coding the website meant we could publish it as a Single Page Application (SPA), which speeds the website up by not reloading shared elements, like the header, when navigating to new pages.

We’ve worked with many more composers and musicians since completing Terry’s site. Our unique understanding of the needs of artistic professionals has made this something of a speciality for us.

A screenshot of the homepage of Terence Allbright's personal website. The page features a large portrait of an older man with close-cropped white hair wearing a dark blue jacket, alongside a heading identifying him as a British composer and pianist known for BBC Radio Drama scores, choral works, and chamber music. Below, two feature tiles link to latest compositions and a featured recording, followed by a news and upcoming events section listing a concert at St Michael's Church, Lewes.

A screenshot of the Publications page on Terence Allbright's personal website. The page lists a large catalogue of compositions in a two-column grid, each entry showing the work title, instrumentation, date range, and a link to view the score on Composer's Edition. Works include pieces for piano, strings, brass, clarinet, and ensemble. A filter and sort function appears at the top of the listing.

A screenshot of the About page on Terence Allbright's personal website. The page features a biography detailing his career as a pianist, composer, organist, and teacher, alongside a portrait photograph of an older man with close-cropped white hair wearing a grey zip-up hoodie, photographed outdoors. A pull quote from critic Ivan Hewitt appears below the portrait. The page concludes with a site map and social media links in the footer.

Contact us

Leave a message using the form below, or book a no-commitment discovery call with Chris.

Book a discovery call

    Frequently asked questions

    1. Our services all run on data centres powered entirely by renewable energy, and with a PUE rating of 1.2 or lower. This includes both websites and servers that run internal and client applications.
    2. The internet is for everyone. Our website are built to meet full accessibility standards. This includes meeting at least WCAG AA compliance for text colour contrast ratios, complete keyboard operability for users with motor impairments, and automatic deactivation of animations for users requesting reduced motion preferences.
    3. Our websites respect the privacy of your visitors. We don’t ask users to download tracking or advertising cookies when they visit your website. Tracking cookies are often detrimental to the performance of a website, while being invasive to visitors and not being beneficial to your business.

    This is where you should lay all your hopes and dreams for your website on the table. We’ll sift through them together and propose a design and a technology stack to realise it.

    At the conclusion of the Discovery Phase, after signing our Terms of Business. At this point, we’ll have an agreed deliverable, and have mapped out a timeline for development. Receipt of the first payment – 50% of the agreed amount – kicks off the Development phase.

    This depends on the scope of the project, but we’ll agree a timeline in the Discovery phase. As a general rule, any website that can use our Graphite WordPress theme will move quickly, usually taking only a matter of weeks to reach completion.

    In fact, our record for going from Discovery to Publication is six days. After the discovery meeting, the website was ready for review less than 48 hours later. After a minor round of edits, the site was rubber stamped and we completed the content management training with the client.

    On the flip side, anything that involves a custom integration will be a bottleneck on development. The longest we’ve spent in development is three months, where we had to work with a third-party service provider to build a gateway from the ground up.

    We’ll discuss the needs of your website in the Discovery phase, and you’ll be made aware of any time-intensive aspects of the proposal before you sign the Terms of Business.

    As little as possible. We’ll only begin the Development phase once the Discovery phase has been signed off by you.

    The Development phase is where the main body of work takes place for us, and can involve several sprints to complete the project. Input during this phase will slow down development, so, while we encourage you to stay in touch, we ask that significant edits be saved for the Review stage.

    We believe in transparency of the development process, and we give you access to a staging site for that reason during development. The process works best if you make notes as development progresses, then we can begin the Review stage with a complete set of edits that has grown organically.

    The Development phase aims to built the website as closely as possible to the agreed deliverable from the Discovery phase. You can monitor progress during the Development phase through the staging site, and check that everything is shaping up the right way.

    You can request any changes to the design during the Review stage. A review can be a sweeping redesign, or just a rubber stamping of the product at the end of the Development phase.

    Anything related to copy, images, content, layout or design. Features that require additional functionality that weren’t discussed during the Discovery phase incur an additional charge. Everything else is fair game.

    This is an important part of our process. Limiting reviews does two things:

    1. It forces you and us to properly define the scope of the project in the Discover phase, rather than defer it to the review stage.
    2. It means that once the website has finished development, its publication isn’t delayed by trivial updates. Each review should meaningfully move the project forward.

    Yes! Our Terms of Business grant you a perpetual licence to use your site once the Publication phase is complete. If you have a trusted hosting partner, you’re welcome to host it with them.

    If you choose to host your published website with us, you’ll get unlimited content edits (subject to our fair use policy).

    Any additional features that were not part of the scope agreed in the Discovery phase are not included in this. We can provide a quote for them separately.

    No, we don’t host email servers. The reason is singular and simple: getting emails delivered from self-hosted or shared hosting platforms to major providers is a major technical hurdle, and a full-time job.

    Not at all!