Fortunately for us (and them and the rest of the fashionistas in Tampa…that 5 year old website had long since reached the sell by date), we were able to start a new web project for them this summer. This is the result. We built a custom WordPress theme for them, utilizing microformatting and a tasteful smattering of social media, and tied in a shopping cart that integrates into their Quickbooks POS system to make sales and inventory control a breeze.

We like it. Have a peek:

Penelope T Boutique Women's Fashion Store Website Design

• Total bin requests for the first two weeks of the campaign were up over 820% compared to the same time frame the previous year.
• The bin request page has been the most popular page on the site, generating over 1,400 page views in the first two weeks of the campaign.
• 25% of all bin requests county-wide through the Web site came through the contest page of the micro-site.

Boo. Yah.
Hat’s off to our boys over at Elevation Brand.

Featured technologies on the project include: CSS/PHP-based custom two level site template (1 primary level template, 1 secondary level template), fully extensible and editable (client-side!) Actionscript/XML banner rotator, JQuery dropdown navigation and JQuery accordion-style expandable divs (see the News, Resources sections of the homepage) to maximize vertical space).

Credit: Billy Milstid (Art Direction, Design, Programming) / Tim Wernicke (Programming) // Left Designs

Check them out.

In other news, our pal John McSwain just finished the last in his series of videos for Yo La Tengo/Matador Records. See it here.

This was an interesting process, really, that saw us through the development of a number of iconic marks aimed at symbolizing the purpose and brand personality of IdeaField - as would normally happen in the identity development process - and eventually ended with the realization that a company that be so mutable, having so many different meanings to so many different people, may not in fact benefit from a single defining icon.

As such, we developed a customized typeface and a series of color variations.
Shown below is the full logotype, with social media icon at bottom.

Credit: Billy Milstid (Art Direction, Design & Illustration) // Left Designs

Working off of their existing campaign, which featured hand-drawn caricatures of “Famous Bins” on outdoor media with little more explanation than a contest entry call-to-action, we developed this little guy: PHP-driven mini-site with custom Actionscript-based intro animations (optimized!) and AJAX user forms.
Yup.

UPDATE! You want marketing results? Try 820% growth in two weeks!
The marketing initiative and ad campaign (for which this little micro-site served as a central component) has made a major impact on the local community, and has driven up recycling bin requests an incredible amount. See the facts:

• Total bin requests for the first two weeks of the campaign were up over 820% compared to the same time frame the previous year.
• The bin request page has been the most popular page on the site, generating over 1,400 page views in the first two weeks of the campaign.
• 25% of all bin requests county-wide through the Web site came through the contest page of the micro-site.

Boo. Yah.
Hat’s off to our boys over at Elevation Brand.

Credit: Billy Milstid (Art Direction, Programming, Design & Illustration) // Left Designs

We also handled initial SEO and a base social media initiative for these guys, resulting in an immediate spike in readership. In the first month of the site, they put away a pretty respectable 1,000 unique members with nearly 10,000 page views and over 60% return visitors hitting up the site on 15 or more occasions.

We’re hoping those number just keep getting bigger.

Credit: Billy Milstid (Art Direction, Design, Programming, SEO & Social Media) // Left Designs

Credit: Billy Milstid (Audio, Animation, Art Direction) // Left Designs

Also, our boy/partner/lifelong friend John McSwain has been whipping up some videos for Yo La Tengo (1 | 2 | 3) of late.
We like them. You should like them.

Also doing a lot of fishing. Should be doing more fishing.
Strangely mixing work and fishing…weird.

We should be posting some of the new work soon. Very exciting.

In the meantime, we thought we might share this handy little article from Smashing Magazine [who we ♥].

*Our spanish is not so awesome…Billy minored in German, which is totally different. If anyone knows this particular verbiage to be entirely and embarrassingly wrong, please let us know. We’re using it in some work.