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Evolution: a cult of French media

Paris, France — September 11, 2009

The new Canal+ website is live, designed by AREA 17

Canal+ is a brand that is internationally known as a producer of celebrated films and locally recognized as a revolutionary premium pay TV channel (fellow Americans, think HBO x10, squared). Recently, they have embarked on a global redesign of their iconic visual identity — a major endeavor for such a beloved brand (designed by Etienne Robial in the 80’s).

Last year, we were honored when asked to create the visual identity and website for the new Canal+ Presse extranet, and we were tickled senseless when we were given the opportunity to redesign their primary website, canalplus.fr — a website that many of us at AREA 17 use regularly for our daily dose of diversion.

Today, we are pleased to announce the new Canal+ website has gone live! There is still more work to do on this large initiative (as you will see if you navigate too deep), however we find it gratifying all the same … we hope you do too.

For you fellow geeks, we also developed the interface and it was a base requirement for the website to work on Internet Explorer 6 … and with all the JavaScript that drives the interface, you know that we know that you know how much of a royal pain in the ASCII that was. But just like the folks at Digg, for the time-being, we feel obliged to support this archaic web browser.

But I digress.

Congrats to the entire team at Canal+ that pulled off this seamless launch!!!

Work → Canal+ Website

See also
canalplus.fr
Deadlines are OK

Did you know that back in the day a “deadline” was a line around a military prison beyond which a prisoner may not go without risk of being shot? Did you also know that “OK” is a term used after a military battle that means “zero killed”?
We twerps are tickled by tweeting

Twitter — June 30, 2009

AREA 17 has begun to Twitter

It’s not the call of the wild nor a series of short, sharp shocks, no sir it’s Twitter and if it pleases, you can follow us at: twitter.com/opticalcortex.

Agency
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a…
Las Vegas — May 11, 2009

Luis Lavena wins Ruby Hero Award at RailsConf 2009
Luis Lavena hard at work

There are many people out there that contribute to the Ruby community with little recognition and no pay. The Ruby Hero Award was set up to give these folks the recognition they deserve.

Each year at RailsConf, 6 Ruby Heroes are picked by the previous 6 Ruby Heros. And this year at RailsConf 2009 in Las Vegas, our very own Luis Lavena was one of the winners. Unfortunately he was slaving over client work and wasn’t able to attend.

Other winners are:
- Bryan Helmkamp for Webrat
- Aman Gupta for EventMachine and AMPQ
- Pat Allan for Rails Camp and thinking_sphinx
- Dan Kubb for DataMapper
- John Nunemaker for HTTParty and RailsTips (the blog)
Nominate your own Ruby Hero at rubyheroes.com.
Agency
A brief history of an agency website

AREA 17 opened the Paris office in 2006, three years after the company started in New York City. At that time, we had decided to launch a new website to mark our entry into the French and European market…
Action sports with a keyboard

Avoriaz, France — April 6, 2009

Just because we do action sports websites doesn’t mean we do action sports

David and Kemp pose for a sellar portrait in the French Alps.

You may have noticed that we’ve been doing a lot of action sports lately (ahem) well with our keyboards that is. Two years back we worked with Salomon Sports to refine their corporate identity which lead to the redesign of Salomonsports.com. Recently, we got together with our friends at Virtue Worldwide and MTV to develop the brand for ALLI — Alliance of Action Sports and their main tour ALLI Dew Tour.

With all this talk of action sports, art director David Lamothe and creative director Kemp Attwood got together to take on the French Alps. David, a mountain man hisself born and breed in the Pyrenees mountains (between France and Spain), is no newbee to the slopes. And Canadian-born, Portland Oregan-lovin’ burton-sneaker wearin’ Kemp Attwood no less.

Alas, even the brave and fearless break bones — David broke his right arm (luckily he is left handed) and Kemp busted his shoulder (luckily … oh there is no luckily). Sorry to say this story doesn’t include any heroic attempts at backside 180 McTwists off some mountain-side cafe or a frontside body varial 540 stalefish. Nothing was caught on video and no love story came out of it. The story ends with them back to work — broken bones but not broken spirits — designing yet another action sports adventure.

Agency
Building momentum for open source sewing

New York City — March 24, 2009

BurdaStyle.com traffic increases exponentially as we prepare for relaunch

Since June 2008, we’ve been working with BurdaStyle, a leading online sewing destination and the only UGC platform around sewing pattern. We have been hired to redesign their visual identity and rebuild (from the ground up) their next generation website.

In the meantime, we’ve been maintaining the existing website, implementing SEO and performance enhancements that have increased overall traffic by 100% and non-paid organic traffic by over 300%. And the unbelievable part is that we did it simply with a flat-head screw driver, some duct-tape, needle-nose pliers, a bag of heavy-duty rubberbands and a bottle of your average household drain cleaner — MacGyver would have been proud.

In late May 2009, the new BurdaStyle.com is set to beta launch — including the new visual identity — and we are super excited about it (not to mention super busy with it). More to come once the new website launches.

See also
BurdaStyle.com