Viget Labs is a web development and consulting firm who can boast a well known web app such as Squidoo in their projects section. They have four “labs”: strategic consulting, application development, online marketing, and interactive design. A few weeks ago I spent a couple of hours in their very impressive Falls Church office, peaking over the shoulders of their designers and kicking back in their “fishbowl” lounge. They have fun. They innovate. They practice web standards. They design Bad-ass websites. They flourish.

These guys have been on my radar for a while now. Last June their Team Viget site caught my eye on CSS Import with their sexy java-script skills. Upon further investigation I realized… “hey these guys are right around the corner from me”. They have since been featured on galleries all over the web including the Web Designer Wall’s Best of CSS Design 2007. Back in August I literally walked into DC Barcamp and met Rob Soulé a member of the Viget Design team, who then went on to co-lead a fantastic presentation on the “Challenges we face as Designers”. Interested in the team’s enthusiasm and community involvement I added the Four Labs Blog to my RSS reader and followed along from afar.

The concept of a company’s brand has really evolved in the last few years. What used to be considered a logo and a tagline has transformed into a full blown experience. Not only does a strong brand transcend the products and services a company provides, but it amplifies the attitudes and personalities of the individuals creating them. When you walk into Viget not only do they have swank offices that just shout “web 2.0″… there is an indescribable vibe amongst their team. A buzz. A feeling of anticipation and excitement. The word “viget” comes from Princeton University’s motto “Dei sub numine viget” and means be strong or vigorous; thrive, flourish, be active, be effective.

I am very excited to say that this Monday will be my first day as a Web Designer at Viget Labs.

I grew up on Macs. I am a member of an all Apple family and currently live in all Mac Household. My first Mac was a Quadra 605 and I have never owned any sort of Windows machine. My family still holds on to a Flower Power (still running) in our attic. In 2002 I started my summer job at an Apple Specialist in Richmond. Back then there weren’t Apple stores, there were Apple Specialists who had on-site (knowledgeable) repair technicians. We used to throw midnight release parties for the new OSs and would rent out a local movie theater to broadcast Mr. Jobs’ keynotes. Some people think this sounds pretty dorky but It was the most fun I have ever had in my life. Everyday I woke up and got to share my passion with the Apple Community. And thats what it was… a community.

(Im not pissed off in this pic, I just didn’t know my picture was being taken at work)

Apple has inspired a culture that extends beyond a brand, it created a community and now that community is becoming mainstream. So was it a revolution? Perhaps it has just made people begin to think Different…ly.

This trailer got me thinking a little bit about how things have changed since my days working at Capitol Mac.

When I was in college I heard a lot of cheesy pick up lines, but I had one friend who was the king of them. He insisted the money line was “Excuse me are you from Tennessee? No? Well… you are the only Ten I see“. He really did use that line and it really did seem to work. A cheesy pick up line won’t catch my attention, but a bad-ass series of websites will.

Tennessee has Dollywood, the Bonnaroo music festival, Graceland, and obviously some bad-ass web designers. Thanks to the help of Rob Soulé I found the team responsible for these fantastic sites nestled right in the heart of Knoxville Tennessee at DesignSensory. Why import talent when you have it at home?

With exceptional attention to detail these sites creatively incorporate rich textures while keeping their information organized. Layering hand drawings, photographs, and patterns the designers have created rich experiences that compliment the content of the site without overpowering it. A clear hierarchy allows the user to easily navigate through the site to find what they need in a timely manner.

I especially like the fact that this is a series of sites. It is far more common that you find a series among print collateral such as posters, invitations, or banners. On the web it is much harder to pull off a series of websites without it feeling forced or disrupting the user experience. While many of these sites have been featured on CSS Design Galleries I have yet to find a place that really shows off all of them as a series. There is one site for each season, a site focused on education, and a site advertising vacationing in Tennessee. So I am going to post them here, please click on the image to launch the site and check them out.

http://winter.tnvacation.com/

http://spring.tnvacation.com/

http://summer.tnvacation.com/

http://fall.tnvacation.com/

This month marks my one year blog-iversary.

When my blog first launched it did not look like this at all. I have actually had a lot of websites; none of which are at the domain SamanthaWarren.com. No, rather a super-classy 1992 styled “Under Construction” warning has taken up a permanent residence on that page. It has been there since 1999 which is why I decided to pick the corniest, longest, most ridiculous joke URL I could possibly think of for my first domain. SamanthaRocksYourWorld.freeservers.com in all of it’s blazing college glory didn’t last very long, but I can tell you that it could have put a lot of today’s myspace profiles to shame.

Once the need to use my website as a place to send a shout out to all of “my dawgs” wore off the quest to experiment with online media began. People have asked me how I learned to build websites, and besides the help I got from some fantastic coworkers, my personal website really is what taught me how things works. It is a continuous experimentation. Now I am going to show you what a lot of other designers probably wouldn’t… the evolution of my personal web site. Keep in mind “at first you don’t succeed, try try again”.

2002 SamanthaWarren.net
I muddled my way through dreamweaver using a book and dumb luck to come up with my first real portfolio site. I had no idea what the hell I was doing, but looking back on the code, I am surprised to find it in pretty good shape. The entire motif was crude and simple; revolving around a concept piece I created for my final college portfolio. The idea was to hand a possible employer a file from a mental ward stating I was “crazy about design”. Probably not something I would go with again.

June 2005 SamanthaWarren.net v2 & v 2.5
After completing a few sites for the Army web team I felt confident to bust out some CSS of my own and experiment with flash. The flower on the left hand side grew when you first came to the page. While a happy dance was done over an achievement as that,it wasn’t long before I realized there weremajor issues that needed to be addressed. For instance…. It took forever and a day to load my portfolio. So I went back and rebuilt the entire site again from the ground up and launched a sleeker version 2.5 of my website. As soon as that was up I quickly saw the potential to improve and redesign.

January 2006 SWarrenDesign.com
So the flash bug then bit me. This site provided me the perfect challenge to learn the basics of flash but not without some headache. Early on I settled on a Victorian Phrenolgy concept hat looked 90% awesome but had this interactive bald-headed me on the front page. Killer concept but visualy rode the boarder between genius and really friggen’ weird looking. So loving the design otherwise I concocted an animated version of my cat to fill the void. Funny… but still a little friggen’ weird. This would be an example of when a concept running off on a tangent. I keep this site live for kicks… go check it out.

January 2007 BadAssIdeas.com
After my first trip to SXSW in 2006 I was not only inspired to crack open some Wordpress CSS but to start blogging. When I told people i was going to blog their first reaction was “What about?” and as you can see that probelm worked itself out fairly well. The inspiration for the name came partly from a joking remark made by a colleague referring to my “Bad Ass Ideas” and visually from my love for Janis Joplin. Janis had a relationship with the San Fransisco Hells Angels who she gives a shout out to on her “Cheap Thrills Album”. Inspired by the no-bullshit attitude of Miss Joplin, this version of Bad Ass Ideas was born. Between this redesign and this final version I did over 32 unique comps.

June 2007 BadAssIdeas.com v2
Rejuvenated by my second trip to SXSW and my growing obsession with social media I decided to redesign and realign many visual and structural elements of the site. I also surprised myself with my dedication to blogging and decided that should come to the forefront of the site. Visually I wanted the content to be the spotlight enhancing my audience’s usability. Hoping to reference the patterns found in the 1960s art-nouveau poster that advertised Janis’s tour I added a faded Victorian pattern into the background of the site. It is reminiscent of her many costumes that now seem to be available at any local Urban Outfitters.

Expect a redesign before June 2008.

I attended a fantastic presentation by Steven Heller hosted by the Art Directors Club of Metro Washington DC on Friday night and he explained that Brand is a fetish… it is when people don’t just identify with something but embrace it. This concept fascinates me especially when it falls in the realm of an a-typical product. People get totally juiced up and excited over so many things; there are mini-cooper meet-up groups and people who are obsessed with Harry Potter, but I am fascinated when a group of enthusiasts rally around something meant to be functional.. often dry, and usually transparent… like a web browser. Firefox has organically grown an enormous group of brand loyalists using guerrilla marketing and online tactics that go far beyond anything that their competitors are doing. From that they have defied odds and currently maintain a healthy stronghold on a substantial percentage (36.3% in December 2007 according to the W3C) of the browser market. How are they doing it?

They are not evil.
Firefox is a project of the non-profit Mozilla foundation:

devotes its resources to promoting openness, innovation and opportunity on the Internet. We do this by supporting the community of Mozilla contributors and by assisting others who are building technologies that benefit users around the world.

They go so far as to spell out exactly what they are all about in their own Manifesto which states their goals and principles. Dude, what is cooler than a manifesto? I mean Pirates and people who start revolutions have manifestos.

The first time I read this document my heart skipped a beat… an organization that believes in all the idealistic wonderful web things I do? OMG How can I not embrace that? An excerpt of three of their principles are as follows:

1. The Internet is an integral part of modern life–a key component in education, communication, collaboration, business, entertainment and society as a whole.
2. The Internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible.
3. The Internet should enrich the lives of individual human beings.

Openly stating and documenting all of their non-evil beliefs online in a manifesto makes them hard to dislike… and modern day pirates. Arrrr!

They make a great product & experience (which organically creates word of mouth)

There are lots of great advantages to Firefox, the customization really sets them apart from the other products to the average user. While being open and secure are big pluses, the average joe is going to notice all the fantastic plug-ins they can use to make their browsing experience unique.
As a Web Designer I constantly rely on (and recommend) the Web Developer Extension. My friend, the Catch-up Lady (an avid Firefox user) constantly recommends the All in One Gesture Add-on.

They have fun.

Fun designs, fun T-shirts and fun promotions abound. They don’t take themselves too seriously and that makes using their product that more attractive. They recently held a competition called Operation Firefox where they encouraged their users to use guerrilla tactics to place a 3.5 foot Firefox sticker in a public space. Insane challenges and a manifesto… pirates. Arrr!

They leverage successful online and offline marketing tactics
Spreadfirefox.com houses a complete toolkit that helps people spread the word online through photos, banners, and talking points as well as offline events where Firefox enthusiasts take to the streets. Rather than utilizing traditional marketing tactics Firefox has decided to go this low budget route leveraging and amplifying the word of mouth their product has already created and giving their users to do the same. They take all the work out of it, making it simple and effective.

They look good
Firefox’s logos, buttons, banners, and even T-shirts are all well designed. Its a pleasure to have the Firefox logo sitting in my dock, and their T-shirts are witty and fashionable. Their microsites like Operation Firefox and the Mozilla store all have organic tangible feels to them. Taking something like a browser that exists only in the online space and giving it a very offline feel.