Initially, Tripwire had the idea of having different icons, colors and backgrounds for each one of the four authors.  They also wanted these differences to reflect the topics of each author’s blog; these including: Steve-Best Practices, Karen-Marketing, Matt-Industry, and, last but not least, Ted-Project Management.  The Tripwire team also wanted to distinguish the Virtual Black Hole blog from all others, steering away from the general post after post format of the traditional blog layout.  Lastly, they wanted to include Tripwire branding within the overall site but not be designed within the usual brand standards.

In order to accomplish the initial requests that the Tripwire team presented, Garrett, our lead designer of the project, dove in and developed very compelling wireframes that organized the 4 blogs in a way that presented all 4 characters separately.  Garrett collaborated with Creative Director Sam White and designer Tom O’Toole to take it a step further and designed functionality that would showcase the most recent blog entry for each of the four authors.

After our team had gathered Tripwire’s feedback, Garrett and Tom worked together to produce the final stage of designs for the blog.  Tom focused on creating the different icons for each of the authors.  He decided to go with a look of blacked-out silhouettes that showed each person differently along with a unique background image for each based on the specific author’s topic/personality.  What resulted was the following: Code in the background of the image icon to represent Steve and his Best Practices blog; a landing page to signify Karen and her blog about Marketing; Flow charts to resemble Matt’s Industry related blog; and, wireless signals to showcase Ted’s blog on Project Management.  As for Garrett, he focused much of his design energy on the overall look of the blog.  He did this by incorporating and balancing fun, comic like elements while still yielding a glossy and technical looking design.  Going along with the client’s request, the designers also visually implemented a connection to the “black hole” by adding stars and galaxy looking elements in the banner.  To also uphold eROI’s standards of best practices in terms of blogging, the team incorporated categories, tags, blog roll, feedback, RSS feeds, etc.

Overall the Virtual Black Hole blog turned out wonderfully, but it was not without challenges along the way.  Balancing a fun and professional design was especially challenging in that the eROI team wanted to give the site the true feel it deserved.  Another challenge was the timeline given for the project.  As the client wanted the new design live for an important press release that revealed the hiring of one of the bloggers, the design team had to work quickly without compromising the blog potential.  Though the timeline was shorter than preferred, the team did well in developing a visually pleasing design that worked beautifully in achieving the client’s goals.   In the end, each of the four authors were showcased along with their personalities, the overall look of the site steered clear of the traditional blog layout, and the site remained true to the Tripwire brand.