www.blastradius.com/who/article.jsp?id=24&type=1&search -
[Cached Version]
Published on: 6/15/2000
Last Visited: 3/15/2007
"We looked at the surf, snowboard, and skate communities in chat forums, newsgroups, and informal focus groups," says Lee Feldman, creative director at Blast Radius."We researched the lifestyle they were leading both on and off the Web.We found that they were a lot like ourselves - and it's easy to look at ourselves.From there we extended that to people who are likely to buy G-Shock watches and came up with the 'Toughest Watch in the World' concept."
Blast Radius continued the mind-meld with the G-Shock consumer while designing."Casio sent us 35 watches and we each took one best-suited to our interests," says Feldman.
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"That strategy gave us complete control over the layout of the site and allowed us to customize to a higher level," says Feldman."Some areas don't have to be animated, for example, but have to be regularly updated."
Between flying objects and tricky transitions, there's a sense of constant motion on the site."In a site that is very rich in terms of imagery and graphics," says Feldman, "we had to come up with innovations so the user would not have to wait to see things.We extracted all of the changing elements to make mini-movies that compartmentalized the downloads.We used Flash's Load Movies command to bring in these layered movies so the background didn't have to reload every time."
The site's designers also employed a multi-tiered Flash navigation system that expands and collapses on demand."We didn't want the navigation to take over the overall look and feel of the circular watch," Feldman explains.
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"Casio also challenged us to allow them to know their customers better," Feldman continues.
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"People are always looking for cool sites," says Feldman."The awards draw more traffic and the traffic draws more awards.It's a snowball effect that's resulted in a 60-percent increase in traffic over the previous year."
"Designing sites like this really excites me," Feldman concludes.