STEP 100 Design Annual 2004
NOON: Lunch at Noon Announcement: STEP 100 Award
This card is a classic case of how a great idea snowballs. Recently the team at Noon filled some idle time with a Monday pot-luck lunch modeled on the Iron Chef concept. The results were so tasty, the team built a website around it—a site that surfaced on Yahoo! Hotlists and generated a host of emails. “After we had the website up, we thought: ah, it’s so cute!,” laughs creative director Cinthia Wen. “We should just send an announcement to people.”
“We wanted someone to be able to see from the outside that it’s [about] food, and we wanted to do it at a low cost,” Wen continues. “The paper-punch we bought at this place called California Stampin’. We bought some envelopes and hand-punched them. And we took turns, because it was pretty hard.”
“We wanted to include the idea of ingredients. So we cut fresh rosemary and inserted it into the card,” Wen adds. But even in play, it’s hard to stop working. “There was the whole discussion of, which side should the rosemary be on? It looks really good on the white, but is it going to smudge the paper?” Wen chuckles. “So your designer instinct still comes into it.”
—Jude Stewart for STEP Inside Design, March/April 2004
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NOON: Lunch at Noon website: STEP 100 Award
Who says the devil finds idle hands? Sometimes, the angels do. During a lull, the team at Noon decided to sharpen their cooking skills. “I was obsessed with Iron Chef , everyone here likes to eat, and we thought: we should do a pot-luck lunch on Mondays. We also felt this could be a good creative outlet,” notes creative director Cinthia Wen.
“Everyone writes an ingredient ... and throws it in a fishbowl,” Wen explains. “Each person gets to pick an ingredient—you can’t pick your own—and you make something with it.” The results were surprisingly delicious. Plated by designers and photographed by Wen, the recipe collection grew until Noon decided to build a website around it.
Elegant in coffee-brown and white, the site begins with an empty place setting. Mouse-over the entrée fork, and it gets larger; click and the entrée recipes appear. Each recipe includes a bit of trivia—under Deviled Eggs, it’s recommended to sing all five verses of “Onward, Christian Soldiers” while boiling an egg; the egg should be perfect by the final Amen. To everyone’s surprise, the site hit Yahoo! Hotlists, and it’s still growing—they’re even planning version 2. “It turned into its own little phenomenon,” laughs Wen.
www.designatnoon.com
—Jude Stewart for STEP Inside Design, March/April 2004
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EYEBALL NYC: STEP 100 Award
For its website, motion-design firm Eyeball NYC wanted a miracle of simplicity, just a frame to surround their commercials and videos. “We don’t want too much thinking on top to cloud the message,” says Limore Shur, creative director of Eyeball NYC. “Overlaying more design [on our website] ultimately jeopardizes what we’re trying to do: show off our work.”
Eyeball teamed up with Last Exit, an Internet design firm, to build the viewer. Shur’s instructions were straightforward: “We wanted as big of a window as possible, with as few steps to view a movie as possible. We also wanted it to have a tangible feel, like a PDA or phone.” The resulting viewer floats airily on the desktop with an incredibly easy interface. Simplicity doesn’t stop with looks: the viewer links to a database that allows Eyeball to upload work instantly from anywhere, or snip together a client reel in minutes. What do clients say? “We don’t hear a peep from them. That means they love it,” says Shur. “They never ask, where do I go? what do I do? Our designers like it, too. Their heart goes into the work; this is just the frame.”
—Jude Stewart for STEP Inside Design, March/April 2004
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More STEP 100 Design Annual Articles
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