Blog Archives

  • July 29, 2011

    New Signature Founder and CEO Christopher Hertz Recieves Pete Kuchli Urban Empowerment Award from YearUp National Capital Region

    By New Signature
    Awards

    New Signature Founder and CEO Christopher Hertz received the Pete Kuchli Urban Empowerment Award from YearUp’s National Capital Region Chapter.   This award honors leaders who share YearUp’s values and vision and who are making a strong and measurable impact on young adults.

    Year Up is truly one of those rare programs that has a direct, immediate and lasting impact on the community.  The entire community is enriched through YearUp’s empowerment of young adults.  The YearUp program provides them with the skills, experience, and support that helps them reach their true potential.  We have been honored to have the opportunity to assist YearUp in their efforts.  New Signature has worked closely with YearUp by sponsoring interns, and providing pro bono training to enhance the educational experience for students and pro bono IT services to improve the productivity of staff and faculty.

    Year Up is a one-year, intensive training program that provides urban young adults 18-24, with a unique combination of technical and professional skills, college credits, an educational stipend and corporate internship.  The program enables graduates to move on to full-time employment and higher education.  Year Up provides opportunities for urban young adults to demonstrate their true potential.  Watch the video below to learn more about the opportunity divide in America and the steps that YearUp is taking to close it.

    Interested in helping close the opportunity divide? Contact YearUp today to learn about what you or your organization can do to help!

  • May 27, 2011

    New Signature Wins Six Awards at the 17th Annual Communicator Interactive Design Award Competition

    By New Signature
    Awards \ Branding, Website and Database

    2011 Gold Award of Excellence (Websites - Environmental Awareness)

    New Signature is proud to announce that we took home top honors at the 17th Annual Communicator Awards.  Websites that we designed and built won one gold and five silver awards in categories ranging from best Activism website to best Restaurant website.

    With thousands of entries received from across the US and around the world, the Communicator Awards is the largest and most competitive awards program honoring the creative excellence for communications professionals.

    New Signature took home the following awards:

    The Communicator Awards are judged and overseen by the International Academy of the Visual Arts (IAVA), a 550+ 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: Condè Nast, Coach, Disney, The Ellen Degeneres Show, Estee Lauder, HBO, Keller Crescent, Monster.com, MTV, Polo Ralph Lauren, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Tribal DDB, Victoria’s Secret, Wired, Yahoo!, and many others.

  • May 19, 2011

    Factory Farm Map Wins Interactive Media Awards Best in Class Award for an Advocacy Website

    By New Signature
    Awards \ Branding, Website and Database \ WordPress

    New Signature is thrilled to announce that the Factory Farm Map website, under the Advocacy category, has won the Interactive Media Awards Best in Class Award.  The Best in Class award is the highest honor bestowed by the Interactive Media Awards (IMA). It represents the very best in planning, execution and overall professionalism. In order to win this award level, the FFM site had to successfully pass through the IMA’s comprehensive judging process, achieving very high marks in each of our judging criteria – an achievement only a fraction of sites in the IMA competition earn each year.

    The IMA judges utilize a points-based scoring system which allows each entry to receive a maximum of 500 points. By adhering to the specific guidelines and criteria of this system our judges are able to maintain the highest degree of fairness, accuracy and integrity; competently and effectively evaluate entries; and, deliver clear results.  The Factory Farm Map website was scored using five specific criteria, with a score from 0-100 awarded for each criterion. The total of these five scores establish the overall score for the website up to a maximum of 500. The rare few websites receiving an overall score between 480 and 500 receive the Best in Class award.

    The Factory Farm Map scored as follows:

    Design: 97
    Content: 97
    Feature Functionality: 100
    Usability: 97
    Standards Compliance & Cross-Browser Compatibility: 98
    ——————————————————
    Total: 489

    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.  You can read more about the website and the project in New Signature’s “Factory Farm Map Reloaded” post.

  • May 13, 2011

    “I Am Working America” Campaign Website Wins the IMA Outstanding Achievement Award for Advocacy

    By New Signature
    Awards \ Branding, Website and Database

    New Signature is excited to announce that the “I Am Working America” campaign website, under the category ‘Advocacy’, has won the IMA Outstanding Achievement Award!  The Outstanding Achievement award is a top honor bestowed by IMA and an extremely challenging award to win.

    To win the “I Am Working America” website was judged to excel in all areas of the IMA judging criteria and demonstrate that it represents a very high standard of planning, execution and overall professionalism.  The judging criteria includes design, content, feature functionality, usability and standards compliance and cross-browser compatibility.  This award is further validation that New Signature is a leader in the industry, able to effectively and efficiently develop powerful and appealing advocacy campaign websites for our clients.

    Working America, community affiliate of the AFL-CIO, launched the I Am Working America campaign website in March 2011.  New Signature provided strategic recommendations, helped develop the campaign concept, then worked to design and produce the website.  The site is powered by the Drupal publishing platform, and is supported by the JQuery JavaScript library and utilizes HTML5 and CSS3.  In addition, we leverage JSON integration with Drupal to poll for site content updates, and dynamically show updates in real time.

    This timely and engaging website asks visitors to stand up and declare their support for the rights of working Americans, and empowers visitors to make their own statement on the website about how they participate in the American workforce that will then be shared with the social world through seamless social networking integration.

    Working America, community affiliate of the AFL-CIO, is a powerful force for working people. They combine the strength of 10 million union men and women and millions of workers without the benefit of a workplace union who share common challenges and goals to fight in communities, states and nationally for what really matters–good jobs, affordable health care, world-class education, secure retirements, real homeland security and more.

  • December 29, 2010

    Washington Business Journal: Awards honor ethical businesses

    By New Signature
    Awards

    Awards honor ethical businesses
    Washington Business Journal - by Jill R. Aitoro
    Wednesday, December 29, 2010, 8:54am EST

    “Following a year that brought contracting scandals and promises from the administration to crack down on incidents of fraud, ethical businesses have the opportunity to steal some of the spotlight…  After the nomination process, entries will be evaluated by an independent panel of judges. Recipients are named at a black-tie gala event in the fall. Last year’s winners included D.C.-based IT consultancy New Signature, Rockville-based Sparks Personnel Services Inc., Reston-based Helios HR and Noblis Inc., a nonprofit science and technology organization in Falls Church.”

    Read the full article here.

  • December 7, 2010

    Spill the Truth Earns an IMA Outstanding Achievement Award

    By New Signature
    Awards \ Branding, Website and Database

    Food and Water Watch’s Spill the Truth website earned a 2010 IMA Outstanding Achievement Award under the category “Politics”.  This award demonstrates that the Spill the Truth website excelled in all areas of IMA’s judging criteria and represents a very high standard of planning, execution and overall professionalism.

    Food & Water Watch turned to New Signature to conceptualize, design and develop the Spill the Truth campaign website.  SpilltheTruth.org features a compelling message delivered through multimedia content including a compelling video, interactive timeline, and supporting documentation.

    The Interactive Media Awards recognize the highest standards of excellence in website design and development and honor individuals and organizations for their outstanding achievement.  This award is further validation that New Signature is a leader in the industry, able to effectively and efficiently develop powerful and appealing websites for our valuable clients.

    The Spill the Truth website has also earned the 2010 Silver Davey Award and 2010 Silver W3 Award.

  • December 5, 2010

    Bar Pilar Website Wins Top Honor at 2010 Interactive Media Awards

    By New Signature
    Awards \ Branding, Website and Database

    BarPilar.com earned an IMA Outstanding Achievement Award under the category “Restaurant”.  This award demonstrates that the Bar Pilar website excelled in all areas of IMA’s judging criteria and represents a very high standard of planning, execution and overall professionalism.

    New Signature created a visual design that extended the culture and energy of the restaurant.  The visual design draws heavily on a Hemingway theme to complement the restaurant’s Hemmingway name and motif (the Pilar was Hemingway’s boat).  The restaurant acts as a meeting place for locals and as such it made sense to reflect this on the website through the incorporation of social media features.  For example, the website  promotes customer generated content aggregated from Twitter and Facebook on its homepage and community page.

    The Interactive Media Awards recognize the highest standards of excellence in website design and development and honor individuals and organizations for their outstanding achievement.  This award is further validation that New Signature is a leader in the industry, able to effectively and efficiently develop powerful and appealing websites for our valuable clients.

    The Bar Pilar website has also earned the 2010 Silver Davey Award (Restaurant) and 2010 Web Awards’ Standard of Excellence (Restaurant).

  • November 1, 2010

    New Signature Designed Websites Win Five 2010 Davey Awards

    By New Signature
    Awards \ Branding, Website and Database

    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.

    “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.

  • October 29, 2010

    New Signature Receives 2010 National Capital Business Ethics Award

    By New Signature
    Awards

    We are proud to announce that New Signature has received the 2010 National Capital Business Ethics Award in the micro company category (companies with 50 employees or fewer).  The Awards recognize companies that exemplify a strong commitment to business excellence and to the highest standards of civic and social responsibility, integrity and ethical conduct in the Greater Washington region.

    We are thrilled that New Signature’s commitment to an ethical approach to business has been recognized with this prestigious award.  New Signature’s core values shape the way we do business and drive our success.  Since our founding, we have pledged to:

    • Be a great company to do business with—for colleagues, customers, partners and suppliers.
    • Provide only superior services.
    • Foster client communication and provide polite customer service.
    • Educate our clients.
    • Stay creative and be forward thinking, proactive, entrepreneurial and adaptive.
    • Promote trust and credibility through legal and ethical conduct.
    • Promote diversity of experience, culture, ideas and opinions.
    • Contribute proactively to a better community.

    The consistent application of these values has allowed us to operate a successful double bottom line business with a conventional bottom line—financial profit or loss—and a second bottom line in terms of positive social impact.  This commitment and the support of our customers, partners and suppliers has positioned us to do what we love: deliver services and build products that use technology creatively, are beautifully designed, have a positive impact on the community, and are always backed by passionate, friendly support.

    The National Capital Business Ethics Awards are presented annually by the National Capital Chapter of the Society of Financial Service Professionals, in partnership with George Mason University.  The awards honor companies in the Washington area that demonstrate a strong commitment to the highest ethical business practices in daily operations, management philosophies and response to crises and challenges.

  • October 18, 2010

    New Signature Websites Receive One Gold and Five Silver Awards in the 2010 W3 Awards Competition

    By New Signature
    Awards \ Branding, Website and Database

    The winners of the 2010 W3 Awards have been announced by the International Academy of the Visual Arts and New Signature has earned six awards–one gold and five silvers–for websites that we designed and produced.  Receiving more than 3,000 entries, the W3 Awards honors outstanding websites created by some of the best interactive agencies, designers and creators worldwide.

    The New Signature designed winning websites include:

    “We were once again amazed by the high standard of excellence represented throughout the entries we received this year. W3 winners continue to embody what the Internet is all about and continue to raise the bar in Web development and design. We are honored to have reviewed such a diverse and remarkable pool of work this year” said Linda Day, the executive director of the IAVA. “On behalf of the entire Academy, congratulations to this year’s W3 Award entrants and winners as they continue to push the limits of Web Creativity. “