Welcome to newsletter 06
The BIG NEWS for this edition is the birth of Petra and Jason’s daughter Lucinda on October 6th last year (hence the exceptionally cute header imagery and downright scary tiled background.) So as you can probably imagine, productivity slowed somewhat in the last quarter of 2006. But we’re ramping up for the new year now, so in the event we haven’t spoken with you personally yet, we extend our best wishes for 2007. Now, on to business:

studio threefiftyseven redesigns
Anybody that keeps regular tabs on our web site will no doubt be aware not only of baby Lucy, but of its recent redesign. Although the look and feel are similar to the old site, the back end has been totally reworked. We’ve opted to develop in compliance with standards developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (or W3C) using XHTML and CSS. This technique enables much flexibility; for example we may want to give you an optional style for the newsletter. The default style, OR the Lucy wearing a hat aunty Caroline knitted for her style. (Click each link to swap between the two.)

Believe it or not Microsoft’s Internet Explorer doesn’t support CSS (cascading style sheets) all that well. Popularity as we all know, does not necessarily guarantee quality.

Fortunately things are much better in MSIE version 7, so download it (if you haven’t already) before looking at our new site or you may think we’ve completely lost our minds!

OR you could of course do the more sensible thing and download a modern, standards compliant browser like Firefox, Safari (Mac users only), Opera or Flock.

All the techno-babble aside, we’ve added some new projects and enabled all the portfolio images to display over the top of the same page without using any pop up windows, or even loading a new page. It makes viewing our work a whole lot easier and faster. In a nutshell we’ve cleaned up both the front and back ends and hopefully improved the user experience in the process.

NOTE: Don’t be too quick too quick to skip the home page either — or you may miss the Flash based slideshow of portfolio pieces.

Mr. Geh redesigns
Adelaide based commercial photographer Robert Geh has been a long time associate of studio threefiftyseven. In fact many of our projects feature his work prominently, so when it came to freshen up his web presence he called on us for assistance.

The brief was to retain the look and feel of the existing site, but streamline its operation and strip back any extraneous elements. He liked the fluid motion of the new script we were experimenting with on our own portfolio — especially the way it loaded images right over the top of the existing page.

We ended up building what is really only a single web page. All his thumbnails are arranged in five categorised panels laid out vertically down the screen as you can see in the screen capture. Each panel contains 16 thumbnails and all the high resolution images load in the same window (as per the studio threefiftyseven site).
All 80 thumbnails and 80 portfolio images are viewed without opening any extra windows or loading any additional pages. It’s clean and functional, placing the focus on his photography rather than the web site interface.

Smartsoft (Australia) redesigns
Local software development firm Smartsoft (Australia) Limited approached us last year to review their printed and online marketing collateral with a view to freshening it all up. Smartsoft develop an application called Front Desk Practice Management System, designed for running a medical or allied health practice.

Our review revealed the need for their web presence to more quickly convey what they actually did. To illustrate this we modelled and rendered a hypothetical software box in 3D for use on the home page. This was met with much enthusiasm by the client, who requested we take it a step further by actually producing a real box to actually ship the product in.

We arranged some new photography (seen on the reverse side of the box as it’s portrayed at left) and along with the new packaging, redesigned all their print advertisements and web presence. The site has only just gone live as the client wanted to handle the database driven back end in-house, but the feedback from the revised print advertisements has already been better than expected.

Tri-Spark identity
There’s a guy we know called Steve (North Star Electronics) who builds really complex interactive electronic display kiosks for museums. At least we think that’s what he does. He says he’s an electrical technologist, but we see all sorts of crazy things on his work bench.

We do know he’s a big fan of classic English motorcycles — Triumphs in particular.
A while back he came to us with a little black box that he assured us breathes life back into these old machines. It’s a digital electronic ignition system that he originally only made a few of and started selling online via a classic bike enthusiasts forum.

Once the word got out among the community, orders started flooding in, so he figured he should give this 'thing' an identity. That’s of course where we came in. Subsequently the Tri-Spark digital electronic ignition logo was developed, (Alternate versions shown above) resplendent with just the right amount of old school goodness. Hell, I just want one of the t-shirts!

The Albion Hotel identity
Located in country Victoria, The Albion Hotel is the result of recent modernisation and refurbishment of what was once the old Club Hotel in Kyneton.

Although now a contemporary restaurant and bar, the new identity carefully retains elements of the traditional, bearing a likeness to an old cameo — in keeping with the history and atmosphere of the original building.
(NOTE: studio threefiftyseven worked on the identity only. Web site and other assets have been developed by third parties.)