As the new Brite Revolution grew into both a music service and an online music magazine, they needed a new email for their users. This redesigned email template allows them to feature new artists and new tracks by artists, and it leads to the music articles that have become such an important part of the service.

Answers Systems has a pretty involved business process. It’s so involved that their clients and even their new employees had a pretty strong learning curve to get their heads around it. We wrote a plain-talking description and created some clear and approachable illustrations to demonstrate exactly how Answers Systems and their software ContractPro work.

Our client and their clients have been thrilled with the result. We see a lot more “a ha!” moments in their future.

We love when the work we produce can be used for multiple projects. Our client, Answers Systems, needed some print collateral they could use to introduce the basics of their service to clients when talking in person. Having already created an approachable written explanation and some great graphics for them, we were able to reduce the complexity for a simple, folded brochure.

Just because it’s print doesn’t mean it can’t be interactive. The final piece exposes the story of Answers Systems and their software ContractPro as the reader unfolds this double-sided brochure.

Answers Systems is made up of a bunch of different people that handle trade promotions management. Sounds exciting, huh? Well, it's important and complex work for their industry that needed to feel a bit more approachable. We created multiple character illustrations to help them achieve this feel. These have already ended up in infographics, brochures and an animated video. And they're just getting started.

A rebranding always deserves new business cards. And these new ones for Brite are, well, brighter. Naturally, the logo with the unforgettable Brite Bubble is still there, and it's even replicated on the name side as a repeating element.

Using the Daisy illustration and logo created by Kathy Mitchell, we created a whimsical and chic design to speak to the youthful female audience our client needed to reach. The character of Daisy was so compelling that we decided to use her as the face of the site and feature her as the anchor of each page. Placing her in the context of an idyllic landscape scene wrapped up the look and feel of this site just the way we wanted it.

This was an enjoyable project for an identity creation. We took the client through a strategic set of moodboards and, eventually, logo approaches. Each one carried an important meaning for their brand. This church that meets each Sunday in a movie theater finally settled on a diverse-looking set of theater chairs gathered in a group of four to demonstrate their welcoming environment.

After going through some moodboards and developing an original logo for this church, we turned our attention to the design of their new website. Since it was going to be a constant resource for their congregation as well as for website visitors hoping to learn more about them, it needed to be inviting and useful. Complete with multimedia, social media feeds and a detailed footer, this site is as easy to get to know as the folks at the church.

VISIT SITE

The products and the photos of them are the real heroes of this website. We worked directly with the client to make sure we got all the necessary angles to demonstrate how the products could be used and showed them in context with the Apple products they support. With the photographic approach and aesthetic established, the client has been able to have additional products photographed with their own vendor that match the original photography perfectly.

As Brite Revolution began to add more artists and get feedback from their growing user base, a slight redesign became necessary. We updated the color palette a bit but kept the bold, dark look. A carousel music player now had the featured position at the top and the calls to action and navigation became fully integrated.

Magazine ads, especially trade magazines, are generally known for their busy look. So we took a completely different approach to these ads for Renalab. Using the text of the headline as the major design element, we made sure these ads stood out as a striking difference to their competitors.

As part of a total rebranding, we updated the text logo for Industrial Door Contractors (IDC). Even though is was only their name and initials, it had to communicate the strength and steadfastness of their service.

We ended up with a logo that has no separate mark or illustration but is still reminiscent of the heavy gears, rollers and machinery found at their expansive shop.

We count the photography for this site as one of our greatest discoveries. The client was adamant about wanted a complete rebranding. After speaking with them and visiting their facility in Columbia, TN, we realized they were most proud of two areas of their business: their people and their facilities.

We decided to let photography of their dedicated employees in the context of their day-to-day work communicate the strength and quality of their brand. With very little setup, we literally had it interrupt these guys and shoot photos of them in just a few minutes before allowing them to get back to their hard work. These guys were serious about their work, and they worked in a tough-looking facility.

Our result provided the foundation for the design of the entire site. The photography even won a Silver Addy all on its own.

We created a series of email templates for a suite of sites for our client Master Grinding. Each reflects the photo-centric and dark design of each site.

We’re pretty comfortable with creating logos for websites and brands. But this time we were creating three. Each had to have its own identity and still feel like it belonged in the same family. And more than just appearing on websites and collateral, these logos would appear on the products themselves.

Our result was a family of logos that met every challenge set before us.

When designing a trio of sites for Master Grinding Service, we were glad to make great product photography a main feature of the designs. Our graphic designers worked closely with photographer Kris D’Amico to create an aesthetic that featured the products as the true heroes of these sites.

Soon after Brite Revolution was launched, they took out some ad space in the Nashville Scene alternative newspaper. This full-page ad had to grab readers and reveal the purpose of Brite within the amount if time it might take a reader to turn a page.

Our designer created what has become known as “the equation.” This profound, icon-based message revealed the essence of Brite so well its owner was compelled to call us up just to remark how much he loved it.

Our original design for the new Brite Revolution website created a deep, dark look that was pretty different from many of the music sites emerging then. Against the dark background, the words and song titles are hard to miss. The simple site design made it clear that the music and causes were the focus.

We love the opportunity to create an identity for a new brand, especially one as exciting as Brite Revolution. We started with moodboards to establish the general aesthetic. Once that was determined, we tried several different directions. It was a tough choice, but the client ended up with a truly versatile identity that has easily evolved with the brand while remaining very close to the original vision.

As one of the largest construction firms in the Southeast, Bell made a critical decision to update their brand. We started with a visual re-branding and logo which was used for the website, microsites, newsletters, and other print collateral. It turned out to be simple, easy-to-read, but still unique. They liked it so much they can hardly remember the old one.

It's not often a client asks you to make sure your photos make their environment look cold and sterile. But when you're Renalab, that look is just what you need to communicate. We were lucky enough get access to their facility (with scrub-like gear of our own, of course) and shoot their precision instruments, expert technicians and truly impressive space. You can't help but have confidence in them after you see these photos.

It's easy to take for granted that everyone has web access all the time. But our client Master Grinding found they also needed a printable order form for some visitors of their KnifeSpa website. Even though it's a bit of an involved series of questions, we developed and designed a one-page PDF form that allows users to easily fill out information on the knives they need sharpened and stills get KnifeSpa the information they need.

The folks at Run Daisy came to us with an interesting challenge. They were entering into the online daily coupon market and needed a solid plan of how to get there. So we all settled into a conference room and asked a bunch of tough questions. As a result, the client was able to answer exactly how they wanted to approach their market and what they needed to accomplish next.

We always know it’s been a successful strategy session when the client says, “Wow, I don’t know what we would have done without this meeting.”

We worked with our trusted vendor Foxycart to handle the ecommerce programming. We also worked out some special ecommerce needs like delivering the deal vouchers to buyers and making sure the all-important email signup list was easy to manage and update. Not to forget the charities they support, we made sure proper reporting was available in their custom-built CMS so the folks at Run Daisy can give to those charities based on the number of deals purchased that day.

A daily deal site has a lot of moving parts and most of them live on one main page: the deal page. We began our work here and developed a scheme that ensured all the functions and content were accounted for. We also made sure the activities of the page were intuitive and even fun to use.

We developed marketing copy and some initial deal copy to establish the character of Daisy running around town gathering up the best deals she could find. We also made sure that business and website users alike would have clear and approachable messages to help them understand the value of the service.

We often create sites that feature products, but when that product is art, displaying that product is even more important. The Two Moon Gallery has a constantly changing roster of superb visual artists. We developed a scheme that allows the art featured to be used right on the homepage. Plus, each artist's page has a nicely contained experience that allows multiple examples of their work to be perused by visitors.

So, what do you do if your client has a business that is really complicated? I mean, really, really complicated. You talk to them about it…for a long time.

That’s what we did with Answers Systems to learn about how they’ve improved the trade promotions process in the foodservice industry. We spent two days in a room with them writing on white boards, taking furious notes, and generally learning out butts off. Good thing we did, too; that work provided the foundation for everything we’ve accomplished for them since.

The Infrastructure Corporation of America (ICA) came to us because of our success with websites for other construction-based firms. Due to this experience, we knew that creating a site that featured the scope of their work would deliver the messages they needed.

The end result seems simple, but the architecture process was critical for this project because it exposed how they wanted to feature their portfolio and present the data for the jobs they completed. It seems this data is critical for their audience, which is often members of state governments.

The ensuing architecture brings their projects forward while making it easy to discover their unique benefits.

The messages that resulted on this website can seem simple and straightforward. It may not seem that they were challenging. Actually, the greatest challenge came before the actual writing began. We helped ICA discover what their true benefits to their customers are and how to reveal what they offer to them.

This process of message creation revealed as much to the client about what they do as to their audience.

Crafting messaging for the rebranding of Industrial Door Contractors (IDC) meant starting over from the beginning. Their core message had gotten lost, but we discovered it again by talking directly with the brand owners. We learned that they built these giant doors all within their own facility. They even have their own rail line. Also, they are completely dedicated to their employees, and that dedication is returned ten-fold. Will a surprisingly low turnover rate and many employees counting their tenure in decades rather than years, we knew that they earned the right to sound confident in their messaging.

The result is clear-voiced messages that don’t waste time with marketing. It respects their audience by confirming that they truly are the best and quickly explains exactly what they offer.

This client was able to provide us with plenty of high-quality photos of their exquisite pearl jewelry. Because of that, we developed an experience that relied on big, beautiful background images of the jewelry for the homepage. And the interior pages always featured copywriting in association with the photos.

Our client Masato is introducing a new line of jewelry featuring their own saltwater cultured pearls. Developed to be among the most valuable pearls available in the world, the client needed to position themselves apart from average department store pearls. We developed messaging that educates the site's visitors about the history of cultured pearl jewelry and describes the expertise and care that goes into culturing, harvesting and selecting these rare jewels of the sea.

Tasked with creating a suite of three sites for our client Master Grinding at one time was certain to be a respectable amount of work. Just as the aesthetic designs of each site would need to both feel like part of a family and have their own identity, the user experiences needed the same treatment. Before designing one page, we developed the experiences for each site in wireframes. These included multiple customized and unique ecommerce experiences and educational content.

The folks at Master Grinding might sell one type of knife to thousands at a time. For this reason, we built some special functions for the administrative area of their ecommerce site KnifeProCutlery.com. Not only can our client track and manage online sales, but they can also handle offline sales with it, too. More than just an ecommerce engine, this backend allows them to manage their full inventory, online and off.

While recreating the branding for a trio of websites, we needed to establish new messaging for two of them and create new messaging for a new service. The client is dedicated to their business and wanted to educate their users on the craftsmanship and quality of their cutlery as well as on the proper use and care of their knives. In addition to this, we had the honor of working with a brand that had its beginnings over three generations ago.

Reba McEntire has made a giant career as a musician, a TV star, an author and a Broadway performer. But she also has her own line of merchandise; four lines to be exact. Originally, each of Reba’s lines had their own separate web domain. Under our new architecture, we combined them into one domain with easy navigation between each brand and line. The result is a site that connects fans of one of her lines to the other three.

It may not be an ecommerce site, but the new RebaStyle.com still has hundreds of products to manage. Within her four lines of products--including housewares, clothing, shoes and even luggage--there are plenty of variations, photos and descriptions. Plus, she's always coming up with something new. Using Django, we built a custom Content Management System that allows the client to manage the products lines as easily as adding photos to Facebook.

Reba McEntire's new album is called All the Women I Am. This seems to fit because it doesn't seem possible that one person could have done all she has. We built an admin area for her new site in Django so administrators can update music files, videos, press recognition, tour dates and ticket sales on a daily basis, if they need to. It turned out to be no ordinary artist site--but Reba is no ordinary artist.

Reba McEntire has done a lot of work that spans the music industry, television, books and Broadway. With such a vast career, presenting her work in an easily accessible way for her fans is paramount.

We used the information architecture phase of this project to solidly determine what content and functions need to be on the site for her fans. One of the most critical spaces involved her discography. On the old site, users had to visit a separate page just to learn about an album. With the new experience, they can view and listen to tracks from any album without leaving the music page.

The Hermitage is the historic home of former President Andrew Jackson. As both a museum and an historical site, visitors to The Hermitage are the lifeblood of this non-profit. We were eager to redesign this site even though it was cabedge that designed the then-current live site. It seemed like a lifetime ago for us, and we were ready to show how far we had come.

Getting the user experience and organization of the site improved was the first goal. Much of our efforts was spent on reorganizing the content into a new sitemap to make it more intuitive for visitors to experience the site in one of two ways: as potential visitors looking to tour the museum and grounds or as students and researchers looking for deep academic writings about The Hermitage.

The result was a site scheme and page experiences that made it easy to find out operating hours and ticket prices for individuals and groups. It also organized the historical research writings on the site in a far more intuitive and easily searchable manner.

From the beginning, Brite Revolution was all about fresh content. At first, it was about continually adding new music downloads from their growing artist list. Today, they’ve grown to include an online music magazine format along with music downloads.

All that means content, content, content. We built a Content Management System (CMS) that allows multiple users to update the site with new artists, new music files, online and downloadable videos, and article content. In fact, it allows them to update virtually any article of content without having to rely on a web designer to do it for them. Plus, the administrative area of their site also allows them to keep track of music downloads, subscribers, affiliates and the authorized users who manage it all. When the folks at Brite say the like how well the website works, they may actually be talking about the parts the public doesn’t even see.

When the folks at Brite Revolution first walked into our offices, their service was just a dream. To make it real, we had to start by putting some boundaries around that dream and getting a plan together.

We used several discovery sessions to determine the strategy and true business goals of this new music download service. Brite Revolution has come a long way since those initial discussions. And this evolution has been accompanied by continuing our process of continual discovery and evaluation.

Even if it is your own idea, it can be difficult to envision what your new web service will look like or how it will work. From the beginning, we’ve created information architecture documents like sitemaps, user flows, and wireframes to determine the content and functions of every iteration of the Brite Revolutions site. It’s always proven to make the user interface design process quicker and more successful. It’s essential to the client and essential to us.

Brite Revolution was more than just a new website or service: it was a new paradigm for exposing musicians and connecting people to great causes. In much the same way we use moodboards to establish a visual aesthetic, we started with some written voice samples to find out how Brite would “talk” to its audience.

This critical step allowed us to produce the originally copy for the newly launched site and has proven to be a strong foundation for a service that is continually producing new content.

This database, naturally, allows the site owners to add products and manage web site content. But its real power is in its abilities to track orders, automatically send data to the fulfillment provider (so the client doesn't have to), and even allow retailers a space to make wholesale purchases online.

We even developed a special mobile version of the database so our client could keep track of orders and all things Twelve South wherever he could use a smartphone.

The majority of RenaLab's audience is made of other medical professionals. Each gets a different benefit from interaction with RenaLab. We developed copy that speaks, in detail, to each of these clinical roles. In addition, we delved into the complexities of their industry to get a solid understanding of it, and produced the rest of the marketing copy for the site as well.