typestorming

A report on the move Thomas Pamminger

2010August 17

Back and Cover.

It seems we reported on the WHS annual report for 2008 only yesterday. Since then, a lot has happened for this upstanding institution, and long time client of wollzelle, including the massive consolidation of four separate offices into a building of their own — designed afresh, no less.

Because changing buildings is also about changing perspectives, and finding enriching new ways to work together, we made the move, and the people behind it, the star of this year’s show.

One of the most striking elements of the “Lagebericht 2009,” as it is known to the locals, is the cover, which also acts as its packaging. Reading the document entails tearing away a strip of paper, as if to open a box, thereby physically introducing the reader to the report’s salient themes: movement, discoveries, collaboration. While the outside features an image of the previous WHS headquarter, the inside offers an exploration of the institution’s new surroundings, immediately rewarding interaction and engaging the eye.

Index of contents.

Content.

Diagramms.

Title opener.

Details.

While the predominantly green colour palette obeys the WHS’ branding guidelines and immediately dispels any uncomfortable — and inaccurate — associations with retirement homes, hospitals and illness, the daring typography breaks the report’s clear structure into legible and attractive chunks. The clean sans-serif-based layout is peppered throughout with hand-written titles, pencilled graphs and flat saturated colours to convey a sense of perspective and energy, without sacrificing mathematical precision where it is needed.

Our collaboration with Franco Winter, brought to life the many portraits that enliven and shape the report, in stark contrast with last year’s urban still lives. After celebrating some of the organisation’s most iconic and representative clients, we have opted to focus on its administrators and caregivers without whom none of this machinery could be set in motion. Staff are depicted in their everyday setting, performing the very relatable tasks of carrying papers, enjoying a cup of tea or peeking at the sunny views outside the window, carrying on the document’s overall message. It should be noted that, continuing our tradition, all these snapshots are genuine, proving once again that authenticity never goes out of style.

We hope you enjoy reading this report as much as we enjoyed crafting it. You can download the WHS Lagebericht 2009 in PDF format.

As always, we tip our hats to the WHS and its associates, for their efforts and accomplishments, and welcome your comments.

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Our hearts are ticking Thomas Pamminger

2010July 20

Gucci Timepieces is famous for marrying the fashion-forward eye of its parent house with an uncompromising view on engineering quality: under the attractive faces of their wares, tick precision mechanisms that are built to stand the test of time. Since wollzelle unveiled the first multi-award-winning new generation Gucci.com, back in 2006, we have worked in close collaboration with the brand to echo this dual commitment in their web presence.

Today, we are proud to unveil more details on the brand new site for Gucci Timepieces we launched on May 5, that takes our original design to the next step in immersive experiences and standards-compliance. By building upon rich JavaScript frameworks and leveraging the latest developments in HTML5 and CSS3, we have devised a site that intuitively delivers sound, video and data to a wide range of devices, from the office PC to the Apple iPad — and in eight languages to boot! While iPad users will appreciate using gestures to scroll through our endless gallery of watches, desk-bound visitors will appreciate the lightness and speed afforded to the site by our plugin-free architecture, CSS-based special effects and efficient image compression.

The site’s aesthetic is voluntarily subdued, and provides what we think is the perfect frame to the brand’s original designs. Wood, leather and precious metals, such as you would find in store, discretely frame the models, and the forgiving, loop-based navigation gently guides the user through the company’s timeless collections — pun intended. While seemingly similar to other wollzelle-designed Gucci properties, so as not to unsettle the visitor, this site brings some new features of its own, and has been optimised for the higher-resolution, wider screens that have recently become commonplace.

Under the site’s appealing façade beats a cutting-edge engine, that polls and arranges data on the fly for computers, iPads and smartphones, from a common pool of assets. Transparent geolocalisation helps users find stores effortlessly on a wide range of devices, while our own image-processing technologies, fluxiom and ImageGeisha, ensure illustrations are always crisp, clear, and correctly sized, without any manual intervention from the webmasters. In fact, the site was so cutting-edge, we had to “smuggle” iPads for testing from the United States to Austria, on the day they launched!

Because no company wants to mess around with code and proprietary applications, the site comes complete with a web-based backend for Gucci staff to manage store locations and report on events, as they happen. In addition to a long list of references, happenings and languages, which only keeps growing, this back-end intelligently puts over 4000 stores on the map!

We hope you take a few minutes to check out the site…

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European Design Award 2010 Thomas Pamminger

2010June 11

Last Sunday the best of graphic design, illustration and multimedia design in Europe were honoured at the European Design Awards Ceremony in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. This ceremony is the crowning event of the ED-Festival, a 3-day conference organised around lectures given by speakers and graphic design celebrities from all over Europe. The festival travels every year to a new city in Europe. After Athens, Stockholm, and Zurich, Rotterdam hosted the festival from 28 to 30 May 2010. Images from the Award Ceremony.

The European Design Award Catalog 2010

We are pleased to announce that we received a bronze trophy in the category Publications/Annual Report for the WHS Lagebericht 2008 and the website for the St. Gilgen International School made it to the list of finalists.

WHS Lagebericht 2008

WHS Lagebericht 2008, details

St. Gilgen International School website

About the award

The European Design Awards is the comprehensive annual awards organization acknowledging the best of graphic design, illustration and multimedia design in Europe. It is based on a collaboration of 14 prestigious communication design magazines in Europe who have taken upon them to support and promote the event. Representatives of these magazines compose the jury: 2+3D (PL), Design Austria (AT), Design Week (UK), +design (GR), Elephant (Int), étapes: (FR), Grafik Tasarim (TR), idpure (CH), KAK (RU), Novum (DE), Progetto Grafico (IT), TYPO (CZ), Visual(ES), BNO Vormberichten (NL).

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Branding, one stone at a time Thomas Pamminger

2010June 05

Architects and designers share a common set of goals: providing novel and memorable solutions to life’s everyday problems. Whether their work is about creating spaces or what goes into them, their craft lies at the intersection of art and technology.

In this light, we are doubly happy to finally share two sites we designed for architecture firms: Raumkunst and Dennis Lems were we also featured the process a while ago.

Considering our own architectural background (Christina and I both studied architecture) we always appreciate the challenge of transposing an architect’s logic and his emotional palette into the virtual world, from brick and mortar to zeros and ones.

raumkunst.at, project overview page

raumkunst.at, project details page

Denis Lems Architects, homepage

Denis Lems Architects, project page

Because buildings are statements, and part of an architect’s brand, we decided to feature them front and centre. Even though both sites speak wholly different visual languages, they are united by the lavish use of photography, from magnified details that emphasise craft to wide shots that highlight proportions.

Both sites feature a strong, directive site structure and guide the visitor through a clearly defined tour of services, past accomplishments and portraits. Each section, in effect, creates a space to be interacted with.

Both domains are built upon our custom mix of standards-based technologies, as well as our trusty image processing back-ends, fluxiom and ImageGeisha, to allow for quick and painless updates as projects come and go.

We look forwards to seeing you at the house warming party!

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we're looking for a senior web developer Thomas Pamminger

2010March 08

We are looking for a senior web developer to join our team. At wollzelle you will be working across multiple clients and projects, as part of a team of designers and developers. You are passionate about designing websites, interfaces and web applications, and you have the relevant skills to bring your ideas to life.

You positivly have:

• 5+ years experience in web design, development and web app development
• Deep knowledge in HTML, CSS and JavaScript (HTML5, CSS3 and all the good stuff)
• Experienced with JavaScript libraries (eg. prototype, script.aculo.us, mootools, jQuery, ...) and familiar with AJAX, JSON
• A strong value for web standards and user experience
• Experience with social networking applications, APIs and mashups
• Strong organization and communication skills
• Exceptional problem-solving skills
• You enjoy working in a team-based environment
• You know your tools inside out (Photoshop, Textmate, SVN, ...)
• A background in Rails development is helpful but not an essential
• Languages: English/(German)

We’re think of hiring a freelancer who works either from our offices or remote, so location doesn’t matter that much in this case. If you think you are the one, please send your CV, portfolio/links/code examples showing your work (minimum of 3) to jobs[at]wollzelle[dot]com before March 26, 2010.

Updated March 29, 2010:

We are currently reviewing the applications within this week and we will answer everyone within the next two weeks. Thanks for your patience.

If you are late to the game we will accept submission until April 2, 2010.

Signing in at the WHS Thomas Pamminger

2010March 03

The Wiener Hauskrankenpflege have recently merged their four separate offices into a newly refurbished five story building in Vienna’s twelfth district. We are honoured to report they turned to wollzelle to design an original wayfinding system that would match their brand, echo their personality and, of course, get staff and visitors to their destination as painlessly as possible.

To reflect the brand’s caring, relatable personality, we opted for warm hues and a geometric, open typeface. Furthermore, we forewent signage pomposity in favour of a straightforward, idiomatic style that draws its inspiration from regional sayings and mannerisms, raising the occasional chuckle and making an official building feel that much more like a home. Its logical colour palette and straightforward family of pictograms can be easily extended as the organisation adds new services, moves existing ones, or even adds an entirely new wing to the building.

The Process

Below is a peek at the many plans, diagrams and mock-ups we wallpapered our office with to arrive at the final result. We used multiple complementary techniques from blueprinting to 3D modelling, to cover all our bases and approach the same problems from multiple perspectives:

Laying out the flow and logic of each floor

Workers were provided with detailed mounting plans.

An overview of the full pictorial system we developed.

final design

Below are some images of the signage system in action. More shots can be seen on our flickr photostream.

A no-nonsense approach to information in the Lobby

The Lobby in perspective | “Come on in!” door sign

Remember to silence your cell phone! | The little boys’ (and girls’) room.

“Enquire here,” at the Reception Desk

“Let’s talk about it” says the meeting room door

The Psychology offices

No office is complete without a kitchenette

“Where things happen” proclaims the Event Room

A brief floor directory and the door to the IT room

Alma Thomas Pamminger

2009December 31

A beautiful CGI animated holiday short film from Rodrigo Blaas… Dolls are scary!

Alma from Rodrigo Blaas on Vimeo

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Happy holidays, y’all! Thomas Pamminger

2009December 21

As the year wraps up, we at wollzelle wanted to take a few moments to wish you all a very happy, and very successful new year. For your trust, for your support, for being yourself, really, we thank you: may 2010 bring you all the felicity and success you expect from it!

Special cheers go out to those who were able to attend our open office, and join us in this afternoon of celebration. We are delighted you could come, and are already looking forwards to renewing the experience!

Please note that our offices will be closed between December 24 and January 6, as our staff takes a few days off with friends and family. We will keep a light on, however, as our support engineers will keep turns ensuring our servers and machines run smoothly. fluxiom customers need not worry about issues going unnoticed, or the robots being left to their own devices.

Finally, our hearts reach out to the St. Anna Kinderspital, whose caring team has saved the lives of two young members of the extended wollzelle family over the past six years. As a token of our gratitude, we will be foregoing promotional gifts this year, in favour of a donation to this institution, so that other children can benefit from their talent and expertise.

Once again, thank you all for a wonderful year! See you in 2010!

full metal at Momentum ’09 Thomas Pamminger

2009December 10

The Wiener Hauskrankenpflege 2008 annual report, which we introduced on this very blog only a few weeks ago, has just won a silver award at the 2009 Momentum event.

For those of you keeping count, this does indeed mean we have gone full metal, after receiving both bronze and gold from other juries for this particular work.

Needless to say, we are thrilled and honoured by this show of support from our peers in the industry.

The award ceremony, much like the trophy itself, in fact, was a ball. A great time was had by all, the highlights of which we wanted to share with our readers, who unfortunately could not attend, but whose continued enthusiasm and support made this very project possible.

We dedicate this prize to you !

Stocking up on cool drinks for the hot evening ahead

The air is heavy with anticipation as the winners are announced

Moderator Gerald Votava never missed a beat

Stephan Grötzschel (PaperNet), WHS Chairwoman Evelyn Weismüller and Thomas Pamminger

Winners show it all after the ceremony

Our award partakes of a celebratory drink

More information on Momentum 2009 is available in German, including a gallery of winning entries, press packets, shots of the event, and juror bios.

wollzelle Wins 3rd Place Accolade from the American Design Awards Thomas Pamminger

2009November 03

The American Design Awards has just released the list of its 2009 Summer Semi Annual Design Contest winners. From among 1,400 participants 49 were awarded with the Award of Design Excellence for outstanding design achievements. We are proud to announce that wollzelle won 3rd place at the American Design Awards for the WHS Annual Report.

Next to Gold at the 20th International GALAXY Awards 2009 and the nomination for the Momentum ‘09 Award (we still keep fingers crossed on this one) this is our 3rd award for this design work and we are more than overwhelmed with all the positive feedback.

• See all Semi Annual Design Contest Winners
• Read the ADA Press Release

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wollzelle receives Gold at the 20th Galaxy Award 2009 Thomas Pamminger

2009October 27

Over 580 entries from 21 countries were submitted to participate at this years 20th International GALAXY Awards 2009.

We are pleased to announce that wollzelle received Gold for the WHS Annual Report 2008, category: annual report, NPOs.

The Grand Winner in the category of Annual Reports is Bertelsmann AG. Jung von Matt won the top honor, Best of Show, on behalf of the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra for their dynamic publicity campaign.

We are very excited and like to thank Evelyn Weismüller, CEO of the Wiener Hauskrankenpflege, and her team for the great partnership.

about the annual report

The WHS’ 2008 annual report is part official document part catalogue, showing both the human and financial aspects of this respected non-profit organization, in a single go, and reflects the warmth and energy that radiate from the institution and empower its staff.

Each still life (taken at their clients homes) reflecting the everyday reality of those the WHS supports. Each shot is both a work of art in itself, and a powerful testimonial of life in Vienna today. Strong type structures the pages and links together the various sections of the report.

Designing the annual report 2008 was a very exciting process and you can find more details about it in an earlier post.

About the client

The Wiener Hauskrankenpflege (WHS) approaches communication seriously. By making themselves known, and by interacting with people of all ages, they reach out to potential new clients, but also further the cause of affordable, quality home care that empowers elderly patients and helps them enjoy their lives to the fullest in spite of the ailments of age.



About the award

The Awards Competition is sponsored by MerComm, Inc., founded in 1987 with the principal purpose of advancing the arts and sciences of communications in an international arena. The organization strives to establish and promote high standards of individual and collective achievement by way of recognizing the multi-disciplines involved in professional communications.

• All winners 2009 (category: annual report)
• Galaxy Award press release.

St. Gilgen macht Schule Christina Fried

2009September 29

The St. Gilgen International School offers a novel perspective on education by immersing students in a unique setting, the typically Austrian village of St. Gilgen, and helping them shape their minds and personalities through repeated interaction with this pristine environment, as well as the thriving community it fosters.

Much like St. Gilgen, the School, and St. Gilgen, the village, are immersive experiences, we at wollzelle wanted the institution’s website to draw the visitor in a unique, interactive, self-paced adventure. Building upon powerful cutting-edge technologies like Flash 10 (including the new 3D API) and HTML 5, the site allows the visitor to experience for himself the sights and sounds of this jewel of the Wolfgangsee. At St. Gilgen, the school is the village, and the village is the school.

The project takes roots in the output of photographers, painters and writers whose works were instrumental in crafting the school’s original vision. We set up a fluid creative process, around a dialogue between the school’s founder, a renowned architect by day, and wollzelle’s creative think-tank. Throughout our brainstorming sessions, we defined the ideal visitor experience, and balanced our client’s dream with our own views on design and interactivity.

The result of this unique process has little to do with your average business web site. Instead, we like to think of it as an art project, an experience, a true reflection of what we felt during our own stays at St. Gilgen, of the school’s latent and patent views on education. Much like the school allows students to develop and expand their minds over time, the site evolves and progressively deepens, the longer the visitor explores it.

Creating a truly immersive experience requires skilful blending of images and sound, which we achieved in two complementary ways. Throughout the web site, context-appropriate sound effects, taken live at St. Gilgen, allow the visitor to associate a sound, a feeling, with the environment they find themselves in. For example, the visit of the school is accompanied by sound-bites taken from classrooms or the school’s central plaza. Of course, we have taken image and sound all the way to video as well, by filming a special school tour, headed by the webmaster himself. This sequence walks prospective parents and students throughout the school, as well as throughout the school’s philosophy and values.

Unlike many educational institutions, St. Gilgen opened its doors wide, allowing us to delve deep into its history, interview current students and highlight the many little architectural details that give the place its soul. Indeed, History is also a key part of the school’s personality. Did you know, for example, that the administration building once was the summer residence of Marie Ebner-Eschenbach?

Visitors in a hurry can access a convenient PDF page, from which all documentation, forms and, generally speaking, printed matter related to the school, can be downloaded in a single click. This synoptic view gives immediate access to application procedures, learning processes, teacher bios and more, thereby replacing the need to refer to a bulky paper brochure.

Music is part of the site’s quintessential experience. The theme song, typical of the salzkammergut, was composed by local musician Hubert von Goisern.

The St. Gilgen International School web site was a challenge to imagine and create. We hope you find it as enjoyable to visit as we did the school itself, and, as always, are looking forwards to hearing your thoughts.

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Mona Lisa: ageing creatively Christina Fried

2009September 22

Soziales Netzwerk is a regular publication from the Wiener Hauskrankenpflege, one of wollzelle’s oldest and most esteemed clients.

Earlier this year, a good deal of our energies were focused on putting together issue 14 of the magazine, tackling the sensitive and always-inspiring question of graceful ageing. This last issue featured one of Sacha Goldberger’s photographic masterpieces on the cover, and, we are honoured to say, drew rave reviews from both professionals and the public at large.

When preparing issue 15, which went off the presses in June of this year, we decided to try a complementary approach, one that would build upon the strengths of the previous cover and reassert its key message. This time, however, we wanted to try our hand at a different, free-form medium, to announce the next part of the magazine’s series on ageing.

Indeed, after Ageing gracefully, this issue is all about Ageing creatively. To symbolise creative ageing, we focused on the one person, the one icon, that has remained fresh and inspiring throughout the centuries: the Mona Lisa. Even though its flesh-and-blood model is long gone, both the portrait and the woman have kept their aura of genius and mystery very much intact.

Romina, our graphic designer, found a painting of her “Nonna” and we decided to centre this cover around this family portrait directly inspired by the original Mona Lisa: a discrete reference to the world-known icon, and, in itself, an assertion of its humanity. We took the romantic figure out of its frame and into a world of graffiti-inspired symbols of life, crafting a cover that blurs the line between a classic portrait and illustration. Indeed, the illustrative quality of the cover complements the portrait’s finished and polished feel, suggesting the infinity of worlds one can create for oneself — at any age.

From there, we only had to design 32 inside pages around this original concept, and voilà Issue 15 was ready for the printers!

As always, we hope you enjoy reading this inspiring issue as much as we did putting it together for you. Extra cheers and gratitude go to Evelyn Weismüller, CEO of the Wiener Hauskrankenpflege, and her team for giving us carte blanche, and allowing us to contribute to this wonderful NPO.

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Art & Copy Thomas Pamminger

2009September 08

“The frightening and most difficult thing about being what somebody calls a creative person is that you have absolutely no idea where any of your thoughts come from really and especially you don’t have any idea about where they’re going to come from tomorrow.” — Hal Riney

Art & Copy is a film about advertising and inspiration. Directed by Doug Pray.

Tun Sie sich was Gutes Thomas Pamminger

2009May 19

We at wollzelle are honoured to entertain a long-term creative relationship with the Wiener Hauskrankenpflege, a non profit organisation that provides home care services in and around Vienna, our hometown. In fact, they have been client of ours since I got on board with them as part of his civil service.

Not only are they a very worthy cause to support, they entrust us with a wide variety of tasks, ranging from interactive design to the production of promotional items. As a creative agency, we like to “mix things up” and the WHS gives us plenty of opportunities to do just that, both in terms of form and function.

Case in point, our latest project: turning a potentially dry document (their 2008 annual report) into an engaging whole that would reflect the warmth and energy that radiate from the institution and empower its staff.

Having complete control over the project allowed us to take many liberties not usually seen with such documents: out with the traditional white gloss stock and in with a natural, lightly processed paper to emphasise the group’s down-to-earth approach.

Working with Ursula Röck, a highly talented, unconventional photographer and friend, we created a collection of unexpected still lives taken at their clients homes, reflecting the everyday reality of those the WHS supports, and emphasising how small touches converge to dramatically improve their overall quality of life. Each shot is both a work of art in itself, and a powerful testimonial of life in Vienna today.

Of course, a report isn’t all fun and games. By bringing design into the visual representation of data, turning pie charts and graph bars into silhouettes and cartoons, we were able to directly link the data with what it represented, thereby facilitating its understanding. Strong type structures the pages and links together the various sections of the report.

High-end printing techniques, such as UV varnishing, completed the effort, and allowed the text to become a de facto design element, working with instead of against the report’s layout.

You can see the results in our Flickr Photostream and a little Video from the production.

Design is all about making quality content approachable, and we can think of no better content to work with. The WHS’ 2008 annual report is part official document part catalogue, showing both the human and financial aspects of this respected institution, in a single go.

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