Spitfire Blog

We’ve recently had the pleasure of working on the website for Talastar Exteriors, a home remodeling company founded by master craftsman and designer Sean Tarala. He had kept all branding and marketing in-house (pun intended), and was in need of a fresh set of eyes to gain a new perspective. We set out to give his branding and website an updated look that better showcased his extreme talent and custom services.

The original Talastar Exteriors site was a simple design, but lacked the intricate details in the design to reflect the ornate nature of his work.

BEFORE:

His new site is full of design details that compliment his work and accent the quality of his services.

AFTER:

By adding a tabbed photo gallery, users are able to better see completed projects for each service category. Additionally, the text was refined to read easier, clearly define services offered, boost Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and best of all, drive sales!

We are proud of the finished product, and have a client that thinks it’s great too. That always makes for a great project, but especially when it comes from a talented designer himself. To celebrate the launch, we ordered up a batch of custom cookies featuring the Talastar Exteriors brand.

Thanks for the opportunity to help with your marketing, Sean!

More than 40,000 clients in over 50 countries rely on The Bankers Exchange for ATM, Banking and Gaming parts, solutions and training. In fact, within their industry, they are known as the miracle workers.  Our challenge was to give their website a fresh, tailored feel that was user-friendly and inviting – no matter what the customer might be looking for.

A simple navigation path now enables users to find information without digging through tiers of pages, while helping them learn about additional services offered by The Bankers Exchange. The website features an easy-to-use and robust eCommerce store as well, setting it apart from competitors in the industry.

While we’ve already heard about happier customers and a happier sales team at The Banker’s Exchange, we’re also very excited to hear about increased sales and a happier bottom line in the near future.

Check out The Bankers Exchange website.

We recently launched a website for one of Gwinnett’s leading dentists, Dr. Slade Slail. Serving the area for over a decade, Dr. Lail’s professional staff instantly puts patients at ease.  We developed a warm, friendly website that’s intended to do the same.

From easily accessible patient registration forms to convenient online bill paying and appointment scheduling, the new website is a useful tool for patients and the practice.

Visit www.drlail.com.  (and floss daily!)

This week we launched a new website for Southern Wall Systems, once of the Southeast’s leading providers of stucco and plaster for commercial buildings.  Since SWS is an experienced company that’s worked on many high profile projects in metro Atlanta and beyond, we had access to a number of quality images to use as our inspiration.

The experts at SWS are consistently focused on delivering the best product at the best price to their clients, no matter what role they play at the company.  To showcase this experienced group, we wrote bio’s for each employee and worked with Keith Taylor Photography to get professional images of the staff.

The Featured Projects portion of the website showcases some of the best building exteriors in the Southeast, including the 50-story Atlantic II condo building in Atlantic Station, one of the tallest stucco buildings in the country.

Benny Sims, Founder and President of SWS, stopped by The Hangar on Friday and several of us presented him with a bouquet of custom cookies featuring the SWS logo and cookies shaped like high rise buildings.  It was our way of saying thanks for the opportunity to work on such a fun project for a great company.

Check out SouthernWall.com…

At the outset of my design degree, I eagerly soaked up all the “rules and principles” in design and aesthetics. By the time I was ready to graduate, I learned not only how to mix and match these findings to be an effective, visual communicator but also learned how and when to break them. Sounds illogical right? Let me explain.

Not too long ago we worked on a website redesign for Pure Green Solutions. We had a good idea of our objectives and method of tackling the new site. After sharing our initial thoughts with the client about our design direction for the site, they challenged us to separate them from their competition. Our “function” of the site was correct, but our development of the “form” was off. Instead of the typical route of focusing on the product, we decided to explore a more emotional path and focus on personality. We highlighted the all-natural and environmentally conscious aspect of their business practices. For Pure Green, success wasn’t based on just selling cleaning products, it was about being responsible for the environment and educating people about going green.

So, should form follow function? Absolutely. Is functionality the main prerequisite? Sometimes. But it is critical to keep the context of its application in mind. Sometimes there is a hidden, grey area that I like to call the fun factor. We could have just shown nice big images of Pure Green’s products with some big bullets of factoids and called it a day. Yawn. Instead we made each page unique and broke out of their industry’s norm and made their site more than products; we made it human.

I recently found this video from Volkswagen that illustrates the fun factor perfectly. How do you get more people to use the stairs instead of the escalator? Simple. Convert the stairs to working piano keys. I dare you to watch this without smiling.

After all, whether your buying cleaning supplies or taking the stairs, it’s a lot more fun to do anything with a smile on your face.