DBP, Renée Rouleau, Blenderbox Honored with W3 Gold Awards

Blenderbox is thrilled to announce this year’s W3 honors — two Gold awards in the Tourism and Homepage categories for Downtown Brooklyn Partnership’s “It’s the Moment” campaign site, and one Gold award in the Beauty and Cosmetics category for the Renée Rouleau Skin Care site!

This awards cycle received
 nearly 
3,000 
entries 
from 
ad 
and interactive
 agencies,
 in‐house
 creative
 professionals, web and graphic 
designers, and other
 web
 enthusiasts, and less
 than
 10%
 of
 all
 entries
 were
 selected
 as
 Gold
 Winners.  We are truly honored to be counted among these highly talented agencies.

“We were incredibly impressed by the quality and creativity of this year’s entries.    W3 winners continue to set the bar in Web development and design, push the limits of web advertising creativity and advance the use of web video. We are thrilled to have reviewed such a diverse and respected pool of work” said Linda Day, the executive director of the IAVA. “On behalf of the entire Academy, we congratulate this year’s W3 Award winners as they continue to advance Internet creativity and greatly contribute to the robust and ever-changing online community.”

Blenderbox Named IMA Top 10 Agency of the Year

Blenderbox is thrilled to announce our recent selection as one of the Interactive Media Awards’ Top 10 Agencies of 2008.

The IMA Top 10 Agencies represent organizations that consistently uphold the highest standards of excellence in web design and development, and of the 500 agencies that submitted their best work to the IMAs in 2008, the ten agencies with the highest scoring evaluations were selected for this honor.

To see the full list of recognized agencies, visit the Interactive Media Awards website.

Founder Jason Jeffries speaks at Brooklyn Business Summit

Earlier this week, Blenderbox CEO and Co-Founder Jason Jeffries presented at the Brooklyn Business Summit on the importance of good customer relations.

Created by the Brooklyn Business Center, the Brooklyn Business Summit is dedicated to providing a “progressive venue and agenda for small business owners and entrepreneurs looking to become small business owners”. After building three successful businesses, Jason has gained extensive insight into creating and maintaining quality relationships with his clients and customers, insight that he shared with 50 small business owners at Wednesday’s Customer Satisfaction & Retention workshop.

Cutting through the traditional Customer Relation jargon, Jason mapped out a simple and effective guide to securing customer satisfaction using a modified version of the “Blenderbox method” — Listen, Think, Create, Deliver.  By listening to your customer’s needs and desires, making your service memorable, and maintaining a personal involvement in your company’s client relationships, you can positively shape the perception of your company and generate quality business leads.

The message is simple, should business owners wish to embrace it:  listening to what your clients have to say about your methods and addressing these critiques in your process is always the most effective way to keep your clients happy and your business booming.

While the next Brooklyn Business Summit has yet to be scheduled, video of Jason’s presentation will be available on their site soon, so keep checking back for more details.

Blendercise!

One of the great things about working at Blenderbox is being surrounded by people that are constantly trying to better themselves in one way or another.  Blenderboxers are a curious bunch, always looking to do more, learn more, and create more, and in no instance is this more apparent than during the semi-annual celebration of knowledge known fondly as the Blendercise.

Blendercises are our own particular brand of continuing education; an opportunity for designers to teach us some of the finer points of Photoshop, for developers and information architects to teach us the best SEO techniques, or for project managers to provide tips on organization that might help us in our constant struggle to keep our time sheets up to date.  They’re a way for each department to learn more about the day-to-day work of others and to take away valuable information that makes us stronger individually and as a team.

Anyone can suggest a topic for a Blendercise, and with the constant stream of innovations in web technology, we’re never at a loss for new material.  Previous Blendercises have covered a diverse range of subjects, from SEO and Google Analytics to Photoshop and Web Form Design, and many more are yet to come.

Currently scheduled Blendercises include sessions on InDesign and Sitecore, but with an increased interest in projects requiring open-source development and a variety of opportunities for professional development outside of the Blenderbox office, 2009 may be our biggest year yet for tech-centric Blendercises.

Blenderbox Takes Home 5 Summit Creative Awards

Blenderbox is pleased to announce our most recent SCA wins – two Bronze awards for 7 World Trade Center Events and BackboneNYC, two Silver awards for World Trade Center and the Bedford Cheese Shop, and a Gold medal for the Clinton Presidential Center website!

The Summit Creative Awards were created in an effort to recognize and celebrate the creative accomplishments of small and medium sized advertising agencies and other creative companies throughout the world, with submissions evaluated based on the strength of their “big idea”, the quality of execution, and their ability to communicate and persuade.

The Summit International Awards organization is dedicated to furthering excellence in the communications industry and has established itself as one of the premier arbiters of of creative and communication excellence.

Blenderbox Launches Hewlett Beta

When Blenderbox first engaged with the Hewlett Foundation to redesign their existing site, Hewlett wanted to be sure that their site’s users would stand to benefit first and foremost.  So Blenderbox developed beta.hewlett.org, allowing the Foundation to gather feedback from the site’s users that could be used to gauge their level of satisfaction with the new design and influence the ultimate re-launch of hewlett.org.

After receiving initial user feedback, the site’s new design is a rousing success!  New sections like “What We’re Learning” have been met with remarkably positive feedback, and many users are applauding the Foundation’s user-friendliness and transparency as well.

Since 1967, the Hewlett Foundation has been making grants to solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world.  For more information about the Hewlett Foundation’s mission and work, and to check out the Beta redesign, head over to beta.hewlett.org.

Launched: the New + Improved Backbone NYC

Earlier this week, on behalf of longtime client Backbone NYC, Blenderbox launched the newly-redesigned backbonenyc.com.

Back in 2005, Blenderbox created a compelling Flash-based website to showcase Backbone’s high-quality retouching and pre-press capabilities.  In the intervening years, Backbone’s already robust portfolio grew by leaps and bounds, eventually outgrowing their portfolio section.

With the 2008 redesign, Blenderbox used updated Flash technology to bring Backbone’s portfolio front-and-center, revamping the organization and navigation scheme to allow easier access to their work.