Headstand Media is pleased to announce the launch of a new website for the iTRACS Corporation, headquartered in Tempe, Arizona. The firm specializes in providing advanced software solutions that allow IT groups to manage the physical infrastructure layer and the process, technology and organization behind it. Communicating their Converged Physical Infrastructure Management (CPIM) solution was a prime objective of the website redesign.
Content Management System
Headstand Media worked with top level iTRACS management executives to redefine the strategy and goals of the site. We restructured old content and updated, refined and created new content. The WordPress content management system was selected for its simplicity and ease of use.
Design
Headstand Media redesigned the corporate logo and identity, and based a new website interface around it.
Video
Video was identified as a strategic way of communicating the more complex ideas and solutions that iTRACS provides. Headstand Media shot and produced all of the videos for the website project, as well as all of the website production and design.
Blog
A company blog was also integrated into the site, allowing iTRACS to more effectively communicate their thought leadership within the IT industry.
Based upon the relationship developed with Randal Birkey in previous years, Ryerson Inc. has selected Headstand Media to design and produce a new website for one of their newest locations in the Southeastern region of the US, and a print brochure to accompany it.
Ryerson Inc. is headquartered in Chicago and is one of the oldest corporations to be continuously located in the city. It is also the largest steel distributor in North America. The current corporate website at www.ryerson.com was designed and developed by Randal’s previous web design company, then called BIRKEY.COM.
Headstand Media is proud to be associated with Ryerson again in this strategic initiative.
Wellness House is a non-profit organization that provides information, support, and a community to help families living with cancer. Founded in 1990 by a committed group of community leaders in Hinsdale, Illinois, Wellness House serves the western suburbs of Chicago as a vital complement to medical treatment for anyone experiencing the effects of cancer by providing a comprehensive array of programs at no cost to participants.
Wellness House contacted Headstand Media near the end of 2009 with their need for a new, redesigned website – one that would effectively communicate a new branding message and marketing direction. We also discussed their desire for the site to help them reach more people. In the end, a balanced Creative + Technology strategy was adopted, to ensure that both the user experience was great, and that the site would perform well in the search engines.
Based upon this strategy, we recommended a WordPress-driven foundation with a custom designed web 2.0 interface that added new features such as: interactive events calendar, event registrations, blogging, links to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media sites. We also designed the home page to invite visitors to “Please step inside…” and view engaging, people-centered real-world video stories of people helped by Wellness House. We also integrated a “Virtual Tour” of the facility and a “What’s New” slider allows Wellness House to feature important events and resources on the home page.
Over the last couple of months we have been training and working with the team at Wellness House, and are happy to announce that the new website is now live. If you or anyone you know is living with cancer, be sure to check out this great organization in Chicago’s west suburbs, and consider extending their reach by “Following” them on Twitter and to “Like” their Facebook page.
As we reported in November of 2009, Shands HealthCare of the University of Florida had contracted with Headstand Media to produce floor plans of their new cancer hospital, and to then turn those floor plans into an interactive map for their hospital and their visitors to their website.
We are pleased to announce that the project has been completed and the floor plans, maps and interactive application can be viewed online at Shands.org.
Headstand Media thanks Michael Schaffner for his integral work with us on the interactive Flash application.
We combined the use of Adobe Illustrator and then Flash to create all of the map and floor-by-floor designs, including actual Google Maps to outline the existing campus and its buildings. We then created a 3-dimensional model, and combined it all within the Flash framework to finish the interactive map.
In all, this was a fun project to work on and complete, and we enjoyed working with the Shands team to provide a tool that would both look good and make the user experience of the new cancer hospital interesting and interactive.
Headstand Media has a dedicated web page on our site addressing this question (What is WordPress?). However, on our WebSmart.tv site, we have also just launched a video version that addresses the same question… “What is WordPress?”
If you are new to the “web 2.0” world, and are wondering what these new terms mean, this YouTube hosted, video blog site is for you. Each video topic tackles one aspect of the web in about a minute.
If you learn something new, and find WebSmart.TV to be useful, tell your friends and colleagues!
As we announced in November of 2009, Friends Fiduciary Corporation headquartered in Philadelphia, PA, provides a range of financial services for meetings, schools, and other non-profit organizations associated with the Religious Society of Friends, also known as Quakers. Since then, Headstand Media has been involved in a project to redesign the Friends Fiduciary brand, and build a new web 2.0 website to reflect that brand and communicate the services they provide more effectively.
On Monday, March 1, 2010, the new Friends Fiduciary Corporation website was launched. You can see that the new brand reflects a much more contemporary look that competes well with other financial service entities in the marketplace today.
Project Objectives
Contemporary, simple, clean, new brand design
Feature the performance of the FFC Consolidated Fund more prominently
Enable site updates to be easily performed by Friends Fiduciary staff
Increase search engine performance in the natural search results on relevant keywords
An integrated blog and RSS feed
The new website is built upon the WordPress content management system which allows the Friends Fiduciary staff to add, edit and delete their site content using a standard web browser. It also allowed us to incorporate and integrate a blog and RSS feed under the Dialogue on Current Issues tab. WordPress positions Friends Fiduciary’s content in an accessible, search-engine friendly manner, and provides them a great tool for unpacking their web strategy as time goes on.
Future Goals
One of the potential future web goals of Friends Fiduciary is to incorporate private client/user accounts. This will enable each client to track how their specific funds and accounts are performing, as well as to communicate in a secure manner with their Friends Fiduciary account managers. Headstand Media envisions a dashboard of rich reporting tools and interfaces to give the client quick visual feedback on their account, with the ability to drill deeper as needed.
Headstand Media is excited to announce the launch of a brand new online community website for The Blacksmith Project, a recording studio and Christian musician collective based in Bull Valley, Illinois. The site was built around emerging Web 2.0 strategies, and offers in-depth content, photos, music sampling and purchasing, blogs and social media integration for its artists.
Project Strategy
Headstand Media, a Chicago web design company, met with the founders of The Blacksmith Project soon after the construction of the aforementioned recording studio, and provided a comprehensive web strategy that focused on:
Logo design, branding, and messaging
Educating the client in regard to Web 2.0 best practices and social media
How to tell a captivating story and engage the culture
Developing a dynamic, compelling website
The Blacksmith Project needed a site that was both visually exciting and able to handle multiple user accounts. Since there were a handful of artists involved, it was important that each artist had their own unique area of the site, where they could develop their own content and sell their music. Equally of importance was the building of the site with a technology that would be versatile and scalable for future expansion and additional features.
Project Technology and Integration
Theblacksmithproject.com was built in a content management system called WordPress, the world’s largest blogging and content management platform, using open source technology. For this particular project we used WordPress MU, to facilitate multiple users and accounts. We designed the custom theme that controls the way the site looks and feels, using industry standard best practices in HTML, PHP, SEO, Javascript, and CSS web coding. The site is an excellent example of our balanced approach of creativity + technology—a strategy we consistently employ as we’re solving business problems for our customers.
More About The Blacksmith Project
The Blacksmith Project was founded in 2007 by Duncan Mathieson and Mark Filippi, both longtime musicians with a passion to both teach and empower new artists in their pursuit of recording, performing, songwriting, and promoting themselves and their own original music. The founders met around the time that Duncan was considering retirement from a business career and Mark was an interim worship pastor at Moraine Valley Church.
Since its inception and the completion of the recording studio in Bull Valley, Illinois, The Blacksmith Project has amassed a handful of talented musicians and hosted benefit concerts in their area. One of their big goals is to raise awareness and support for local ministries and meaningful causes in order to impact their local community. Their next free concert will be on February 6th at the Raue Center for the Arts in Crystal Lake, Illinois and will begin at 7:00pm. The concert will benefit the Crystal Lake Food Pantry.
For more information on The Blacksmith Project, their artists, and their events, please visit them at www.theblacksmithproject.com!
Headstand Media is pleased to announce the launch of a new website for the Morey Corporation located in Woodridge, IL. This new site was built around emerging Web 2.0 strategies, and offers in-depth content, videos, and blogs for the electronic manufacturing industry.
Project Strategy
Headstand Media, a Chicago web design company, provided a comprehensive online web strategy that focused on developing a dynamic, compelling website for the client. Our friends at Morey needed a site that was conversational, transparent, and easy to navigate, and highlighted the key strength of their business: service.
While the Morey Corporation has for decades specialized in electronic manufacturing over a wide range of platforms and contexts, this new web strategy paid special attention to their personality and relational qualities. Developing a website that both highlighted Morey’s professional and technical expertise, as well as featured their key customer service strengths, was important to the success of the project.
Entering this project, Morey had an existing site and content that where static and invisible to the web at large. The new web architecture provided by Headstand Media gives Morey an improved technical foundation, where all content is both well structured, and search engine friendly.
Integral to the strategy of the new Morey Corporation website are several new videos, which feature the Morey leadership team. These were conceived and produced by Headstand Media from start to finish, and included filming on location in Woodridge, Illinois. These non-corporate-feeling videos promote Morey’s culture of approachability, integrity, and excellence, and divulge lots of great information about the company in a creative way.
Project Technology and Integration
Moreycorp.com was built in a content management system called WordPress, the world’s largest blogging and content management platform, using open source technology. We designed the custom theme that controls the way the site looks and feels, using industry standard best practices in HTML (PHP), SEO, Javascript, Flash and CSS web coding. The site is an excellent example of Headstand Media’s balanced approach of creativity + technology—a strategy we consistently employ as we’re solving business problems for our customers.
More About Morey Corporation
The Morey Corporation is known for its rich history of providing the highest quality electronics to industry leaders. Their innovative approaches to manufacturing, prototyping, problem solving, product design and customer service makes them an incredibly versatile partner to a range of different clients. Nestled just east of I-355 in Woodridge, Illinois, Morey’s entire operation can be found under one roof. On site is also a brand new Innovation Center, where Morey employs some of the top engineers and thinkers in the industry around expanding product lines, developing new strategies, and solving complex problems for customers.
Dedicated to quality and service since the Morey Corporation’s 1934 foundation in the basement of William Morey, the people at the Morey Corporation are some of the finest individuals we’ve had the opportunity to work with.
For more information about the Morey Corporation, be sure to visit their site today!
Shands HealthCare is the hospital system connected to the University of Florida. Their web department needs some campus maps and floor plans developed for their new cancer hospital in Gainsville. So, they went to Google and typed in campus map illustration… and who did they find but Randal Birkey! Through links they eventually contacted Headstand Media and shared their needs for the project.
It turned out that they were going to use these maps in print as well as in an interactive Flash web application for hospital guests and patients at www.shands.org, and needed a partner to develop that application as well. Funny thing… Headstand Media can handle both!
So, Headstand Media wrote a proposal and won the project.
We say to our new customer from Florida… “welcome to Chicago!”
In 1934 William Morey began manufacturing radio test sets in his basement for Montgomery Ward, an industry-leading catalog retailer. Today, the Morey Corporation continues to provide American-made electronics manufacturing and design services with the highest levels of customer service and support. Their products include ruggedized electronics and telematics for a number if industries and other well-known American manufacturers.
Headstand Media is pleased to be selected as the company’s newest partner in redefining and designing a new web 2.0 strategy and presence for the 21st century. Several web projects are being planned extending into 2010. Headstand’s creativity + technology approach will ensure that the new site messages and brand stories are compelling and perform well in the search engines to produce new business for the company.
Headstand Media is pleased to announce the launch of a new website for the iTRACS Corporation, headquartered in Tempe, Arizona. The firm specializes in providing advanced software solutions that allow IT groups to manage the physical infrastructure layer and the process, technology and organization behind it. Communicating their Converged Physical Infrastructure Management (CPIM) solution was a prime objective of the website redesign.
Based upon the relationship developed with Randal Birkey in previous years, Ryerson Inc. has selected Headstand Media to design and produce a new website for one of their newest locations in the Southeastern region of the US, and a print brochure to accompany it.
