Windows of opportunity – IT students at Cardiff and Vale College win Bae Coffi web design contest

Two Level 3 IT students from Cardiff and Vale College have won a competition to design a website for the College’s coffee shop, Bae Coffi.

Students Mateusz Kolacki, 18, and Tomek Pawelek, 20 – both living in Cardiff, beat off competition with their winning design and were presented with a prize of £200 each. The Bae Coffi team will now explore coding the design to make them a reality.

Bae Coffi is a commercial coffee shop located in the College’s City Centre Campus on Dumballs Road. The high-end coffee shop and café offers speciality coffee and quality food sourced locally and also acts as an events venue and hub for the local community.

IT students were presented with a ‘live employer brief’ – a means of giving learners opportunities for work experience by working towards a client-led brief on projects covering a variety of areas. The brief called for an innovative website that is visually appealing and user-friendly.

“The brief was to create a website for Bae Coffi,” Mateusz said. “It was fun and a new experience – we learned a lot of new things as we had to go through the entire design process and not just create the website.”

“It took quite a lot of time as we had to start from scratch,” Tomek added. “We’ve coded the website so that if there any changes or if anything needs to be added they people at Bae Coffi can do it easily.”

CAVC Commercial Retail Manager Andy Ursell said: “The standard of Mateusz and Tomek’s work is light years ahead. They have designed and created a fantastic website on their own and when it goes live it will be amazing.

“The work across the board from all of the learners who took part in the competition was extremely impressive which just goes to show what incredibly talented students we have here at the College.”