Sites that movelike film
The same eye that frames a shot builds the website. Cinematic, fast, and quietly automated behind the scenes.
Composition is composition,
whatever the medium
Years of deciding what belongs in a frame — and what gets cut — turns out to be the same discipline a good website needs. Most sites fail because everything is shouting at once. I build the opposite: pages with a clear subject, deliberate pacing, and nothing competing for attention that hasn't earned it.
And because I run a studio myself, I know what the back end has to do. This very site takes a quote request, creates the customer in Square, emails the client, raises the invoice and opens the project when it's paid — without me touching a thing. I build that for other people too.
More than a brochure
Websites that feel designed
Not a template with your logo dropped in. Every site is built from scratch around your story, your images and the way your customers actually move through a page.
Fast, everywhere
Your pages appear the moment someone taps the link — on a laptop or on patchy mobile data at a game. Photos stay sharp without making anyone wait.
Automation behind the scenes
Quote forms that email you and the client instantly, invoices raised in Square, payments reconciled automatically. The admin runs itself.
Client portals & dashboards
Give your clients a private login to track their job, approve work and download their files. The same system running this studio, built for yours.
Found on Google
Set up properly so search engines understand who you are, what you do and where you work — the groundwork that gets you turning up in local searches.
Yours to keep
You own the site, the domain and every account it runs on. No lock-in, and no monthly fee just to keep your own website online.
Three ways to start
Every project is quoted individually — these are starting points, not boxes you have to fit into. Tell me what you need and I'll price it honestly.
The Landing Page
One page, one goal
Price on request
A single, beautifully built page that converts — ideal for a campaign, a launch or a focused service offering.
- Custom single-page design
- Contact or booking form with email automation
- Mobile-first, fully responsive
- Basic SEO and analytics
- Live on your own domain
The Business Site
Most small businesses
Price on request
A complete multi-page website with everything a growing business needs to be found, trusted and contacted.
- Up to 6 custom-designed pages
- Portfolio or gallery system
- Quote requests wired to your inbox
- Square invoicing integration
- SEO, analytics and performance tuning
- Content you can edit yourself
Custom Portal
When a site isn't enough
Price on request
A bespoke web application — client logins, dashboards, file delivery, bookings and payments, built around how you actually work.
- Everything in The Business Site
- Secure authentication and user roles
- Client dashboard and file delivery
- Square payments and automated invoicing
- Admin panel built for your workflow
- Ongoing support and iteration
Scriber — A practice tool for students who sit exams with a writer.
Some students are approved to have a person write their exam for them — they dictate, the writer writes. It's a skill, and until now there was nowhere to practise it.
Scriber plays the part of that writer. Students upload a past paper, read it on one side of the screen and dictate their answer on the other, saying every comma and full stop out loud exactly as they'd have to on the day.
The hard part wasn't the dictation — it was making the writer human. A transcription tool types every word instantly and never tires, which teaches a pace no real person could survive. Scriber's writer runs a beat behind, can only hold so much before they lose the thread, and occasionally stops to ask how a word is spelled. Push too fast and they ask you to repeat yourself, exactly as they would in the room.
- Students practise against realistic limits, not a perfect machine
- Exam papers never leave the student's own device
- Runs at effectively zero hosting cost
- Free for students to use
Built end to end — the idea, the interface, the logic and the launch. Live at pracscriber.com.
Scriber
A practice tool for students approved for a writer under NESA exam provisions. They upload a past paper, read it on one side and dictate on the other — saying every comma, full stop and capital out loud, because a real writer only writes what they hear.
- Strict modeStrips the punctuation and capitals speech recognition adds for you — the help you won’t get on the day
- A human writerBounded memory, a fixed pen speed, and spelling questions — not a perfect transcription engine
- Session reportEnds with the habits worth practising
Behaves like a person taking your words down by hand.
Put a Demanding writer against a Rushed pace and words start falling out of their memory for real — that gap is the thing students have to learn to manage, and it’s what practising against a perfect machine never teaches.
The real engine, running here: the same working-memory model, writer presets and load thresholds as the live product at pracscriber.com.
Your clients get their own login
No more chasing approvals over text and losing paperwork in expired download links. Your customer signs in, sees exactly where their job is up to, approves the estimate, pays, and collects their documents — while the same job updates on your side automatically. Builder, caterer, sparky or studio: same system, your words.
Rear extension — 14 Alder St
- Site preparation and demolition$6,800
- Slab, framing and roof structure$42,500
- Windows, doors and external cladding$18,400
- Certification and council fees$3,200
Click through it — accepting the estimate raises the invoice, and paying the deposit opens the job. Switch sides to see the same job from the business’s desk. Pick a trade above; it’s the same system either way.
How a site gets made
Discovery
We work out what the site actually needs to do — who it's for, what they should feel, and what counts as success. You get a fixed quote before anything starts.
Design
I design the real thing in the browser, not a flat mockup. You see it move, on your phone, before a line of production code is written.
Build
The site gets built, the automation gets wired in, and you get a live preview link that updates as I go. Nothing happens in a black box.
Launch
Domain, DNS, analytics and email all configured and tested. I hand over the keys, walk you through it, and stay reachable afterwards.
Built to stay built
No page builders, no plugin soup, nothing that breaks itself while you sleep. You get a site that's genuinely yours, runs for almost nothing, and still works properly in three years' time.
Straight answers
What does a website from Johnston Media include?
A custom-designed site built from scratch, mobile-first, with the forms and email automation wired in. Quote requests reach your inbox, invoices can be raised through Square, and the search-engine groundwork is done before launch.
Do I own the website?
Yes — the site, the domain and every account it runs on are in your name. There's no lock-in and no monthly fee just to keep your own website online.
What does it cost to run?
At the scale most small businesses operate, hosting is free or close to it, because the sites are built to run on hosting tiers that cost nothing at low traffic. You pay for your domain, and for anything that genuinely charges per use.
Can clients log in and see their own work?
Yes. A client portal gives each of your customers a private login to track their job, approve estimates, pay invoices and download their files. There's a working demonstration of one on the web development page.
How long does a website take?
It depends on the size of the site and how quickly content and feedback come back. You get a fixed quote and a realistic timeline before the work starts, and a live preview link that updates as it's built.
What happens if something breaks after launch?
You deal directly with the person who built it. The sites don't run on page builders or plugin stacks, which is most of the reason they don't break themselves overnight.
Tell me about your project
A few details is all I need to come back with a real number and a realistic timeline.
Need the photography too?
Site, stills and video from one studio — shot to match, built to fit.