GALLUP
No information gatherer is associated with accuracy more than the Gallup Poll. Want to see the numbers between Obama and McCain? Check the Gallup Daily. “Our organization is really growing and moving in a progressive global direction, and we wanted to hit the mark with a flag­ship site that helped communicate who we are and where we’re going,” says Gallup creative design manager Dave Marks. While organizing infor­mation to provide more efficient use of the site for visitors, Gallup also ad­opted a sleeker, more cohesive design for its new web home.

The goal was to demonstrate the strength of the brand and the seriousness of the Gallup approach to nonbiased information gathering, analysis and consultation. “We absolutely love it,” says Marks. “We really approached the design from a news-source point of view, rather than a typical corporate home site,” he says. “With the 2008 election we knew we would have a lot of visitors hitting the site to view our election polling results.”

The site’s design had to be compelling enough to keep viewers coming back. Timeliness of information and the ability to cross-reference related stories, videos and data visualizations were key attributes. “We wanted to make sure visitors could hit the site mul­tiple times daily and feel like there was fresh content being continually added,” says Marks. He adds it was imperative that users feel they could genuinely explore a topic thoroughly or pan across a number of different topics easily. Implementation of a right-hand page column and the ability to stack related content there, along with a new and improved tagging system, helped users take full advantage of the tremendous amount of information on the site.

Marks points out that the Gallup.com redesign coincided with a global rebranding effort. “Our web presence was one of the first pieces we wanted to tackle in the rebranding effort. The whole exercise forced us to consider how we line up as a business, and how we wanted to portray ourselves to the world in the 21st century.”

Much more than a U.S. information gatherer, Gallup works in some 28 countries, employing a field staff of thousands of people. Gallup knows it’s important to put forth a global effort to understand what the Earth’s population is thinking. “From a design perspective we really feel like we nailed it,” Marks says. “We feel visitors can easily get where they need to go, and [the site] gives the sense that one is using a dashboard for news, research and discovery—rather than simply paging through a series of articles and poll findings.” Dana Rouse

GALLUP | CREATIVE DIRECTORS: DAVE MARKS (GALLUP); LISA STRAUSFELD (PENTAGRAM) | ART DIRECTORS: JAKE WIECHMAN (GALLUP); CHRISTIAN MARC-SCHMIDT, TAKAAKI OKADA (PENTAGRAM) | DESIGNERS: COLLIN STORK, CHRISTOPHER PURDY, SETH WARRICK, RYAN PHELAN, CHRIS MEEKS (GALLUP); CHRISTIAN MARC-SCHMIDT, TAKAAKI OKADA (PENTAGRAM) | PROGRAMMERS/DEVELOPERS: MATT JOHNSON, BRYAN MAO, DAVE SEEVERS, ALAN SEALY, BILLY KRASSO, MIKE JAROS, BOB EVANS | WRITERS: JERRY KRUEGER, BARB SANFORD, JULIE RAY AND ALL GALLUP POLL STAFF WRITERS | WWW.GALLUP.COM