Monthly Archives: November 2010
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Syndication
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November 30, 2010
Factory Farm Map Reloaded
By New Signature
New Signature worked with Food & Water Watch to re-envision their Factory Farm Map website. The Factory Farm Map website compellingly illustrates something that people in rural America have known for a long time: family farms are being replaced by factory farms, and these facilities are overwhelming some regions of the country.The focal point of the website is the map, which displays the number of livestock on the largest operations in every county, by type of livestock, which is displayed on the density color scheme. Food & Water Watch compiled the data that drive the map from the 1997, 2002 and 2007 U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Census of Agriculture–a five-year survey of America’s farms. The map provides an easy-to-use and visually compelling interface for visitors to quickly browse multiple years of data, filter the data to specific data indicators, and view data at the national, state and county level. This interface provides visitors with a fluid exploration of the impact of factory farming across the United States from coast to coast. Visitors are also able to access an array of contextual interactive charts, rankings, and information at the national and state level.
The Factory Farm Map also provides visitors with information and tangible actions they can take that will result in sustainable and secure food systems that provide healthy food for consumers and an economically viable living for family farmers and rural communities. The website seamlessly integrates with the DemocracyInAction Salsa platform to allow visitors to sign up to receive emails, donate and take online actions including legislator contact, letters to the editor, and petitions.
Visitors can also embed a Factory Farm Map “The Facts” widget on their own website. The widget is built using JavaScript and displays a miniature Factory Farm map and pulls facts from the Factory Farm Map website. This widget empowers visitors to truly get involved in promoting the facts about factory farming on their own websites and blogs.
Factory Farm Map’s technical design was driven by the goals of the user experience instead of wiz-bang technology. The map itself uses established techniques along with newer techniques in JavaScript to retrieve data from the server asynchronously and create smooth transitions. The charts are created with the Google Visualization API which provides real-time charts. To improve the user experience of sharing the map, a user can send the current URL to a friend and the map will automatically show the correct location, year, and animal. To improve performance, the map takes advantage of localStorage, which came out of HTML5, to cache data for newer browsers. Underneath the hood, the site runs on WordPress 3 using a custom plugin to drive the map and Easy Post Types plugin to manage multiple post types for the textual information. Built using open technologies, the site is fully accessible on any platform, including the iPad and iPhone. There is a mobile version of the site for smaller form factor devices.
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November 15, 2010
New Signature Helps Oceana Visitors Adopt-A-Creature
By New Signature
New Signature worked with Oceana to design, build and launch the updated Adopt-A-Creature section of their website. Using the website you can adopt a creature (such as a shark, dolphin, sea turtle, octopus, or penguin) for yourself or for a loved one. Your donation will help Oceana’s work to protect these creatures and their habitats. As part of your adoption, you receive a personalized adoption certificate lists the name of the adoptive parent and displays the common and Latin name of the adopted creature.New Signature worked with Oceana to create the visual design for the Adopt-A-Creature section. We then built the solution using Ubercart–an open source e-commerce shopping cart that fully integrates with Drupal. To reduce the workload on Oceana’s staff New Signature integrated Ubercart with ActionKit (a flexible, reliable software for online advocacy) and automated transmission of order information to fulfillment.
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November 12, 2010
The American Foreign Policy Council’s World Almanac of Islamism Website Launches
By New Signature
New Signature has launched the World Almanac of Islamism website for the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC). New Signature worked with AFPC from concept, through visual design, build and launch. The website combines the Drupal content management system and Adobe Flash to deliver uncompromised interactivity, and a rich and immersive user experience.The American Foreign Policy Council’s World Almanac of Islamism is a comprehensive resource designed to track the rise or decline of radical Islam on a national, regional and global level. (more…)
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November 5, 2010
Why New Signature’s Phase 0 Delivers Results
By New SignatureAt New Signature, we refer to the bundle of strategic and tactical thinking that precedes any “real work” on a web project (that is, design and programming) as Phase 0. This collection of tasks typically consists of the following:
- Strategic Analysis and Planning
- Information Architecture
- Wireframing
- Technical System Design
We consider these steps absolutely mission critical for delivering great results, and we think our approach to them separates us from a lot of other firms delivering attractive websites — because being successful takes much more than being attractive. As XKCD eloquently demonstrates:
Credit: XKCD.com
Phase 0 addresses more than just the potential gulf between what users are looking for and what a website offers, but ensuring there’s no such disconnect is certainly a large part of it. To understand what makes our Phase 0 so valuable, though, you first need to understand what all the steps are about. (more…)
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November 2, 2010
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Launches MemberCentral
By New Signature
AAAS has launched MemberCentral, an exclusive website for AAAS members. MemberCentral is dedicated to highlighting AAAS activities and fostering community among our members. To support these goals, the site features original content presented as webinars, videos, podcasts, blogs, and more.AAAS selected New Signature to provide strategy and execute on this important project. New Signature worked with AAAS from concept to launch. We started by working with stakeholders to define the requirements for the website, including providing strategic direction on how best to engage target audiences. With competition for readership increasing from online publications, MemberCentral provides a new channel to showcase additional content and multimedia to AAAS 100,000+ members, as well as engage potential new members and inspire them to join. By creating new content and multimedia and by syndicating content from their many publications, AAAS is able to provide an extensive set of resources that members can consume through MemberCentral.
“Our experience with New Signature has been outstanding from start to finish,” says Ian King, Director of Marketing and Membership. “Their overall technical acumen and execution are first rate and their commitment to customer service has made working with the New Signature team both pleasant and productive. I cannot recommend them highly enough.”
We utilized the open source Drupal platform as the foundation for MemberCentral. New Signature implemented the Solr search platform to provide powerful full-text search, hit highlighting, faceted search and rich document handling. In addition, New Signature designed and built a paywall that effectively engages potential members to subscribe, driving up revenues and return on investment.
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November 1, 2010
New Signature Designed Websites Win Five 2010 Davey Awards
By New Signature
New Signature is thrilled to announce that websites that we designed have won five 2010 Davey Awards. The 2010 Davey Awards featured an incredible pool over 4,000 entries from the best small firms in the world. New Signature is truly honored that the International Academy of the Visual Arts has recognized our work with this mark of excellence, not once, but five times.- Silver Award—Activism, Food & Water Watch’s “Spill the Truth”
- Silver Award—Activism, Working America’s “I Am Not Your ATM”
- Silver Award—Homepage Design, Working America’s “I Am Not Your ATM”
- Silver Award—Restaurant, Bar Pilar
- Silver Award—Education, National Alliance for Public Charter Schools’ “Public Charter School Dashboard”
“The International Academy of the Visual Arts was honored to have once again participated in the International Davey Awards competition. We were truly amazed and excited at the overall caliber and quality of this year’s pool of entries” noted Linda Day, Executive Director of the IAVA. She added “The Davey Awards serves as the benchmark for recognizing creative excellence and continues to raise the bar in honoring the best work from small agencies and firms worldwide. Congratulations to the “Creative Davids” at the forefront of their industry, helping to push the limits in creativity and design.”
The Davey Awards is judged and overseen by the International Academy of the Visual Arts (IAVA), a 200+ member organization of leading professionals from various disciplines of the visual arts dedicated to embracing progress and the evolving nature of traditional and interactive media. Current IAVA membership represents a “Who’s Who” of acclaimed media, advertising, and marketing firms including: Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Yahoo!, Estee Lauder, Wired, Insight Interactive, The Webby Awards, Bath & Body Works, Brandweek, Polo Ralph Lauren, ADWEEK, Alloy, Coach, iNDELIBLE, MTV, Victoria’s Secret, HBO, The Ellen Degeneres Show, Myspace.com, and many others.