GRAPHIC DESIGN DEPARTMENT, ART CENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGN | www.artcenter.edu/gpk
“Graphic design is the most competitive field of design education,” maintains Nik Hafermaas, chair of Graphic Design at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif. So in preparation for building a new website for the department, he asked students what they wanted to see. Their answer: “What the people going here are producing, and what the instructors we’re paying for will be like.”

Now, visitors to the site are never more than two clicks from a changing gallery of student work and detailed information on the faculty’s professional background—more than 10,000 media elements, according to Brian Boyl, faculty member and creative director for the site. Because “the hero piece here would be the image, we had to bring that forward and get people sensing and feeling the work,” notes designer and faculty member Carolina Trigo. So first-level pages show student-shot images of the school, overlaid with a brightly colored, scrolling, Venetian blind of navigational information. “There’s always some image that tells you where you’re at, and then on another surface, a different type of content. One is gridded and one is organic, but they permeate each other,” Trigo says. While Boyl lauds Trigo’s “completely out-of-the- box thinking,” he also notes that they first tried—unsuccessfully—to set up the site in Flash 7, but “then Flash 8 came out and the concept worked.”
Laurel Saville

VISUAL DIALOGUE | www.visualdialogue.com
The question springs from the website: “There are plenty of design firms out there. Why work with Visual Dialogue?” Simple: The firm knows what it’s doing, and it shows in their own site.

“Visualdialogue.com is the online home for a multifaceted design firm,” explains principal and design director Fritz Klaetke. The site presents in swift clarity the whole gamut of what the firm can do: brand identity, music packaging, print collateral, websites, magazines, sculpture, book design, interiors. The site showcases the firm’s work in a bold, straightforward way, with a clean, uncluttered interface. A concise problem/solution overview gives “the story behind the design” for each featured project.

Visual Dialogue clients tend to be smart, thoughtful people, according to Klaetke. This site’s design reveals the firm’s affinity for the Modernist era and the notion that thoughtful design can and does make a difference in the world. “But the web didn’t exist back then, so we’re updating some of those ideas into contemporary culture,” Klaetke says. In keeping with his own ethic, he allows the strength of the work to speak for itself, without fanfare or puffery. “Depth and breadth,” he says. “Thoughts behind actions.”
Dana Rouse

VISUAL DIALOGUE | www.topic101.com
Raised in cyberspace, dusted with the pollen of limitless imagery and information, college students are all alike … but have never been more diverse. So for Topic 101—a market research firm focused on this audience—the very randomness of the web itself served as inspiration for this site.

”The site design uses online video pulled from YouTube as the background imagery for all the content,” says Visual Dialogue principal/design director Fritz Klaetke. “This is actually very different than the way we usually work. The elements that a designer spends a lot of time worrying about—color, composition, imagery—here it’s all randomized and determined by a computer algorithm.” His first project done immersed in Flash video, he credits “some hardcore Flash gurus hanging out in chat rooms,” with helping him figure out how to achieve what he set out to do. It was fun trying out new ideas for a client open to unpredictable results, Klaetke says, and unpredictable they were. “I have to say that initially the client was a bit freaked out by the site—as were we,” he admits. “But she has learned to love it. And Topic 101 has never been busier since the new site was launched.”
Dana Rouse

LISKA + ASSOCIATES | www.517w46.com
Located in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, 517 West 46th is a new condo development in a hot area for real estate right now. Liska + Associates’ marketing materials and website for the properties suggested people “strike quickly” or lose a chance at the choice location.

“Since the target market is primarily young first-time buyers, we wanted to cut to the chase and show them the product,” explains creative director Tanya Quick, “without a lot of the stock-photo fluff you find on the majority of real-estate sites. We also wanted the copy to be direct, slightly irreverent and inviting, to match the personality of the broker.” The website was designed using vibrant renderings and fast-moving slide transitions to evoke excitement and reflect a vigorous lifestyle in this emerging neighborhood. Quick says the design stands out for one reason: “Simplicity. This site is a single plane that is bold, visual and just plain fun to play with.”
Tom Biederbeck

BLITZ | www.adobe.com/products/flash/special/flashanniversary/?trackingid=ILCY
“It all started with one idea—the notion that drawing on a computer could be as easy and expressive as drawing on paper.” So begins the story of Adobe Flash, as expressed in the immersive site that interactive agency BLITZ developed to record the software’s first decade of development. And if the prospect of creating a site to house a potentially overwhelming load of information wasn’t daunting enough, the developers at BLITZ had another challenge: Their creation had to uphold the latest Flash standards and would be viewed by Flash users and developers … including the creators of Flash itself.

Adobe wanted a kind of timeline to tell the Flash story, including text, graphics and interviews with key Adobe/Macromedia employees. “We found the solution to be creating a metaphoric timeline using the Earth and space,” says BLITZ CEO and creative director Ken Martin. “The website is a metaphor for manipulating time—a time-travel experience.” That feat is made possible by the site’s Earth/timeline engine, which implements many of the new back-end effects possible in Flash 8, as well as a hotspot tracking engine that renders where the events depicted took place, true to their geographic locations.
Tom Biederbeck

JUXT INTERACTIVE | http://bridge.thegluenetwork.com
The Bridge website proves that one person’s creativity can make a difference in the lives of others. This site serves as a pre-launch campaign to raise money to fight society’s ills by encouraging users to register for thegluenetwork. com, an effort to link young people and brands to causes. Built by Juxt Interactive, The Bridge inspires creative expression coupled with passion to spur its users to action.

For every user that adds a link to a 24,902-mile virtual “bridge of hope” by uploading content to create a work of art, sponsoring brands—such as Adobe, Quicksilver and others—will make a $1 donation to an organization selected by the user. By sharing creativity—be it photos, poetry, videos and /or podcasts—this virtual community generates donations to charities that are making an impact in the lives of the needy and disadvantaged.

Both the concept and site design are engaging. The Bridge has been extremely well received by the target audience, gaining broad awareness for thegluenetwork.com and raising money for social causes. Nearly 100,000 people have interacted with the site since its launch last August, and each has been exposed to thegluenetwork’s message of action.
Terry Lee Stone