Create Matter Blog

Creating a Mobile Experience for a Brand Already on the Go.

If there’s anything that we at Atomicdust love more than technology and music, it’s exercising (not true).

Actually, it’s challenges that we love. And recently, we ran up against one heck of a design challenge.

Regular readers of our blog may recall a recent collaboration with our friends from Halski Design for the St. Louis based consumer electronics company, Yurbuds. Yurbuds.com received many accolades, and when we were asked to take that experience and translate it to the touch screen of the iPad (largely for Apple Store employees to demo for their customers) and mobile devices, we were happy to oblige.

Read about Yurbuds mobile and iPad development.

Atomicdust wins 23 Targeted Advertising and Marketing (TAM) Awards

Looks like we’ve set a new record for ourselves! Last night, we won 23 awards at the annual Business Marketing Association show, including six Best-in-Class and the People’s Choice award.

From the Starlight Room atop the Chase Park Plaza, the future of marketing and advertising in St. Louis looks bright – as evidenced by the record number of entries in the 2011 Targeted Advertising and Marketing (TAM) Awards. They received more than 250 entries for 32 categories, celebrating advertising in all forms - printed pieces, websites, three-dimensional displays and more.

The 23 awards we took home included honors for websites, print campaigns, social media, logo design, trade show graphics and email campaigns. We were also recognized with the People’s Choice Award, for a multifaceted superhero-themed campaign created for Mosby’s Nursing Suite, and earned a sweep of the blog category.

The annual awards show is the only one dedicated exclusively to honoring business-to-business marketing excellence. It is sponsored by the St. Louis chapter of the Business Marketing Association.

A big congratulations are in order for the whole Atomicdust team. Thank you to all the designers, developers, copywriters and account managers that work hard to produce award-winning work from year to year!
 

See photos of the event on our Facebook page

Click here to see the complete list of Atomicdust’s 2011 TAM awards

Atomicdust Designs Voltron Website in Preparation for New Series on Nicktoons

So, if you haven’t heard of Voltron, you might not have been around in the 80’s. It certainly played a large part in my childhood. Everyday around 3:30, I would run home from school to tune into the cartoon about giant lion robots coming together to form one giant robot, conquering evil, and saving the planet. I was obsessed with Voltron, and would get in ‘Voltron drawing’ contests with the kids at school. And sometimes, I even won.

So in 2006, when we began working with World Events Productions, the St. Louis company that created Voltron, to develop a website and promotions around the launch of Voltron on DVD for the first time in the US, we were thrilled.

However, working with Voltron is exciting and daunting at the same time. On one hand, you have this brand that you know and love, and want to pay tribute to. On the other hand, the rest of the world knows and loves the brand too, so the pressure is on to really impress.

This year we came together once again to build a new website in preparation for a new Voltron television series on Nicktoons: Voltron Force.

Our approach was to ditch traditional web linear navigation and try to imagine the site as more of a magazine about Voltron and pop culture. Our favorite part of the Voltron brand was our memories of the brand, and the little snippets of nostalgia that come rushing back when you see something from your childhood.

In the magazine world, content is separated by full page ads. We wanted our content to be separated by nostalgia. So we created what we refer to as ‘dreams’; huge expressions of the brand and used a parallax scrolling effect to bring the sections to life. Without flash. The result was an immersive Voltron experience that visitors could explore and get lost in. Check it out here.

To top it off, the entire site is based on the Expression Engine content management system so our friends at Voltron can add their own news, video, and fan memories, or any other content they see fit, quickly and easily.

All and all, the site will act as a vehicle to deliver the brand to audiences young and old, allowing new fans to discover Voltron and old fans to relive a part of their childhood.

See a screenshot of the Voltron website in it's entirety, but to experience the full effect, check out the Voltron website.

Atomicdust makes healthcare marketing simple and easy.

Physicians choose Gateway EDI’s support system to maximize their revenue. Gateway EDI offers a comprehensive suite of tools built with one simple goal: to help physicians get paid faster. However, the problems the tools solve can be complex, and the technology, however intuitive, can seem daunting.

As we redesigned Gateway EDI’s website, we set out to make sure every visitor to the site would come away knowing exactly how Gateway EDI could help them. We wanted to capture the friendliness of the company’s renowned customer service and the ease-of-use of its tools in our messaging and design.

With clearly defined sections devoted to specific audiences, we made it easy for visitors to navigate to the information they sought. And, when they found it, we described the highly technical products and services in a digestible, relatable, benefit-oriented manner, so learning about Gateway EDI is easier than ever.

We also created videos to explain the services that any doctor’s office could relate to, showcasing how Gateway’s products could revolutionize the way they do business with a unified, simple story.

To optimize the branding experience and make the site easier to maintain, we embraced new web-type licensing technology. This enables us to edit text in branded fonts throughout the site without using graphics programs. It’s a revolution for web design.

We also made it easy for our client to manage. We built the site using WordPress, a flexible content management system. WordPress allows multiple users on Gateway EDI’s marketing team to manage pages, content, photos and video, without touching the underlying code. WordPress also lets users easily manage online forms, and share assets across individual microsites.

Just like Gateway EDI makes it easy for providers to maximize their revenue, we’ve made it easy and intuitive for Gateway EDI to manage its most visible marketing asset. This is an important step toward keeping content fresh, helping to engage prospects and turn them into loyal customers. 

Check it out at www.gatewayedi.com 

Point of Care Guidelines Website

CPMRC's Point of Care Guidelines have been the leading interdisciplinary guidelines for hospitals for over 20 years. Their guidelines get everyone in the hospital on the same page in order to provide the best patient care. In the past, the guidelines were sent out in a paper or CD format. With a plan to launch their new web-based version of the guidelines, we created a set of materials to get the message out to their audience.

The first part of the campaign was the website. Just as their product stands out from a sea of other guidelines, we crafted a site that stood out from their competitors. We used imagery and movement that showed how Point of Care Guidelines connected everyone in the hospital. That, coupled with digestible explanations of how the product worked, resulted in a site that is clean, concise and a breath of fresh air to the industry.

Check out Point of Care Guidelines.

Identity Created for Whimsy Celebrations

Whimsy Celebrations is more than an event planning company, they’re an event designing company.

Whimsy Celebrations specializes in events like children’s parties and bridal showers- gatherings that you want to be unique, personal, and memorable. They go above and beyond typical event planning, adding customized touches to everything from the invitations, to the activities, to the decorations.

Whimsy Celebrations came to Atomicdust looking to create and build an identity for its growing company. Through collaboration, we established a soft, friendly and fun identity that stretches from the logo itself to the design of the new website. The blog-style website is easy to keep fresh and up-to-date, allowing them to easily showcase their creations and share their passion.

Check out Whimsy Celebrations.

Atomicdust Launches New Website for Great Getaways

They design dream vacations, we designed their website.

Great Getaways has been creating dream vacations for clients around the world for over 15 years, and as members of the Virtuoso travel network, they are in the top 1% of travel agencies. They take pride in not being ‘cookie cutter,’ and we wanted to make sure their website wasn’t either.

Throughout the website, we paired enticing images from destinations with messages focused on Great Getaways’ expertise and exclusivity. Inviting you to visit Hawaii, for example, and see the ‘greenest greens you can’t reach by golf cart.’ 

Great Getaways goes beyond just being a normal travel agency. They keep a dedicated travel blog, extensive photo albums on Picasa, and connect with their clients through Facebook and Twitter. We made sure to highlight these features on each page of the site, and made it easy for them to update by designing the site to work with WordPress.

In the end, we created a site that was both cool to look at and extremely functional for the client. Check out their site here, and start saving for that trip to space.