Marketing and Design Blog

Building a Modern Identity and Website for Homeyer

When you think “tool and die manufacturer” the first words that pop into your head probably won’t be “modern” or "high tech.” In most cases, you’d be right. But not if you were talking about Atomicdust client, formerly known as Homeyer Tool and Die.

They came to us looking for a new identity and website to reflect the changing nature of their business. Sure, tool and die work has been the foundation of their company and will always be part of their operation. But it’s dwindling. And they’ve smartly responded by shifting to precision manufacturing for some very demanding industries, like healthcare, military, aviation and energy.

Read more about our branding for Homeyer Precision Manufacturing. 

Atomicdust Redesigns Yurbuds Website (Again)

Atomicdust was recently chosen to design and develop a site for Yurbuds, a brand of water- and sweat-proof sport earphones that won’t fall out of your ears during exercise. (The sound they produce is pretty great, too.)

Here’s the twist: we’ve tackled this project before. 

In 2011, Atomicdust designed the marketing portion of the Yurbuds site. This time around, we went bigger, creating the front end design, integrating a content management system, enabling the easy transfer of sales to distributors, and revamping the e-commerce experience. Our design transformed a landing page with several horizontal “sections” into a full-blown site with dedicated pages for each product.

The result? The largest sales e-commerce site we've ever done.

Read more about the Yurbuds website redesign. 

Understanding Responsive Website Design. An Overview for Marketing Managers

We’ve been reading a lot about responsive website design on the web (it’s a very popular topic) and thought we would put together an overview for Marketing Managers that might have questions about the topic. What is responsive design? And why does it matter?

Read, 'Understanding Responsive Website Design. An Overview for Marketing Managers.'

Now Hiring: Web Developer

Atomicdust is looking for a developer capable of collaborating with designers and others during the concept phase of a project, bringing original ideas and best practices to the table. Day-to-day tasks include converting Photoshop and Illustrator layouts into working, standards-compliant websites as well as updating and maintaining client websites.

Interested? Find out more...

Atomicdust helps Monsanto reinvent their blog

Earlier this year, Monsanto asked Atomicdust to re-imagine the hub of the company’s social media presence, the Monsanto blog.

A big part of the project was to bring the blog up to date both technically and visually. This was all to support the company’s new social media strategy, transitioning to a more proactive, informative approach, rather than simply responding to negativity. Read more about our work on the Monsanto Blog. 

A Facebook Search for the Superheroes of Nursing

About a year ago, our longtime client, Mosby's Nursing Suite, came to us with a new challenge. We had already helped them through a branding program and built marketing materials around their core promise, "Confidence Connected." We followed that up by helping them enter the world of social media with a blog, Facebook and Twitter. And now, they wanted to create a full-scale social movement, to which purchasers and end-users alike could connect.

Read more about the campaign we developed for Mosby's Nursing Suite - The Superheroes of Nursing Contest and T-Shirt Giveaway. 

Naming, Branding and Website Design for Daugherty Mobile Suite

One project leads to another.

We were in the midst of a full-scale branding program for our new client, Daugherty Business Solutions, when they came to us with a more urgent task: branding their new, mobile-oriented products.

This in and of itself represented a seismic change for the company. Daugherty had always focused on long-term consultative client relationships, rather than individual products or services. Daugherty asked us to name these new products in a way that positioned them as an extension of the company’s experience and expertise, not as a separate entity or independent division.

In the competitive marketplace, names for mobile-focused divisions run the gamut from straightforward to esoteric. We decided to leverage Daugherty’s brand equity – they have a long history in the IT consulting space – and name the set of products the Daugherty Mobile Suite. It’s simple, descriptive and accurate, while giving the company the flexibility to add new products or functionality without rebranding.

Read more and check out our naming, branding and web design work for Daugherty Mobile Suite.

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.