CBDC

(Cambridge Business Development Center)

This design for CBDC replaced their existing design that was a mixture of inconsistent formatting, unnecessary dynamic elements and plain style and layout.  The new design had two goals — to retain and restructure the information-based content, to transform existing logos and styles.

• Cambridge Business Development Center

The first concern was the logo and how to brand the site in a new way with existing shapes.  First came the tilt and crop.  This somewhat concealed the clumsy nature of the logo, while giving it a new sense of dynamism.  Wrapping the logo in a face plate provided an instant colour impact on the page and allows for a future change of logo without a huge rebranding effort.

As some CBDC programs are held in locations other than their Central Square office, a map style was drafted to provide a basic overview of each location’s immediate surroundings.  Colours similar to the page design were picked so as to maintain continuity of the design as a whole.

The page has a three-colour scheme.  A light grey backdrop with a subtle top-to-bottom gradient, blue-green headings to match the logo area, and bright green links.  The harmony of colours make for pleasant reading and searching, adding colour to the text-dominated site.

Presentation

A simple variation of the face plate was created for presentations that would be Web distributed (as opposed to projector-based).  A view of Cambridge from behind Boston’s Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge was assimilated with the logo.  The design was then cut leaving a striking border.