Design Project: The Vineyard Vines Blog

Happy Friday, Everyone! It’s been a busy couple of weeks, and I’m proud to be able to finally announce the official launch of a project I’ve been working on with some awesome folks at Vineyard Vines. Say hello to the shiny new Vineyard Vines Blog!

I was really excited when Lindsey, the Director of Brand Communications, contacted me and pitched me the idea of building Vineyard Vines a site where they could share their stories, photos and news, and interact with their customers. The company was already experiencing a lot of success interacting with their customers on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. They just needed a central place to bring it all together and create a sense of true community. And that’s just what we’ve done with the new site.

What I’m really happy about as a designer is that the fun-loving Vineyard Vines crew have embraced the idea of having a blog for all the reasons that makes blogs great. It’s awesome to see that the first few posts are true to what they stand for as a brand – living the good life. The stuff they’ve already posted is  fun, full of personality and enthusiasm, and shows you exactly who they are, and what they care about. I love the launch video that they posted this morning – I watched it for the first time today and it put a big smile on my face. What an awesome way to set the tone and kick things off…

For those of you who’ve got 5 minutes (of course you do, it’s Friday ;-)) – head on over to the new blog and check out the new digs. If you’re already familiar with VineyardVines.com, you’ll notice that the new site integrates seamlessly with the old one – there’s virtually no difference in look and feel, even though it runs on a totally different software engine. The site runs WordPress and is built on Chris Pearson’s Thesis theme, so it’s got top-notch SEO and great optimized code on the back end. We also included some nifty interactive social elements that pull in their Facebook Fan Page activity, Twitter feed, Flickr Photos and YouTube videos – all in one place, with a look and feel that matches their brand.

That’s it from me for now. Overall, I’m really happy with the end result and  I hope the Vineyard Vines community really gets into this, because they’ve got some great people on the other end of this site producing the content. Before I wrap this up, I’d like to send a special thank you to Lindz and Doug for their help and input during the project. I had a blast working with you. Good luck!