Web
More than any other application, a web site conveys the brand personality of a company. Its palette of engaging content, sound, movement and color create a walking, talking interactive company experience. It’s the next best thing to reality. The Internet provides the customer with a no-pressure sales environment, but at the click of a mouse, a competitor is waiting. A company’s web site should quickly answer these questions: Who is this company? Why does anyone need to know? What’s in it for me?
YESCO
Young Electric Sign Company (YESCO) is a 1,200-employee firm with multiple services and products offered through offices and divisions spread across the Western United States. Previously, some divisions maintained their own sites, which led to a fractured brand image and destination. YESCO needed one Web site that visually portrays them as a single company with all included services, but allows users to intuitively navigate to the specific information and division that interests them.
The site was primarily designed in HTML for increased search engine optimization and seamless extensibility with all of YESCO’s divisions. Flash-animated icons fulfilled YESCO’s desire to vividly display all of their main lines of business in equal light and intuitively guide visitors to their areas of interest. Flash animation was also used on the home page to feature new and iconic signs, and to entice the visitor to click to various areas within the site. “Recent Sign News” was developed to keep the site up-to-date and allows YESCO to commend specific divisions within the company.
Additional visual interest was added to the otherwise static HTML pages by implementing Ajax/Javascript, creating animation in the navigation, rollovers and gallery pages. We worked with YESCO’s internal IT department to develop a dynamic Outdoor Media location application, which allows users to find outdoor signs by map, zip code or bulletin number.
Mercato Partners
Successful start-ups, (like the Park City-based Skullcandy, who makes hip headphones), don’t get where they are solely on their own. Mercato Partners, a Salt Lake-based growth equity investor, provided capital in December 2007 to Skullcandy to help fund their explosive growth. We designed Mercato’s Web site which prominently touts the success of their portfolio of investments, including Skullcandy.
Ogden Clinic
The Ogden Clinic Web site is an important piece of the Ogden Clinic brand experience. Visually, the Web site carries the identity elements throughout. The home page is not only utilitarian— offering various helpful services to visitors—but also strongly communicates the Ogden Clinic brand message by highlighting their involvement in the community, and displaying health and clinic news items. The site creates a resource for the community by incorporating large, easily searchable libraries of health-related content. The site was built dynamically to allow cross-linking, i.e. if a viewer is researching a topic like tendonitis then Ogden Clinic orthopedic providers would be referenced along side the articles. The site also creates a personalized area for patients to login, make appointments, contact providers, and check medical history.
Architectural Nexus
When we delved into what made Architectural Nexus different from their competition, we got a speech from the principals—complete with drawings—on the subject of “Problem Seeking”. The title alone was engaging. Do most people seek out problems? How does that work? The firm’s unique process was visualized with a spoke-like model with different points addressing different needs. The spoke model eventually became the organizing principal behind the Web site navigation, with the “Problem Seeking” explanation as one of the four points of the model. The Flash-based site features large full-screen photographs that command attention while showing off the portfolio.
FFKR Architects
Architects are visual thinkers. That makes designing Web sites for architects different than, say, designing for financial planners. FFKR Architects, recognized as a regional design leader, engaged modern8 to capture the essence of their design thinking with a clean, modern Web site without (as they so often put it), any “dancing bears”. Our solution features large, high-impact photos in a Flash-based Web site that includes a content management system, allowing for easy changes without skilled technical knowledge.
Dunn Associates
“We are different, and that is by design.” So begins the opening paragraph to the Dunn Associates Web site. Ron Dunn, president of Dunn Associates, Structural Engineering, believes that engineering is a creative activity and he wanted a Web site that not only reflected his “different” dictum but also served as a working tool for the company.
The Projects, People and Case Studies sections of the Web site can be used to assemble and print proposals for clients of Dunn Associates. The site also features 360-degree virtual reality panoramas of the Dunn offices, which are likewise “different by design.”
