12.15.09
New Work: Central
In late summer we found ourselves sitting, slightly askew and slanted, and enjoying some food on the sidewalk patio of Chez Maman — a casual French bistro known for their burgers and sandwiches. Damien Newman, who I’ve known from the internet and his endeavours with MDN Press, his time at Speak Up and The Designer’s Guide to Brand Strategy, as well as the common and amusing fact (to us) that we had both attended the same school during our times in London (separately). Damien had formally started up his off-and-on design studio and consultancy alongside long-time partner Sara Burgess. And we were discussing a new website. And would we like to do it?
For much of the fall and until now, we’ve rapidly designed and crafted a website that reflects the culture, work, ethic and environment that is Central. The Central Story is one that needed to be told in a very carefully considered manner — there are many sides, many faces to the multi-faceted group that is Central. From taking on huge multi-year projects that deal with the fishing industry, the future of and the sustainability of fish, to smaller but not less intense projects that involve hours upon hours of crafting by hand, alphabet books, how do we tell the Central Story?
With a site that matches that ever-changing and ever-progressing environment.
The team for Weightshift consisted of myself, Andrew Huff for content development both for copy and design, Scott Robbin for heavy code and programming as well as the amazing things he’s done to leverage Expression Engine for this project (more on that in a future entry), and Jen Schuetz for project management, quality assurance and copyediting. The new identity for Central was designed by Eric Strohl, which was commissioned separately from this project.
The site has a lot of small details that you might not notice at once. The site itself is time-sensitive and has a 24-hour colour palette that changes every hour to match the time of day and the environment in Sausalito, CA, where Central’s hangar offices are, right across the bay from San Francisco.
Each work project (Central is busy collecting and curating their large backlog of work) page is somewhat unique to that piece of work in that the colours, images and sometimes layout are custom-tailored to the display of the work.
Suffice to say, we’re pretty chuffed with this project as they might say in England (small point: Sara is British and Damien spent many years on that side of the pond).
There are lots of other little details as well, but we invite you to come investigate yourself. And perhaps visit in an hour or three or six for a slightly different experience.
