ARCHRIVAL
By visiting Buildaforest.com, college students helped replenish a balding national forest—thanks to the generosity of the Nebraska Book Com­pany, which runs hundreds of bookstores around the country. Students were encouraged to buy used textbooks as a way of saving trees; in partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation, Nebraska Book donated a tree for each used book purchased. Archrival creative director Clint! Runge designed the website as a sort of base camp for the project. It’s a place where visitors voted on which specific forest-in-need would be the recipient of the year’s tree donations. To sweeten the deal, the college whose students vote most frequently had that forest named in its honor.

“Growing up I was a Cub Scout and went to a lot of camps,” says Runge. “I hearkened back to those outdoor experiences as a basis for the look of the site.” Using everything from Adobe products to hard core programming languages he didn’t understand himself, Runge created a virtual campground inhabited by songbirds and forest creatures, furnished with carved wooden signs pointing visitors in the direction of book buying and forest voting. “I wanted that mash-up of camp crafts and forest ranger under this whole tongue-in-cheek learning environment,” says Runge. “We tried to make it all have a photo real-quasi-illustrated look,” he says. The only thing missing is an outhouse.

In order to “trap” the students and hold their interest, the site featured a series of entertaining webisodes, something that for Runge was not only a first but also the part of the project he had the most fun with. “We just grabbed college students and a camera and hit the outdoors ... even the guy on the front page who just keeps giving you outdoor advice. It was a blast coming up with things for him to say and do.” As it turned out, the site was flooded with hits and votes, and while this year’s forest-building promo­tion may be over, the site stays. “There’s just too much good stuff going on to let it go dead,” Runge says. “You have to have something on there that is worth consuming beyond some interesting nav or aesthetic. Drumming up content can really suck some­times,” he admits. “But things like flies buzzing about or how a nail looks can really take your design to the next level.” R. Ashby

ARCHRIVAL | CREATIVE DIRECTOR: CLINT! RUNGE | DESIGNERS: CLINT! RUNGE, JONTUE HOLLINGSWORTH, CAREY GODDARD | PROGRAMMERS: BART JOHNSTON, CASSIDY KOVANDA, CRAIG KOHTZ WRITERS: TYLER RIEWER, CLINT! RUNGE | CLIENT: NEBRASKA BOOK COMPANY | WWW.ARCHRIVAL.COM