In late 2009, Oxide Design Co. was approached by Metro Area Transit (the local mass transportation provider in Omaha, Nebraska) to look into re-branding the organization. Both MAT and Oxide agreed that the organization was indeed in dire need of a refreshed identity in the marketplace for several reasons:

• A lot of public focus is starting to be placed on mass public transit throughout the nation. MAT has a great opportunity to shine at this moment of increased awareness.

• In the past, branding and marketing had been a low priority for MAT because a majority of the riders had no other transportation options. As young professionals and other progressives look to public transit for both economic and eco-friendly reasons, MAT must appeal to a much broader audience that has a wealth of other transportation options.

• The brand and identity of MAT had been neglected for many years, resulting in a handful of different logos being used, and a dangerously inconsistent presence in the marketplace. A redesigned identity implemented across the organization could underscore the trustworthy and professional nature of MAT.

• The old identity of MAT appeared outdated and old, and implied an establishment that was woefully behind the times. A fresh identity for MAT can convey that the organization is modern and looking to the future.

A collection of the previous Metro Area Transit logos

Oxide worked with the team at Metro to determine the organization’s core values and the key concepts that the new identity should convey. The refined list of key words we developed collectively is as follows:

• Safe
• Clean
• Dependable / Consistent
• Convenient
• Green / Eco-friendly
• Civic
• Modern / Progressive
• Reflective / Productive

Oxide recommended changing the working name of Metro Area Transit from “MAT” to “Metro”. Not only does the change signify to the public that something significant is transpiring at Metro, but it has other benefits as well. By positioning the organization as “Metro” we reiterate that Omaha’s public transit system is one part of a larger, nationwide whole. It helps the local bus system feel more cosmopolitan and connected — and consequently more modern and progressive.

The new livery for Metro's busses, designed by Oxide

Using our research as a guide, Oxide developed a new logo for Metro to convey all of the key words noted above. The new logo needed to be bold and iconic; the kind of symbol you can instantly recognize a block away on a bus sign. The new logo symbolizes the streamlined, clean, safe, efficient, and modern qualities of Omaha’s bus system. We built a strong, solid symbol for the organization that shares some DNA with mass transit systems from around the world, but has its own unique quality.

The new identity is fashioned with some explicit connections to the previous iterations. The new slanted ‘m’ and the striping on the buses are inspired directly by earlier MAT logos — bridging the gap between MAT’s past and Metro’s future. We’ve also halved the color palette, brightening the blue and eliminating the red altogether.

Exterior signage at the Metro headquarters building, designed by Oxide

Along with a new identity, Oxide designed a new corporate website for Metro. The new site reorganizes the previous site’s wealth of information into a much more intuitive, easy-to-use interface and structure. The next phase will be to clarify the content of the site even further to make riding the bus as simple as possible. We partnered with the brilliant team at Brightmix to develop the site, which also streamlines the administrative side, greatly simplifying the process of updating site content, route changes, and rider alerts.

The new website for Metro, designed by Oxide

The new brand was launched at a press conference (organized beautifully by Palette Promotions) on 23 August 2010, along with the announcement of 24 new fuel-efficient busses purchased with Federal stimulus funds. U.S. Senator Ben Nelson and Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle participated in the announcement, along with a host of other dignitaries. For media coverage, see the Omaha World-Herald, the Daily Nonpareil, KETV, and KPTM.

Back in 2007, Oxide had the honor of being on AIGA’s Design for Democracy (DFD) team that developed a set of national ballot design guidelines adopted by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). Since then, I’ve been serving as the Design Director of election design for DFD. Much of that work has centered around advocating ballot design best practices to states and local jurisdictions, in an effort to implement the standards we developed. In the past year, it also led to working with the New York State Board of Elections on a redesign of their voter registration form.

It’s the perfect project for us to fully utilize our information design expertise. There’s nothing aesthetic or gimmicky about form design — it’s exclusively centered around creating the easiest experience for the user. For the design of the voter registration form, we threw out the previous layout and started over with a clean slate. Our process involved determining how a user goes about completing the form, and then facilitating that activity. The primary objective is to maximize the number of users that fill out the form completely and accurately, without confusion or trepidation.

Previous New York State voter registration form, before Oxide's redesign

The improved New York State voter registration form, after Oxide's redesign

We love form design, so this project was as fulfilling as it was challenging. Plus, it allowed us another opportunity to practice the strategies outlined in our EAC guidelines document:

1. labeling and clearly designating each section
2. allowing adequate space for each piece of information
3. relocating vital instructions in-context within the form
4. limiting ourselves to just three weights of one typeface (Univers)

Aside from general usability, we addressed some specific shortfalls of the previous form, including:

1. underscoring the importance of the qualifying questions (1 and 2)
2. minimizing the prominence of the “For board use only” box.
3. clarifying county versus country in the address sections
4. clearly differentiating current, mailing, and previous addresses
5. integrating the optional questions as part of the form

We completely rewrote all of the instructions with the assistance of simple language experts — the intent being to simplify the language to the lowest reading level possible, so the form is usable by the largest percentage of the population. (Versions were also built in Spanish, Chinese, and Korean, the most prevalent foreign languages in the state.) Different iterations of the form were also tested for usability with small focus groups (by Dana Chisnell of Usability Works), and edited based on feedback from the testers.

All told, almost 3 million of the new registration forms were printed for distribution throughout the state. We’re also working with the State to develop an online PDF version of the form. If you’re a resident of New York State, check their site in the coming weeks to download the form or request a printed version.

August 7th marks the date of the first annual Farnam Festival. The festival was created as an annual community event at 40th and Farnam (just outside Oxide’s front door). This year will offer a great line-up of bands as well as food, beer gardens, a silent art auction, vendors, and raffles. Admission to the event is $10, and the money raised will be used to convert Farnam Street traffic to two-way from 36th to 42nd streets. The goal is to raise $50,000 by the end of the summer to complete the project. Converting the street to two-way will allow better local access to the businesses along Farnam and will promote the area more as a neighborhood, instead of an exit route from downtown.

The mastermind behind the festival is Oxide’s neighbor and local photographer Brad Iwen, owner of Iwen Exposures Photography. After recently moving his photography business to Omaha, Brad saw potential in the area and decided that he had to move his business here. With the unique variety of businesses already located in the area, it really has the potential to be the next Benson or Dundee. The conversion of Farnam Street to two-way at Midtown Crossing (just down the road from us) would make expansion into our area a natural progression.

When Brad decided that a festival would be a great way to raise money and get people to the neighborhood, he called on the businesses in the area: Sullivan’s Bar, the recently-added Black Squirrel Tattoo shop, ICON Studio for Hair, and Oxide to help in the endeavor. Since our talents are not in the realm of crowd management, it was Oxide’s job to create the visuals for the event. Our primary goal was to promote two-way Farnam, so we started off with the bold visual of a two-way traffic sign. We also wanted to showcase all that the festival had to offer, but didn’t want to turn the poster into a bulleted list. Our solution was to cram as many fun and exciting graphic elements as possible into the arrows — to underscore how much fun and exiting stuff will be crammed into the eight-hour festival.

The poster is hand-drawn, using a mix of pre-and post-Illustrator and Photoshop assembly — then screen-printed by Ink Tank on a traffic-yellow paper stock.

With acts like Thunder Power, Sarah Benck, and the Southpaw Bluegrass Band, there’s something for everyone. So make sure to mark your calendars for Saturday, August 7th, 2010 for a festival that will be a catalyst for a better neighborhood.

Oxide recently had the pleasure of working with the team at Tripleseat to overhaul their corporate web site. (Developed by Brightmix, Tripleseat is a sales and event management solution for owners and managers of restaurants, banquet facilities and catering operations.) The previous site had undergone a long history of being constantly tweaked to chase the latest SEO trend, with no one keeping an eye on the big picture. The result was a site heavy on verbiage and buzzwords, that sent potential customers frantically searching for the exit the moment they arrived. Our basic creative brief was to build an aesthetically-pleasing site that underscored the ease of the Tripleseat product, with a primary focus on conversion of visitors to customers.

Working with the team at Tripleseat, we re-evaluated their overall messaging and determined what they really need to be saying to their target audience. Our partner Monica McFarland wrote the copy that brings the site to life. For phase two, we’ll be working with SEO/SEM expert (and self-proclaimed foodie) Derek Eskens to build a set of mini search-engine campaigns to bring specific micro-target audiences to the site. There’s already been a great deal of buzz about the new site, and we’ll be closely monitoring the analytics and tracking the conversion rate to make sure the site exceeds all of its business goals.

We could go into detail about our thinking behind the visual design of the new site, but in this case the before and after pictures are worth more than a thousand words. Lastly, if you’re involved in the restaurant, banquet, or catering industry, we highly recommend you look into Tripleseat; it really is a great tool (and not just because of the new web site).

Home page of the previous tripleseat.com site, before Oxide's redesign

Home page of the new tripleseat.com site, after Oxide's redesign

Not long ago, Joe Hubers (owner of Passenger Productions) came to us in search of a new identity for his company. Passenger is a film studio based out of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. In Joe’s words, “Passenger is a creative company that employs various media to deliver well-crafted stories for business, advocacy and entertainment” or “We make things.”

When the team here at Oxide read the simplified description of what Passenger does, we were very excited. With that type of thinking, we knew that they were going to be open to a wide variety of ideas. The above logo, which was ultimately chosen as the final direction, is a nod to the surrounding landscape of Sioux Falls. As a “passenger” in a car or train in the area, this would likely be the view out your window. Like film, the logo is a window into adventure and discovery, not knowing what is around the next corner. The colors evoke a certain level of mystery and intrigue, and the layering suggests film’s ability to turn still photographs into something much more  — creating depth and ultimately telling a complete story.

(1/2) An unselected concept for the Passenger logo; presented as an evolving series

(2/2) An unselected concept for the Passenger logo; presented as an evolving series

Since it is a filmmaker’s job to tell a story by capturing moments in time, we also experimented with a kind of time-based layering. This second concept centered around an ever-changing logo that tasks the audience with creating their own story through interpolation. These combinations of random images tell a complex story by leaving most of it to the imagination. If selected, it was our intent to build out 20 or more variations, making it possible for the audience to rarely run across the same variation.

An unselected concept for the Passenger logo; this was presented to the client as an option

Our third concept focuses on several of the same ideas as the first logo. In this concept, the view of the “passenger” is out the side windows of a train, traveling through a midwestern panorama. The landscape and setting sun on the horizon evokes the romanticism of great storytelling, and the windows of the train imply the frames of video.

The Pinnacle Club was once viewed as downtown Omaha’s premier fitness facility. The club’s early business model focused on corporate memberships for companies with a significant downtown presence. Since then, many corporations have added their own workout facilities, and Pinnacle has had to shift to a more consumer-based marketing. In recent years, the facility has been showing its age, and a slow but steady decline in membership has been occurring.

Late last year, Pinnacle began discussions with Alley Poyner Macchietto Architecture about the long-overdue renovation to their boutique fitness facility. At that same time, Oxide was invited into the mix to refresh the brand of the Club. We partnered with them to clarify the brand of Pinnacle and create an external identity consistent with that brand. We feel strongly that a company’s brand should be pervasive through the institution — from the identity, advertising, and marketing, to the architecture and interior design, to the staff answering the phone.

Oxide’s research process for the branding began with extensive interviews of the Club’s decision-makers and thorough research of the marketplace of downtown Omaha fitness facilities. We also conducted broad surveys of key constituencies, including staff and employees, current Club members, past Club members, and the general public who have never been a member of Pinnacle.

One of the display boards posted in the Pinnacle lobby to share the rebranding with members

Our research and subsequent collaboration with Pinnacle resulted in a clear definition of the brand of Pinnacle, which will be used as a guidepost for all of their decisions moving forward. There are four key components of the brand, ranging from concrete to abstract:

Ultimate goal — the “why” that drives everything Pinnacle does:

To inspire health and community in our membership.

Methods — the ways in which Pinnacle achieves their ultimate goal:

Grow
Pinnacle is a long-term solution for healthy living, a resource for growth, and a nurturing, sustainable environment.

Serve
Pinnacle is a full-service club, designed to be accessible and accommodating, with a committed staff, always willing to listen.

Inspire
Pinnacle is a friendly place where everybody knows your name, and the experience is fun, motivating, and inspirational.

Educate
Pinnacle is not just work out equipment, but a place focused on sharing knowledge through individual training and group classes.

Include
Pinnacle is an inclusive community of diverse people from all fitness levels sharing a comfortable, non-competitive space.

Keywords — the concepts that define the personality of Pinnacle:

health, restore, connections, comfort, energy, grounded, bold, inclusion, social, vibrant, true, light, community, color, boutique

Overview statement — the succinct description of who Pinnacle is:

Pinnacle is a full-service fitness center in downtown Omaha that is interested in the physical and emotional well-being of our membership. What sets us apart is our desire to build an inclusive and comfortable community where people can grow, not just work out. We’ve created a healthy environment where you’re always among friends, and inspired to be fit.

The previous Pinnacle logo(s), which did not accurately reflect the Club's brand

We’ve incorporated these findings into the design of a new identity for the facility. The identity will be implemented throughout the Club and its marketing efforts over the coming months. Oxide’s thinking behind the new logo was shared with Club members as part of the communication process to keep everyone up-to-date on the progress of rebranding and renovations:

The new logo maintains the imagery of the peak to symbolize the pinnacle of physical and mental fitness we all strive for. But it also has a deeper meaning: lines in the logo trace the trajectories of different Club members. Each strives for their own personal best, but it is collectively that they make up the complete community.

The colors of the new logo symbolize (from bottom to top) water, valleys, and mountains, capturing the three core types of physical activities. The natural colors also make an intentional nod toward our more eco-friendly thinking and the “green” materials and processes being used throughout the renovation.

A display board for the Pinnacle lobby showcasing some of the upcoming renovations to the Club. Renderings by Alley Poyner Macchietto Architecture

World-class renovations to the facility will be complete in early 2011. If you live or work in the downtown area, we encourage you to consider Pinnacle Fitness Club as your fitness facility.