Happy Holidays from Triple Strength! This year’s holiday card showcases the original artwork of our new designer, Emily Shellenberger. Painted in watercolor and ink, the piece was designed to resemble a classic holiday card, featuring iconic poinsettias. To set this classic card apart from the rest, the vibrant red color and three flowers make the artwork unique to the Triple Strength brand.

Along with the flowers is a separate pull-tab to take in and out that resembles a greenhouse plant marker. On the front is the TS logo, identifying the flowers specifically as Triple Strength poinsettias; on the back are simple directions to care for the beautiful flowers and make them last.

This card was sent to current clients and friends of Triple Strength as a simple reminder that we cherish the relationship we have and hope it continues to grow. Wishing you the best this holiday season and a wonderful new year!

Ten Thousand Villages is a source for unique handmade gifts, jewelry, home decor, art and sculpture, textiles, serveware and personal accessories representing the diverse cultures of artisans in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. One of the world’s largest fair trade organizations and a founding member of the World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO), the company strives to improve the livelihood of tens of thousands of disadvantaged artisans in 38 countries. They have spent more than 60 years cultivating long-term buying relationships to establish the international trading company they have today.

In Summer 2011, Triple Strength was approached by Ten Thousand Villages to make a bid to design the company’s new ecommerce website. They were in search of a site that would energize the Ten Thousand Villages brand, replicate the store experience online, and share the stories of the artisans. The bid was open to a number of agencies, but it was Triple Strength, with its extensive portfolio of creative and cutting-edge web projects, that was selected to move forward with the site redesign.

The goal was to design a site that allows viewers to easily find and purchase the company’s exclusive items while still functioning as an informational site to learn about the creators and locations where the products are made. The stories of the artisans needed to be as equally weighted as the selling aspects of the site, because the Artisan Story is what separates a plate made in Uganda and sold at Ten Thousand Villages from one sold at Crate and Barrel. The site was designed to reflect the grassroots of the artisans featured; the rich, natural colors and textures are symbolic of the products they craft and sell.

Previous Site

The New Concepts
Three design variations were created to effectively portray the Ten Thousand Villages brand and allow nearly effortless usability.

Concept 1
The first concept uses warm, deep earth tones and natural textures to portray the cultures and heritage reflected in the craftspeople and their products. Torn paper edges along the navigation bar give the site a handmade quality, while unique effects keep the site on the leading edge of functionality. For example, the social media icons on the side of the content bar are designed to slide as you scroll down the page and remain visible at all times. This omnipresence puts customer interaction at the forefront, without being intrusive.

Concept 2
This second concept suggests a more commercially oriented approach. It is clean and light for easy navigation, allowing the products be the focal point. The color palate is muted, off-white and tan with small hints of color to direct attention to buttons and links. Primary ad space would be highlighted at the top, while the rest of the content is clearly defined into three spaces: selling space, secondary ads and blog information.

Concept 3
The final concept is a slight mix of Concepts 1 and 2, with extra care given to the ecommerce and store elements. It has a neutral color scheme and a segmented design. It works well for buying and selling, but is still reflective of the cultures through the green and tan color selections. The bright banners that call out each category make the site’s functionality clear and concise.

Review and Production
After the clients reviewed all three of the design concepts, it was clear they were drawn to the influential textures and rich colors of the first concept. The layout also worked with their idea of the hierarchy and utility for the site.

Triple Strength was selected only for the layout and design of the new site; production for page templates and content implementation began immediately. Ten Thousand Villages would be handling the development and Magento content management system (CMS) integration.

Magento is a leading ecommerce solution providing back-end CMS for a variety of national retailers including Bonobos, the NorthFace, and Ford. With the new CMS each page has its own function and unique display. Purchasing products is much easier with specified categories. Each artisan has a library of media integration, with which they can share their story. Finding these stories is also simplified with an integrated map of their native country and the countries served by Ten Thousand Villages.

Triple Strength appreciated the opportunity to work with such an amazing company, and hopes to work with them as they expand their branding in the future. The experience was more than enjoyable, and we are pleased with the final design. In the future, we hope to enter this design in various competitions. Now that the new TenThousandVillages.com is live, the growth of this long-established fair trade company is sure to increase.

In past ad campaigns the literal Captain Morgan was either not present, or a more cartoony iteration of the character, which played into the less sophisticated, more party atmosphere of the beverage. An overnight sensation, the campaign grew on the back of the Captain’s easily replicated pose of raising one leg atop a rum barrel (even though most replicants use imaginary ones). ‘Got a Little Captain in You’ became the rallying cry for those making this pose in ridiculous situations. It gained so much popularity that the NFL instituted a ban on the impression due to the frequency of its use during touchdown celebrations.

With new marketing efforts, the partying Captain has evolved into a suave, debonair man-about-town … think of the Dos Equis ‘Most Interesting Man on Earth’, but for hard liquor … and he’s a pirate. Calm and level-headed, this liquor leader diffuses the most chaotic of situations, in the most respectful of manner. Pending bombardment by British naval fleet? Solved with somersault dive from the deck, so picture-perfect that a French judge would have a hard time not holding up the 10 card.

“Our consumers continue to evolve and expand their interests, we recognized that Captain Morgan himself needed to evolve with them,” Brand Director, Tom Herbst. While the Captain may have dialed back his party-hardy lifestyle, his escapades still land him with realistic decisions and situations, much like Captain Morgan consumers. “Each spot showcases a new side of the Captain and reinforces … that even today, they can live like the Captain lived.”

In order to bring to life the 17th Century Pirateer, Daigeo utilized the creative minds at international super-group, and NY Cosmos supporters, Anomaly. They also called upon Academy Award-winning Director, Tom Hooper, The King’s Speech, to craft the briny deep atmosphere of the first commercial spot.

The new Captain identity illustrates a maturity of the brand, and, though I don’t drink it, (we had some rough years, and went through an ugly divorce) I’m really happy with their direction. With anything pirate themed, it’s easy to fall into cliche traps, especially when you’re dealing in alcohol. The more refined persona tailors itself to a more refined consumer (one looking for a drink, rather than one looking to get wasted), and aligns itself with other Daigeo brands.

Here’s to you Captain Morgan, I salute you, sir.

Endnote: While we are on the topic pirate themed alcohols, I’d like to jump ship (pardon the pun) to one of Captain Morgan’s smaller-scale competitors. I heard of Kraken Black Spiced Rum in a Comm Arts Design annual, and if you’re a fan of consumer packaging, then I recommend picking up a bottle, even if you’re not a fan of spiced rum.

Key Components:
•  finger-rings on the bottle, always a selling point for Steve Semanchik, and
•   a spectacular illustration of the mythic Krakken on the label.

How incredible it is to see the growth recognized by the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet over the years. It’s amazing to think that some of the finest ballet performers in the country were, at one time, students at CPYB studios in Carlisle, PA. Just as the school has grown — originally conducting classes in the auditorium at Carlisle High School, to its current 10-studio facility that’s instructed over 20,000 students — so too must their identity.

A brand overhaul was in order to re-align how CPYB viewed themselves with how they were perceived by peers. The former identity didn’t fully express the excitement, dedication, and skill put forth every day by the faculty, staff, and student body. Fresh off a redesigned logo, color palette, and standards guidelines, Triple Strength began the extensive process of interpreting CPYB’s fresh look in a visually-striking, functionally-sound web presence that would announce to dance and ballet companies around the globe that the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet was taking center stage as a premier institution for learning and development.

The Concepts
Starting out with a handful of concepts, we narrowed the list to three primary layouts, each with their own strengths and style.

Concept 1

Using dark background colors, Concept 1 featured elements that worked to build a hierarchy of information based on a bright playful color scheme, which drew from CPYB’s freshly updated palette. The site layout optimized search engine features with main content areas dedicated to news and events, which would drive up numbers for unique and returning visits.

Concept 1 also made use of a detailed grid system that replicated CPYB’s focus on perfection and rigorous attention to detail. Spacing, alignment, weight and balance were key components to pulling off the effect. This layout such as this adds a structured quality to the site, recalling CPYB as a trusted and established institution.

Concept 2

The second concept focused more on the student visitor’s perspective of the site. Using imagery that showcased human interaction, whether it be a teacher helping students with technique, performers celebrating their first on-stage experience with loved ones, or some playful time between classes, a large primary image area was meant to draw kids to the program. One of CPYB’s biggest accomplishments was the successful establishment of coed classes. As other schools often lack the numbers to match male and female dancers, CPYB realized this capability and was now able to advertise it to potential dancers. The site would tout that accomplishment.

Concept 2′s design also further enabled users to take an interactive approach. Using different style sheets, at the click of a button visitors would be able to adjust the color scheme of the entire site, giving each user a new experience with each visit.

Concept 3

The final concept looked to mimic the on-stage experience in layout and design, with the key element being CPYB’s extensive catalog of event photography. The easiest way to illustrate CPYB’s top-notch performances was to put them front and center.

Again utilizing a black background, images bleed into the margins of the webpage, creating a stark contrast between performers and page boundaries. The design was meant to recreate an actual theater performance. The lights lower, and the dancers appear from dimly lit wings to create a whimsical experience for the audience to enjoy. Now … imagine that with javascript and css styling.

Review and Production
After meeting again with our clients to gather their feedback and which layout they were drawn to the most, we learned Concepts 1 and 3 seemed to be the crowd favorites, but neither one was a show-stopper (pun intended). We took the strongest elements of the two and began to mesh a stronger, more specialized layout. Merging the large format images of Concept 3 with the SEO-friendly content of Concept 1, the new site was ready to begin the transition for development.

While the introductory work had begun on the homepage, layouts were created for sub-level page templates. Pages were assigned a template according to their depth in the directory. Each main landing page, navigable from the primary navbar, was given Template A. Pages below that were assigned Template B, and below that, Template C. With each lower template, the ratio of image to content decreased. Homepage = 85% image to 15% text, whereas Template C is primarily text, with supplementary images for explanatory purposes.

CPYB was then connected to the TS custom content management system (CMS). This allows CPYB staff and faculty to update and maintain content, images, and other materials with little knowledge of programming. Styles and layout functionality are also programmed into the CMS, keeping pages consistent across the site.

To handle the ballet’s videos, the YouTube API is used as a secondary content management system. With the use of this trusted video management software, the site runs faster by hosting large video files on separate servers, gains greater SEO visibility, and saves money on development costs.

Another cost-cutting measure was to develop a public, and access-only calendar, driven through Google Calendars. Much like the YouTube API, this technique uses a free, dynamic, real-time solution for calendaring software. The API also integrates seamlessly, so the front-end matches the look and design of the rest of the site.

With the new cpyb.org now live, the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet’s brand reinvention is complete. A sum of all the parts — from logo, to color palette, to website — the new CPYB symbolizes energy, sophistication, and fun.

The Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet has seen tremendous increases in attendance and overall awareness since its start in 1955. Today’s organization now has an identity that matches its true spirit — standing center stage among other highly reputable dance companies across the country and abroad.

If you spend as much time as I do driving, road signs and highway markers often fly by at increased speeds without so much as a glance. Interstate, the typeface most closely related to that of highway signage, tends to fade into the landscape as attention can be diverted else where. With its recent adoption by TS for internal and client work, no matter how fast I get to the office, I’m surrounded by the font and it’s many faces and weights. With its growing popularity, I’m waiting for an Interstate film to replace Helvetica as the typography documentary to see.

Interstate is a neo-grotesque typeface, designed by Tobias Frere-Jones, to model closely after the font the US Federal Highway Administration developed in 1949 for road signage. It is also used in Canada, Mexico, The Netherlands, and elsewhere because of its readability at a distance and high speeds. When not applied to signage, Interstate is also used as display font for headings, call-outs and other featured content in publications and branding.

With the recent redesign of the TS brand, Interstate was chosen to replace Helvetica and Weidemann, as our studio fonts of choice. The past identity began to feel dated, and Interstate offered a modern alternative, with a number of faces to accompany. The font is strong enough to stand alone, so many applications are derived from typographic word art where the focus is on message.

Clients such as NSVRC and the Institute for Strategic Management Inc. have also been brought into the fold with Interstate being one of, if not the, primary typeface. For the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, Interstate pairs with Trajan to balance modern sans serif with a classic serif typeface. With the text-heavy nature of NSVRC publications, Interstate is used in the majority of copy to produce utmost readability in body and focal attention to callouts with bold and other heavier faces. In the case of the Institute for Strategic Management, everything from the logo and brochure, to web site headers and video production elements are all handled with Interstate. The brand is built upon the technical and modern applications of the font and showcases the state-of-the-art techniques ISM utilizes.

With its modern characteristics and contemporary style, it’s hard not to appreciate Interstate for it ability to represent action and progress. Companies and institutions looking to replicate these ideas often employee Interstate somewhere in their identity system. This has been just a tiny sample and there are countless to explore, but, at the very least, this may get you to focus a little longer on the next exit sign you pass.

Some other examples of Interstate

Grooveshark is an online music site that enables users to setup playlists from a library of tracks uploaded by other users. A rival of other popular sites like Pandora, Last fm, and rdio, Grooveshark enables total and complete personalization of what does, and does not, get played. A free service initially, upgrades are available to remove ads and other fund generating pieces from display on the site. With greater levels of activation, greater flexibility and customization of the application are available.

This site is quickly becoming one of my favorites. Often times, for whatever reason, there’s a song stuck in my head that I just have to hear. Whether you heard 3 seconds of it on your commute to the office, or just woke up humming it, if you don’t own the song on your iPod, or your work machine, you’re kind of out of luck. The beauty of Grooveshark, is that you can find that pesky song, and others like it, for free. You can’t download it, but you can feed-the-need. Online music sharing is a very gray area and just the words ‘FREE Music’ start to throw up red flags in our subconscious. GS works to provide licensers and other industry financiers with money from advertising and subscriptions. As a user, you can also be compensated for uploads. It keeps users, advertisers and music execs coming back time and time again.

The overall strength of the site is the intuitive nature of its playlist setup. Search for a song and then drag it to the player. The song starts to play as you continue to build. For someone who listens to a lot of music for an extended period of time, this is fast becoming my go to player. Unlike the other online apps, where you choose the first song and it builds a database of music per your preferences, you can pick as many, or as few songs, as you like, and let it expand from there. Users can setup favorites, and save certain tracks you love, making it even easier to get pumped up for your next presentation, or start to wind down on a Friday afternoon. Either way Grooveshark can make it happen … for free.

(above) Mobile upgrades for the Grooveshark app. My one complaint, more-so with Apple than Grooveshark, is that the iPhone has been rejected from the App Store.

Customized listing for user account. Add songs to the list, or mark them as a favorite for easy access.

Recently TS had the pleasure of working with ReadyLink to launch their new dynamic website. ReadyLink takes the everyday numbers that you need and puts them online. Previously a completely printed publication, providing inserts and advertising opportunities for people to place in their phone book for easy reference. Now, this process has been taken to a super navigable online format. You might be asking yourself, ‘but doesn’t Google, or Superpages do that already?‘ They do, but they catalog millions and millions of pieces of information. Where ReadyLink sets itself apart from these other information conglomerates, is that it takes a macro look into information and referencing systems. Rather than indexing every address, every phone number, every email and website, and every other bit of information that you’re NOT looking for and have then have users parse through this muck before finally arriving at the information you DO need, ReadyLink builds a database out of the key, important numbers for your individual area and puts them right on the homepage. Other subsections then provide more numbers pertinent to a particular category, such as Automotive, Government, or Service numbers. The site is a living, growing beacon of information, with new businesses, new agencies and new people using it everyday. We wish them the best of luck and look for ReadyLink to be in your town, in the near future. Check it out, and tell them Triple Strength sent you…

Take Your Web Site on the Road

With the recent growth of mobile and tablet technologies, it’s becoming a necessity to recognize the fact that mobile optimization is become a larger and larger constituent of how visitors view your site. Over the last several years we’ve seen an explosion in Smartphone sales and technological advancement. According to Strategy Analytics, Smartphone sales were up 75% in Q4 2010 compared with the same quarter in 2009. Smartphones made up 24% of the the mobile devices sold in Q4 2010. In the US, 34% of the mobile audience ages 13+ used a web browser in June 2010, according to ComScore. Shopping on the Mobile Web is expected to reach US$119 billion in 2015 according to ABI Research. The projected growth is incredible and makes for a compelling argument for mobile optimization when looking into your next web initiative.

Working again with our clients from CAAP (the Community Action Association of Pennsylvania) mobile optimization was the next step in fully integrating their site for maximum accessibility for their members, where ever they might be. All from their mobile device, members needed to be able to update their profiles, manage job listings and view pertinent documents just as they had on the full CAAP site. It was also important that videos, podcasts and other CAAP materials be accessible from anywhere. This kind of optimization is no small feat, with the various devices available in the marketplace for mobile browsing. Building a system from scratch was too costly for the non-profit to budget, so a framework needed to be chosen that would accomplish all the intricate Member’s Only Access.

Enter HTML5 and jQuery Mobile

Smartphones have been taking advantage of the advancements in Web technologies & standards allowing for a streamlined Web experience. jQuery Mobile provides a framework that utilizes HTML5 and CSS3 to create a mobile optimized site that feels at home on a smartphone device. By utilizing jQuery Mobile we gained the ability to reduce overhead development of a mobile optimized site while presenting an intuitive experience for mobile users.

jQuery Mobile takes a simple approach to page layout and utilizes AJAX as users browse from page to page. This, in effect, reduces bandwidth for mobile users because each page is loaded into the page you are already viewing. So, if you’ve browsed to a page and come back to it later, the browser doesn’t need to connect to the server over-the-air to display that page.

Considering the fast paced developments in the mobile arena, utilizing jQuery Mobile seemed like the best bet. The solution merged cutting edge technology with sleak user interface that reimagines CAAP’s web site in a mobile format. The advantage of this mobile optimization is that it strips out all the extraneous elements that someone viewing from a Smartphone, doesn’t necessarily need and showcases the key information. Using the characteristics that typify the full web site, colorful tabs help members navigate the streamlined site with ease, getting visitors to the information they need, as quickly as possible.

Take some time and compare the intricacies of a full and mobile site by clicking here, and then navigating to www.thecaap.org on your mobile device. If you would like to learn more about how Triple Strength can help you with mobile optimization, contact us or visit our web site and get in touch.

With the updated identity and marketing pieces that we’ve been rolling out over the past few months, our web site was next on the list. In between hectic schedules of client work, everyone here is working overtime on the new triplestrength.com. With the amount of news, events and recent projects that we’ve been trying to post online, the current flash site, though nice, became too much of a burden to maintain and update. The new TS identity offered the perfect opportunity for a redesign. Though it’s still a few months away from completion, here’s a sneak peek at the layouts, interface, style and graphics that we’ll be using as our new online home, once we find an available minute.

ENJOY!

As everyone knows, professional sports are a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Teams such as the New York Yankees, the Dallas Cowboys and Los Angeles Lakers are more valuable than some countries, and they show no sign of slowing growth. But now, it’s not only the teams that are growing their brand, but the players as well. They’ve turned the name on the back of their jersey into a true identity.

Primarily a money-play, majority revenues that would traditionally go to their team, now goes in their own pocket. It also opens up the possibility for different business ventures that might not be there if they stay true to league-licensed apparel. Take Michael Jordan, for instance. He’s the patron saint of sports moguls. It’s one thing to advertise for Adidas or Nike, but it’s an entirely different animal to tell the world’s largest shoe company that you want your own department. Shoes, cologne, apparel, Jordan broke the barrier of athletes selling sporting goods. It opened the door to sports icons creating everything from rap albums and wrist watches to iphone apps and interactive games (I’m looking at you OchoCinco).

Recently, the monogram has become the norm among athletes. Unlike the Jordan silhouette, more modern logos are primarily a set of initials creatively mixed with a player’s number. From a design standpoint, they’re usually nothing to write home about. The style of monogram is usually deemed by the nature of the sport. For example, a tennis or golf identity will tend to look more ‘upscale’ than that of a football or basketball identity because of the market they’re trying to attract. So in the future, when you head to your favorite sporting event, don’t bother with jerseys or team shirts, that’s soooo 1980. Get yourself some TB12 gear and lace up your Starburys, because, apparently in 2011, team is now spelled with an ‘I’ and a ‘$’.

Endnote: Answers :: 1. Allen Iversion  2. Tom Brady   3. Michael Jordan  4. Stephon Marbury  5. Tiger Woods  6. Roger Federer  7. Shaquille O’Neal  8. Pete Sampras  9. Lebron James :: These are some of the best known identities currently, but below is my favorite, circa 1999 …