“We had two main goals in the design of the first ever site for KeyArena: first, to interact with the viewer and improve their ticket purchasing experience; and secondly, to build a user interface that is equal parts informative and entertaining,” stated Stevi Boskovich, Marketing Manager for AEG Facilities at KeyArena.

The newly launched website, www.KeyArena.com, is on the forefront of the industry with its new intimate website design, amenities and special features:

• On the Spot Interactive Seating
• Facebook Integration allowing website visitors to add and comment on events through their Facebook Profiles
• Quick updates of upcoming events and event news
• Virtual Video Library
• Contesting System to allow website visitors to win tickets to upcoming KeyArena events
• Easy-to-use navigation and compatibility with the latest web browsers and mobile devices

“Our charge from the beginning was to create an emotionally engaging experience that represents the long history that KeyArena has as the home of sports and entertainment in Seattle,” stated James Sack, President, carbonhouse, inc.

Congratulations to KeyArena on the new site!

The cobbler’s kids.

It is always a tough task creating a website for your own company. We do this all the time for our clients, but as a creative shop we always want to be…well…creative. After many iterations, we decided the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) approach was best. Get all the good stuff out and available and keep the fluff to a minimum. Really, the problem we were facing was not the look of the site, but the delivery of content.

With that in mind and a blank slate, simplicity became the main goal in the new direction for carbonhouse.com. Building off one of our product sites, venuelements.com, we wanted to keep it uncomplicated, clean and clear, and allow the work to speak for itself. We relied on the typography to create the space, but also improve usability, by providing quick access to all the pertinent information (the good stuff). Taking the single page site concept and amping it up, we used the mootools framework to dynamically deliver the content from our greenhouse content management system and create transitions that aren’t just fluff. These transitions ensure the correct flow of the content to the user and communicate our message.

Design

• Clean, uncluttered design to communicate and focus on work and let the interaction via javascript provide the ‘bling’ or motion
• Single-page format to allow visitors quick access to pertinent information and messaging
• Object-oriented approach to home page spotlight area that showcases recent projects in a less traditional, more unexpected way
• Utilization of sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) to present titles and headers in Helvetica Neue Light, which offers a more sophisticated look than the standardized web font palette.

Technical (all the techy goodness)

• A degradable javascript navigation for users with javascript-disabled browsers allows the site to be navigated while also providing search engine-friendly standard hrefs for our links.
• We utilize AJAX calls with the mootools framework to load page content and project details from our greenhouse CMS, thus avoiding page reload.

Accessibility Benefits

Overall, there are a lot of different ways to handle navigation. By incorporating the degradable javascript within our navigation, we have reduced the possibility of viewers not seeing the site as intended, while increasing the ability of Google and other search engines to find our links.

Author: Taylor Nall

There’s not a bad seat in the house!

Brandon Lucas, Partner and Business Director

Made the trek down to Alpharetta/Atlanta a couple weekends ago to meet up with some old friends and visit a client venue of ours, Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre at Encore Park.

I’ve been to a lot of amphitheaters over the years (for business and pleasure) and to be quite honest I was expecting more of the same. And then I got there. My reaction was….THIS is what an outdoor amphitheatre should be and feel like.

The facility looks like a transformer coming out of the middle of the wilderness. Tree completely surround it once inside. It has a one-of-a-kind white, patchwork roof that works wonders in combination with the lighting during a show. There’s the old cliché comment every venue rattles off, “There’s not a bad seat in the house”, which is sometimes true and sometimes not…..in this case it’s 100% more than TRUE. 7,000 covered seats and 5,000 lawn. That’s only 12,000, perfect size! This place has hosted the Eagles, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Rush and on the day I was there Boston & Styx. So, not only is the place beautiful and unique, it’s an intimate place to see acts that generally perform at places much larger. And the most incredible part? There are real, living, towering trees on the lawn!

Driving home I had tons of ideas flowing through my head on how we can further help the ASO make the website that we built for them [see it: www.VZWAMP.com] as over-the-top as the venue itself. I was blown away!

The site is built on carbonhouse’s Venuelements system, tailored exclusively for major event-driven facilities.

Carhartt, maker of industrial strength clothing, has a new site design. In order to see it, first you get the chance to “blow up” their old design. From the rubble, the new design emerges. Clever! And it’s viral.

It sure beats the awful old practice of putting up an “under construction” page while a new site is being built (we’ve advised against that many times). Even if your current site is less than desirable, it’s better than no presence at all. Still, it’s fun to celebrate when you do take it down and launch fresh.

Remember, this is an Adobe Fireworks-only tip.

Step 1
Obtain said nasty JPG logo from the web site or client. In this case we will use the Lex Mundi logo.



Step 2
Place logo on the dark background in your layout



Step 3
Turn the logo into grayscale. Either adjust Hue/Saturation under Filters or convert to grayscale (Menu> Commands > Creative> Convert to Grayscale)



Step 4
Invert the logo (Filters> Adjust Color> Invert)



Step 5
Add a color fill (Filters> Adjust Color> Color Fill) and in the Color Fill Dialog box adjust the Blending Mode to Color Dodge. Adjust levels as needed for clarity.



Step 6
Choose the background color as the ground in the logo in the Blending Mode dialog box


That’s it. Hopefully you will receive a vector logo, but this will help when in a bind.

carbonhouse has launched a new website for RBC Center in Raleigh, NC.

The site, powered by Venuelements℠, offers many features including detailed event listings, interactive calendars, seating charts, groups sales, special offers and more.

The RBC Center in Raleigh, North Carolina, is home to the 2006 Stanley Cup Champions Carolina Hurricanes and NC State University Men’s Basketball.

Each year, the RBC Center welcomes over 1.5 million guests and plays host to more than 150 events. The RBC Center continually offers Raleigh, the Triangle, and the Southeast an abundance of sports, major concert tours, and events year after year. The $158 million RBC Center encompasses approximately 700,000 square feet. Four different seating levels provide 18,176 seats for hockey, 19,722 for basketball, 19,500 for center-stage concerts, and 18,800 for endstage 360 performances. Amenities include over 8,000 designated parking spaces, 18 permanent concession stands, over 50 portable concession stands, 37 public restrooms, as well as escalators and elevators throughout the building.

VenuElements is specifically tailored for venues, facilities and performing arts centers. It currently powers the websites for a number of major facilities around the U.S., including Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, Prudential Center, Sprint Center, Target Center, RBC Center and more.