EBD
Established in 1990, Ellen Bruss Design (EBD) is a Denver-based design and brand consultancy with clients who appreciate their friendly and in­quisitive approach to the work they do. The team is an eclectic bunch with a wide variety of talents to contribute. With equal emphasis on marketing, strategy and design, EBD takes on every project as a collaboration, working closely with each client to realize goals. EBD’s work is varied in medium, including packaging, web design, promotional and environmental projects—always stressing the presentation of honest, durable and aesthetically appealing brands. In the case of EBD.com, they became their own clients, building a self-promotional portfolio site. As usual, it was a team effort in every way, with everyone in the studio having a hand in. And it was the first time all programming was done in-house.

EBD sought to create a website that would be not only smart and intuitive, but direct, fun and inviting. In keeping with the EBD brand, the site had to be aesthetically based in the idea of communication without clutter. As in any portfolio site, the EBD team wanted to represent the kind of work they offer, but they also wanted to showcase their new office space (in a refurbished paint factory). The site needed to be easily updateable and capable of presenting large, readable images.

The new EBD.com allows visitors to focus on the firm’s work, front and center, with lots of white space, and the navigation was coded so it repositions to stay centered whenever it’s resized. Full-browser Flash enables the work to always come in from beyond the browser, regardless of screen size.

Targeting prospective clients first, the site also aims to draw in peers within the design community, as well as job seekers and students … in short, the most critical of audiences. Probably because of this, EBD specifically avoided certain ubiquitous web elements such as drop-down navigation, music the designers describe as “groovy jazz” and all marketing jargon (an omission that won’t be missed). With EBD.com's clever, easy-to-manage navigation, visitors can access a lot of work very quickly—users have commented frequently on the ease of navigation and the cool image transitions. In building their own web portfolio, the firm also learned something invaluable, they say: They discovered their clients are much easier to deal with than they are themselves. Dana Rouse

EBD | CREATIVE DIRECTOR: ELLEN BRUSS | DESIGNERS: CHARLES CARPENTER, JORGE LAMORA, GORDON CHISLETT, LISA WRIGHT, GABE RE PROGRAMMER: GORDON CHISLETT | WRITER: ANDY BOSSELMAN | WWW.EBD.COM