News
January 9th, 2012
Just Launched: Dauphine Press
We worked with Dauphine Press to design a clean and inviting new website that would make it easier for customers to browse their wide selection of suite options and customizations. The new site features Google Maps integration to help locate nearby retailers, an Issuu integration that allows customers to view custom options as an embedded PDF, and a blog powered by WordPress. We also took careful measures to preserve the high SEO rankings of the existing site, following best SEO practices throughout the site. The site runs on ExpressionEngine.
Visit: www.dauphinepress.com
January 7th, 2012
Two New Redesigns to Start 2012
We recently launched two redesigns of websites that we had previously built for our clients. The first is a redesign for The Sustainable Operations Summit, the premier forum for leading organizations to share best practices that benefit both the environment and the bottom line, run by event marketing company CraigMichaels. The 2012 summit will bring together some of the world's brightest minds in sustainability in New York City during Earth Week to share innovative approaches to reduce impact on the environment with a focus on energy, the built environment and resource conservation. Former president Bill Clinton will be one of the many distinguished speakers. We created an illustration-based design to play on a green and patriotic theme for this year's summit.
Visit: www.sustainableoperationssummit.com
Enfatica develops enterprise solutions for the retail industry. Their new solution is Fusion, a cloud-based platform that offers a wide range of features for retail enterprises. We worked with Enfatica to help explain the advantages of Fusion over traditional retail IT solutions.
Visit: www.enfatica.com
December 22nd, 2011
Just Launched: Art+Life Photography
Art + Life Photography is a duo of photographers—Debbie McGeorge and Denise Guerin—who specialize in weddings, engagements, bar/bat mitzvahs, and portraits.
We worked with Debbie and Denise to redesign and create a portfolio site showcases their photography in a clean and organized way. The new site features a homepage slideshow, a portfolio page that categorizes their work by type of event, and an image-rich blog. We built the website on WordPress.Visit: www.artpluslife.com
December 20th, 2011
Just Launched: Pilot
Pilot is a full-service creative production company and branding agency specializing in on-air promos and viral marketing.
We worked with Pilot to redesign and develop a new website. We built out the site on WordPress to make it easier for the client to update their portfolio and integrated all the videos with Wiredrive. The site features various JQuery effects to highlight the fun and quirky personality of the Pilot team.
Visit the site: www.pilotnyc.com
December 14th, 2011
Just Launched: CU/LSE Dual MA/MSc in International and World History
The Columbia-LSE Dual MA/MSc Program in International and World History offers graduates two connected degrees: a Master of Arts from Columbia University and a Master of Science from the London School of Economics. The two-year, research-intensive program was created to give graduates a deep understanding of globalization while serving as a launching pad for careers in government, journalism, NGOs, and international organizations.
We worked with Columbia University to redesign and build a new website that would streamline information in an accessible way. The new site features information on courses, bios of faculty members, and details about student projects. We implemented ExpressionEngine to allow the client to make updates to the site.
Visit the site: www.worldhistory.columbia.edu
December 7th, 2011
Just Launched: Lux Capital
Lux Capital is a venture capital firm that invests in emerging technology companies in the physical and life sciences. From cancer therapies to petroleum replacements, Lux Capital helps launch companies that can change the world while offering the potential for extraordinary investment return.
We worked with Lux Capital to design and develop a sophisticated new website that showcases their investment portfolio. The website features image-rich slideshows and detailed case studies. With ExpressionEngine as the content management system, we made it easy for Lux Capital to add new content.
Visit the site: www.luxcapital.com/
December 6th, 2011
Designs for Muck Rack
We recently worked with Sawhorse Media to make UI tweaks and new additions to their Muck Rack platform. Muck Rack features directories of verified journalists on Twitter and aggregates their tweets in real-time. This makes it easy to get insight into what journalists are interested in covering and what we can expect in the news tomorrow. The new Muck Rack also features Pro accounts that let users create alerts and media lists to better track what journalists are talking about. We're excited to continue our work on Muck Rack!
December 4th, 2011
Introducing Launch Effect Premium
Launch Effect, our viral campaign WordPress theme, has been downloaded over 6,000 times since August. We've seen hundreds of sites using the theme in various ways and are finding new ones every day (check out the gallery we put together on the homepage). It's been very inspiring to see our theme in use, and we've received great feedback and many wonderful requests for new features.
November 24th, 2011
Just Launched: Connecticut Policy Institute
November 8th, 2011
Just Launched: Subchondroplasty
November 8th, 2011
Just Launched: The Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University
October 19th, 2011
Just Launched: Cabot House
October 4th, 2011
The Barrel Wallboard
We recently gave our wallboard a facelift and added in some new features to better serve our need for at-a-glance information.
Our wallboard is a Samsung 460UX 46" LCD display that's mounted vertically and connected to one of our old Macbook laptops. Here's a breakdown of what our wallboard displays:
- A rotating slideshow feeds images from our Posterous blog.
- We found a way to feed in MTA train schedules, so the wallboard updates every few minutes to show the next uptown and downtown trains for lines near our office (great to check on our way out).
- Our cleaning schedule, controlled on ExpressionEngine, highlights whose turn it is to make sure the office is nice and tidy before leaving.
- We put in a nice JQuery time & weather widget.
- We made use of the Google Calendar feed to show our next holiday and we also display meetings that take place in the conference room, upcoming events, and team member birthdays.
- The largest component is our Harvest Co-op feed, which shows who is working on what. Green means that the timer is running. The blue status bar is an indicator we put in to help identify visually the tasks that take up the most time.
We're very happy with the results and will continue to explore ways to show other kinds of information/data on our wallboard. Does your business need a customized wallboard? Give us a holler -- we'd be happy to design and develop one for you.
September 24th, 2011
Just Launched: Choir Manager
Choir Manager is a web app that makes life easier for choir directors. It provides features such as event scheduling, attendance tracking, and group messaging, allowing choir directors to stay organized and to save time on administrative tasks.
September 20th, 2011
New Features for Launch Effect
How the Theme's Done So Far
Since our launch on August 22nd, we've had over 2,200 downloads of our theme. We've been featured on publications such as The Next Web, Smashing Magazine (their weekly newsletter), and WPMU.org. Our favorite part has been all the wonderful examples we've seen over the past few weeks. Users have stretched the theme to its limits and many have made some very cool modifications.
What's New in This Release
You can read up on the full list of updates on our changelog right here. But here are the highlights:
1) Stats are now a part of the theme settings and a page does not need to be created manually. We noticed that users were having some issues with this, so it was one of the first things we addressed. This is what the new stats page looks like (note the Launch Effect options on the side and top menu):
2) You can modify the labels of everything, which means foreign languages are a go! We were bombarded with pleas from users wanting to use Spanish, Russian, German, etc. for areas like "Enter your email address:" so we made them all editable:
3) You can now add a Privacy Policy or Terms & Conditions statement that can get you permission to import people's emails to a service like MailChimp. We think this is a good stopgap solution until we add full integration with third party email service providers.
4) You can now use Typekit and Monotype's font.com web fonts to style the text. Simply enter the account from either service and select your fonts there to make it work.
5) More options for the content containers! You can choose from three sizes (small, medium, large) and three positions (left, right, center). This means more flexibility for the user to position the content and to let the background image shine.
6) We've added more social media options: Tumblr, Google+, and LinkedIn. You can also link to your Facebook page or Twitter profile on the homepage. And if you're tired of all the social media icons, you can simply disable all of them.
We're excited that Launch Effect's become a useful tool for people all over the world, and we plan on improving the theme even more in the coming months. Keep track of our progress by following @LaunchEffect on Twitter and take a look at our Development Roadmap.
September 17th, 2011
Just Launched: Taylor Supply Co.
August 22nd, 2011
Designs for Zemanta's Outreach Section
We recently provided designs to tech startup Zemanta for their new Outreach section. Zemanta indexes content from brands, marketers and agencies into their semantic engine. Hooked into a blogging platform such as Wordpress, their proprietary NLP (natural language processing) technology analyzes the content as it is being written and makes real-time recommendations such as images and links that the blogger can easily insert into their post. Zemanta targets hyper relevant bloggers and recommends their client's content when appropriate. You can watch a demo of their neat product here.
The Outreach section is aimed at brands, marketers, and agencies that want to use Zemanta to get relevant content in front of influential bloggers as they create content. We worked off their existing brand to create easy-to-understand diagrams and icons of their technology and solution. Visit: http://www.zemanta.com/outreach/
August 22nd, 2011
New Theme: Launch Effect
We're happy to announce the release of our very first Wordpress theme! It's called Launch Effect, and it's free to download and use at www.launcheffectapp.com.
Here's what we've been saying about it:Launch Effect is a free Wordpress theme that lets you create a viral campaign in minutes. The theme allows the user to customize a landing page that introduces a business, product, or event and prompts visitors to sign up with their email to earn some sort of incentive (beta invite, discount coupon, a gift, etc.). The visitor is then encouraged to share a unique referral link that tracks their friends' sign ups. Conversions are tallied on Wordpress, and the user can determine who should receive the incentives. If all this sounds very familiar, it's probably because it closely resembles LaunchRock. Here's the backstory: we're Barrel, a scrappy web design and development shop in New York City. We were heavily inspired by the smart folks at LaunchRock and thought it would be a good exercise to build a viral launch page theme in Wordpress. We started to work on it and made good progress in just a couple of weeks. When it came to creating some sample "launch" pages, we realized that our theme could be used by all kinds of businesses, not just tech startups and group buying sites. Restaurants, spas, boutiques, and events such as galas, dance parties, and movie screenings can all benefit from an easy-to-create viral campaign. We're very excited to release this free Wordpress theme, and hope that web designers and developers can use it to create quick campaigns for their clients or for tech-savvy business owners to implement it on their own. Visit: www.launcheffectapp.com
August 16th, 2011
Working on Korean Beacon
For the past three months, we've worked closely with Korean Beacon to streamline its editorial focus and to introduce new content features. It's been a very exciting venture as this fits right along with our other Korean American projects (I Am Korean American and Korean Food Gallery). Korean Beacon presents a different challenge in that it requires both daily scouring for news and long-term planning for features to keep the publishing schedule busy. We're also very engaged on Facebook and Twitter, as these social media outlets drive a good amount of the site's traffic.
August 12th, 2011
Just Launched: Areté Youth Foundation
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