After a few stabs without much of a direction (see final example), the marketing and design teams decided the best bet was to figure out what exactly differentiated Red McCombs Media from its competitors.

A good marketing ploy seemed to be “The Human Element” – letting people know that with RMM you would receive hands on personal service, rather than simply putting your information or needs into some system.

I began to think of something organic, something that was structured but had a young, unpredictable feel too it. I began to think of collecting people, showing that the company was built upon people and their ideas.

This also served to show that RMM understands the ultimate goal of any advertising is reaching a target audience, no matter what the demographics may be. It was imporant to have all races, ages, and economic stations represented in order to show how versatile the company was.

To add some spice and flare to the whole thing, I set up an HVX-200 in our conference room and had people come in. I shot each person in 720p resolution, and then took each one, shrank them down, and brought them into Flash to create the homepage. Each person has a main animation as well as a secondary animation that occurs only when their photograph is moused over. The live website can be seen here: Red McCombs Media.

Funny enough, my video is the first to animate.

My initial plan was to use a aqua-blue & red color combination. I found that blue, with the right amount of green, created a nice calming effect in addition to bringing a vigor and excitement.

However, there was concern it was too colorful and ultimately the marketing team decided on black as the primary background color.

The final interior & exterior design reflect these initial home page designs, but I handed the finishing to my second designer at the company, feeling that I’d gone as far as I could.