PAGE 1 SOLUTIONS | www.nesei.org
Although Colorado-based Page 1 Solutions is primarily engaged in internet marketing for legal, medical and dental practices, the firm has frequently sought opportunities to work pro bono with nonprofits. The New Sudan Education Initiative, NESEI, provided a richly deserved opportunity to apply the firm’s web development expertise.

NESEI is a partnership between southern Sudanese organizations and a global network of supporters who are uniting “to bring the gift of education home to Sudan to ensure a lasting peace.” Aaron Gerblich, senior account/project manager for the site, says the founders of NESEI were looking for grants and needed an online presence to increase the organization’s prominence. “The first challenge was establishing exactly what NESEI wanted the site to accomplish,” he notes. “The second challenge was establishing a means for future development of the site.” To that end, Page 1 Solutions’ design allows NESEI to update the site on the fly—internal pages are dynamically generated without outside assistance. “Custom tags allow for the site’s content to keep a consistent look and feel from page to page,” he explains, “without requiring NESEI personnel to learn much coding.” Visually depicting Sudan in a positive light was yet another challenge.

“We used the metaphor of a travel journal with pictures pasted in place and rough paper layered on rough paper,” says creative director Andrew Fledderjohann. “The style is … meant to evoke an organic experience: real, solid and earthy.” It also evokes a land of great human potential and powerfully expresses the urgent needs of millions of Sudanese who are threatened by devastating social upheaval. According to Gerblich, although the firm is “incredibly proud” of the site as a whole, “We are most proud of the logo: Rays of knowledge from a book enlighten the nation of Sudan, spreading from the south to the north.”
Tom Biederbeck

PAGÉS BBDO, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC/PIXELMEDIA | www.the1movement.com
Cervecería Nacional Dominicana wanted to launch The One Beer. PAGÉS BBDO created a whole movement. The One Movement took aim at its target audience by building an underground online community of young, outspoken people. The goal of this “secret community” was to facilitate pre-acceptance of The One Beer brand when it was introduced months later.

Inspired by the movie Fight Club’s secret basement, creative director Rodolfo Borrell and his team wanted the site to resemble some broken-down, abandoned joint taken over by a guerilla movement. The site was designed to be appropriated and owned by the members of The One Movement, allowing them to share their thoughts as well as photography and artwork, and post comments. “We took on-site photography and worked with distressed and unrefined design elements in order to create the sense of a low-resourced and independent authoring group trying to create a place for itself,” says Borrell. “To further convey this feeling, we used the flexibility that Flash provides in creating a non-rigid interface, navigation and media streaming.” And though BBDO managed to create the site without specifically mentioning the beer, The One Beer brand has become the fourth-biggest seller in the Dominican Republic.
Dana Rouse

ARCHRIVAL | www.archrival.com
They may not be planting crops, but the team at Archrival did find inspiration in an old copy of the Farmer’s Almanac. Based in Lincoln, Neb., the youth brand strategy and design firm wanted to show off its Midwestern pride in its own site, so the design team played off this classic tome to craft monthly site headers with charming illustrations accompanying the current date and season. In addition, they created a dynamic nod to the shifting weather: Each day the site’s colors change ever so slightly, just like the seasons in the Midwest.

This site design also keeps the focus on Archrival’s work—with portfolio front and center—and skips the “how we approach branding” copy ubiquitous on so many other design firm sites. Instead, the approach is to let past projects and an offbeat blog— based on posts to the company intranet—illustrate skills and personalities. “We didn’t really want an ‘About Archrival’ section, because we feel like the work stands for itself,” says creative director Clint! Runge. To that end, the team built a content management system that allows them to quickly upload photos of new projects—a move sure to keep the site’s content as fresh as its colors.
Michelle Taute

ARCHRIVAL & CLARITY COVERDALE FURY | www.areyouokwiththat.com
This site drops you into the middle of a bar with only a lit cigarette to navigate your way around the immersive, 360-degree environment. It’s an effective way to raise awareness about the effects of secondhand smoke, but the organization behind the site—ClearWay Minnesota—was adamant that no one actually smoke during the project’s creation. This directive forced the design team to get creative. When you first log onto the home page, the smoke coming from the man’s mouth looks completely realistic—but came from a photo of a skydiver emitting smoke during his descent.

Clarity Coverdale Fury brought Archrival onboard for this project, and one reason the collaboration went so well was because it started early in the design process. “It made such a difference to be involved in the photo shoot, since I was going to be building the website,” says Bart Johnston, director of interactive services at Archrival. He attended the full-day shoot and helped make sure the necessary images were captured to create such a comprehensive environment. A camera was set up on a tripod, for example, and rotated at 25-degree intervals to capture the entire bar. The shoot also required moving people in and out of different shots within a relatively small environment. But once all these photographs are woven together on the site, you can practically feel the smoke being blown in your face.
Michelle Taute

TRANSISTOR STUDIOS | www.way2quit.com/flash/tamethebeast.aspx
Transistor Studios director Saiman Chow took one month to create two original animated films inspired by client Glaxo Smith Kline’s themes of “When You’re Driving” and “When You’re With Friends.” Chow’s team worked long days, seven days a week, to meet the deadline. The films are housed at Way2Quit.com with the theme of “taming the beast”—banishing the monsters that enslave the brain of a smoker. The various beasts are rendered in cartoon- creature styles and, when clicked, reveal live-action short films depicting different challenging scenarios for a smoker.

The project’s creative team undertook the challenge of creating sets and puppets from practical (i.e. real, not digitally rendered) found objects in order to establish the piece’s overall style. The objects included: foam core, fabric, pipe cleaners, paper, plastic and cardboard. Shooting the beast-run machine in the smoker’s brain alone required eight layers of video and a meticulous 13-hour shoot. The complexity pays off with a memorable animation that inspires viewers to quit smoking using one of the client’s products: Nicorette gum, Nicoderm CQ patches or Commit lozenges.
Terry Lee Stone