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About us. Making websites since 1999.

Clifton Media is a design and web studio in Lea, near Matlock, on the edge of the Peak District. Mark Pollak started it in Clifton, Bristol, in 1999, and the name came too when the studio moved to Derbyshire in 2002. We design, build and look after websites, brands and marketing for businesses, dental practices and charities across the UK, and some of our clients have been with us for well over a decade.

Founded
1999, in Clifton, Bristol
Studio
Lea, near Matlock, Derbyshire
Founder
Mark Pollak
What we do
Websites, branding, marketing, photography and film
Book a call07515 730686
01

From law to the web

I studied law at the University of Bristol, did the Legal Practice Course at Nottingham Law School, and trained as a solicitor at Osborne Clarke in Bristol, in the corporate finance department. The work was corporate law: mergers and acquisitions for private and public companies, equity capital market transactions and corporate finance.

I qualified in 1999, and then took the difficult decision to leave the law for something more creative. Before I left, I moved into managing IT projects at the firm: a document management system across four offices, the intranet and case management systems. That was my first taste of building things that people use every day.

In 1999 I started a part-time master’s, an MA in Interactive Multimedia at Bath Spa University College. (Who calls it multimedia any more?) It was the age of Macromedia: Dreamweaver 3, Flash and Director, and the CD-ROM was the cutting edge.

  1. BristolA law degree (LLB) at the University of Bristol.
  2. NottinghamThe Legal Practice Course at Nottingham Law School.
  3. 1999Qualified as a solicitor at Osborne Clarke, Bristol, after training in the corporate finance department; then IT project manager at the firm.
  4. 1999Clifton Media starts, in Clifton, Bristol, and an MA in Interactive Multimedia begins at Bath Spa University College, part time.
  5. 2000 to 2002CD-ROMs, kiosks, 360° panoramas and websites, many with DMPS, a Bristol company that specialised in 360° imaging.
  6. 2002The studio moves to Wirksworth, in the Peak District.
  7. 2004Websites for dental practices, still a big part of our work today.
  8. 2005 and 2006The weekly “Computer Expert” on BBC Radio Derby’s afternoon show.
  9. By 2007The studio is in Matlock, and later moves to Lea, just outside.
  10. 2026A new website, and apps built with AI.
02

The CD-ROM years

Much of the early Clifton Media work was multimedia: CD-ROMs and touch-screen kiosks with video, sound and 360° panoramas you could look around, made in Macromedia Director and Apple’s QuickTime VR. A lot of it was with DMPS, Digital Media Promotion Services, a Bristol company that specialised in 360° imaging.

The one people remember is Noble House: a CD-ROM the size of a business card for a 150-foot luxury yacht based in the Caribbean. It had video tours, music, and 360° panoramas of the rooms on board. I designed the interface and built it in Director. With DMPS I also worked on interactive CD-ROMs about Second World War tanks and aircraft, the Absolute Air, Land & Sea series, with 360° views from inside the turrets and cockpits.

  • The Noble House CD-ROM’s welcome screen: the yacht at sea on navy blue, a welcome panel and Welcome, Destinations, Interior and Gallery buttons

    Noble House, 2001The welcome screen of the yacht’s business-card CD-ROM.

  • The Noble House CD-ROM’s interior screen: a deck plan of the yacht beside a photo of the master suite

    Inside the yachtChoose a room on the deck plan to look around it in 360°.

  • The DMPS CD-ROM: a dark screen with a menu of Hospitality, Publishing, Marine, Construction, Product marketing and Gallery, and a curved panel of text

    DMPS, 2001A credit-card CD-ROM for the 360° imaging company, with their portfolio of video and panoramas.

  • The Bath Spa University College kiosk: a hand drawn in orange on a blue square, with links for students, courses, the college, a map and useful information around it

    Bath Spa University College, 2001A kiosk and CD-ROM with video and sound, designed to be striking and still easy to find your way around.

  • A touch-screen kiosk screen about ancient Egypt: a timeline from 2500 to 2000 BC with Egyptian figures, and buttons for Ancient Egypt, Mummies, Daily Life, Timeline and At the Museum

    The British Museum, 2002A children’s kiosk about Egyptian mummies, with a timeline of ancient Egypt.

  • A demonstration intranet for a made-up bank: navigation down the left and a cricket photo in the middle

    Philips, 2000Demonstration intranet sites for a telecoms trade fair in London, showing calls over the internet.

  • The-i CD-ROM in its case: the disc and its cover, both printed with a drawing of the learning centre’s building

    The-i, BristolA CD-ROM for a city learning centre: video, music, students’ work and a 360° tour of the building.

Screens from Clifton Media’s 2001 and 2002 websites, shown at the size they were made.

Very little of that software is still with us:

What we usedWhat it was forWhat happened to it
Macromedia DirectorCD-ROMs and kiosksAdobe stopped selling it in 2017
Macromedia FlashAnimation, games and whole websitesFlash Player was switched off at the end of 2020. The editor lives on as Adobe Animate
Apple QuickTime VR360° panoramas you could look aroundFaded out with QuickTime 7
Macromedia Dreamweaver 3Building websites, from December 1999Still sold by Adobe today
MacromediaThe company behind most of itBought by Adobe in 2005

What did last are the habits: clear ways to find your way around, things that load quickly, and designing for the person using it rather than the person paying for it.

03

Our own website, through the years

clifton-media.co.uk was registered in March 2001, and the studio’s own website has been rebuilt every few years since, as the web changed and the work changed with it.

  1. 2001

    Clifton Media, Bristol

    Web design, hosting and CD-ROMs, with the DMPS CD-ROM as the featured work.

    clifton-media.co.uk in 2001: “Clifton Media” in a pale blue panel with rounded corners, a row of blue buttons for Home, Services, Pricing, Portfolio and Contact, and “Welcome to Clifton Media” above a list of services
  2. 2002

    Black and white

    Web design, CD-ROM, kiosks and training, and a Flash version for anyone with the plugin.

    The 2002 site: a black header with clifton-media.co.uk in white, a menu of web design, CD-ROM, kiosk and training, and the Bath Spa kiosk’s orange hand on a tilted blue square in the middle
  3. 2006

    Wirksworth

    A multimedia design agency near Derby, with a jargon-free approach and a weekly slot on BBC Radio Derby.

    The 2006 site: a photo of a cycle race passing through a Derbyshire town, “Derby Website / Multimedia Design”, sections for clients, a jargon-free approach and recent work, and a news panel about BBC Radio Derby
  4. 2009

    Matlock

    Websites, branding, print and video for dentists, solicitors, accountants, artists and more.

    The 2009 site: a climber on a gritstone wall beside “Get a free quote”, “Derby Website Design”, and short pieces on recent websites for dental practices and a Matlock solicitor
  5. 2026

    Today

    The website you’re reading, built in Etch and Automatic.css.

    Today’s home page: the Clifton Media logo, the phone number and menu, and “Websites, branding and marketing” in large type, with the studio’s introduction and a Book a call button

2001 to 2009 from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

04

Teaching along the way

Explaining things clearly has run alongside the design work all the way through. A sentence from our 2006 website still sums up how we like to work:

We promise not to blind you with technical gobbledegook but deliver creative solutions in plain language.

Clifton Media’s website, 2006
  • 2001: the Redcliffe Challenge in Bristol, where school pupils built an interactive quiz website.
  • 2002 to 2006: adult education courses across Derbyshire in web design, image editing, digital photography and video.
  • Training courses for companies and councils, in Dreamweaver, Flash, Photoshop and more.
  • 2005 and 2006: the weekly “Computer Expert” on BBC Radio Derby’s afternoon show.
05

What we do now

Today we design, build and look after websites, and help people find them: branding, local search, Google Ads, reviews, content, photography and film. We do the whole job ourselves, from the first conversation to the hosting afterwards, so nothing gets lost in hand-overs. Many of our clients stay for years: Sibbalds and Urban Pursuit since 2012, Planning & Design Practice since 2018.

And we’ve gone all in on AI. It now lets us research, build and check software that simply wasn’t possible a few years ago, and we write about it, with the evidence, in Projects & Experiments.

06

Why the Peak District

The climbing. We often came up from Bristol to climb in the Peak District, so when it was time to move, it was the obvious place. Climbing is still one of the things I love doing most, and in September 2026 I climbed my first new route, I’m Lemon Barnaby, on the sea cliffs of Faraid Head near Durness in the far north of Scotland, with Mick Fowler and George Bell.

It’s also why I’m building TopoLine, a climbing app that works where phones don’t.

A climber in a red jacket on a sea cliff at Faraid Head above a rough blue sea, with the green headland and the hills of Sutherland beyond

I’m Lemon Barnaby at Faraid Head, September 2026.

NextProjects & ExperimentsApps and tools built with AI, written up in full: a graduate job-hunt app built in an evening, a climbing app, and more.

Have a project in mind? We would like to hear about it.

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  • Phone07515 730686
  • Email
  • BasedMatlock, Derbyshire