We are an innovation and design studio for start-up and fast-growth companies that want to win in new markets.
It’s hard to imagine a time before gourmet teas. It really existed. There was a time when Whole Foods was just on the West Coast, too. There were only a handfull of gourmet markets. Tea was mostly monopolized by Lipton, Twinings, and Celestial Seasonings. Tea was just a dark bag in a cup of water. A few of us gravitated together under the vision of Will Rosenzweig, Mel and Patricia Ziegler – founders of Banana Republic. We heard their calling – letters to each other – product visionaries that they were – that tea could be something inspiring, something deeper, and even something very spiritual. Somehow, we had to come up with a visual expression of these ideas – in a package that people would want to pick up on a shelf and buy. Right, and it needed to cost about $10.
Creative Director, Nancy Bauch led the exploration that led to experimenting with new package forms and vastly different visuals than mainstream consumers had seen on supermarket shelves. After much research in containers, we settled on a high-quality cylindrical tin that had an airtight lid. Made in Japan, these were tins used by tea aficionados to store tea for long-periods of time. A very functional device, the tin offrered a range of labeling opportunities. The Identity was developed out of a historic hand-drawn typeface. The symbolic teapot sits on top of photographic collages that are crafted and assembled by hand to align with the mysterious effect each tea has on its drinker. The company has since gone on to be sold and repurchased several times and today enjoys the care it deserves. The company features a variety of tea lines ranging from the original 25 to revolutionary herbal medicinal teas. Of course, the competition has increased since the Republic of Tea launched and there are a multitude of tea companies on supermarket shelves today. Happily, the Republic of Tea maintains its quality and commitment to the highest quality full leaf teas and herbs.
We worked with executives at DELL to define a new kind of utility application that could go beyond any normal virus or simple hard drive maintenance utility. The Concierge app “idea” was to develop an application that could be both sophisticated and thorough in being able to examine the performance of a computer and diagnose issues – while also being incredibly simple and elegant to use – without cluttering the experience with too much information that the user doesn’t desire.
Our result was just that – a system that exposes more relevant information the more time you spend with it. If you only want the summary – it’s but a glance away; but if you want to know more about why your computer is performing so slowly, you can “dive in” and really see how we validated that and what specific products are causing the problem…and of course, steps the Concierge application will take to remedy the situation.
Key to this project was a combination of a simple UI model along with well-designed data elements – within the interface that made the application both aesthetically pleasing as well as functionally rich.
Peerbetween started as a very rough prototype “idea” that the CEO brought us to better understand the concept. We often start projects this idea – where a brilliant entrepreneur visits us with a conceptual model that they need help bringing to market. At first, as many clients do – they insist that the project really just needs some visual polish. Very quickly, however, we explain that there are many elements of detail that are not addressed – many of which require major rethinking of a user-model. Thus, we helped create a much stronger foundation by which to build this application – helping to define the user goals and requirements and ultimately a design model and a full brand.
After a chance meeting with the famed Wayne’s World Actress, her frustration with media and our ability to cut through the crap and get to the meat – prompted further discussions. Eventually, we agreed to partner and work together to reach her goals around harnessing the power of her loyal fan base. Today, Tia has one of the most active and loyal fan-bases in digital media.
While we were developing the Web site for ImpactRadius, we developed several information-graphics that helped better explain how their online advertising marketplace worked for both brands and publishers. There were several information graphics we developed that each told a piece of the story.
As we were developing the FreeMonee.com Web site we understood that a major part of the project was to understand how their ecosystem worked and then find a way to explain it to potential and current bank-customers. We spent the better part of the first month+ simply brainstorming on how to tell the story, diagrammatically – and then creating a robust set of diagrams to help tell each piece of the story. Later, we worked with a wonderful Canadian animation company to further animate the diagrams.
Over the course of numerous interface design projects, it’s necessary to develop icons that summarize key functions in an application. While we normally determine and specify where icons are most appropriate, it’s the visual design process for icon development that is always challenging.
In 2009, 3PAR asked Zaudhaus to take over their corporate brand marketing as their new Agency of Record; and take the 3PAR brand to the “next level” as they move forward with very high sales targets. In 2011, the company was purchased by Hewlett Packard for $2.35 Billion – noting that they recognized 3PAR as a highly valued storage brand.
A popular Los Angeles County Botanical Garden, Descanso Gardens’ Executive Director approached us to help bring more visitors in through the gates, more frequently during the week. Reinventing the Gardens’ brand and offering more useful information was how we began our engagment. One year later, membership is up, a new voice is welcoming visitors.
JASÖN Natrual Cosmetics approached Zaudhaus to help them revitalize some of their older brands as well as work on developing several new products. We worked directly with brand managers to get clear direction on the brand concepts and then we worked to develop an identity, look & feel, and ultimately an entire line of product packages. Ester-C was a long-time seller that was slowing down; and RED was a new product derived from African Red Tea.
Light & Motion had, for years, created some of the highest-quality, easy to use underwater camera housings on the market. Their Web site didn’t match the quality and overall brand that their products represented. We were asked to help take it to “the next level.”
Affymetrix, one of the largest Biotech companies in the Silicon Valley, asked Zaudhaus to help them create a completely new software application interface to work with a completely new and unique combination of hardware devices for analyzing DNA samples.
X1, an incubated IdeaLab company approached Zaudhaus to help them craft a new product interface for an innovative product concept – a product that could search deep into social streams and allow users to have robust searching capabilities over the content of those streams. We worked with the talented product teams at X1 to refine the feature requirements and design an innovative interface for X1 Social. It captures all your social streams in one place so you can see what you missed and find what you need.
Three frustrated product designers knew there had to be an easier way to manage all of the documents and tools used to develop products. Faxes, Excel documents, and CAD files often piled up and were lost during an often year-long process. We helped hone their vision into a centralized, Web-based interface; and then developed a brand that made the complex idea understandable.
The Motista Consumer Connection Environment, is a web-based solution that provides marketers on-demand intelligence about the emotional and rational connections that most motivate their consumers to buy or advocate. While marketers are increasingly focused on building stronger consumer connection, the accelerating pace of marketing prevents many of the traditional market research approaches from providing the actionable intelligence required by marketers.
Zaudhaus was asked to review an existing application that had most of the functionality already built – but needed help to streamline the basic user interface and visual information presented. We spent some initial effort restructuring the filter controls in the left pane and then the bulk of our energies re-visualizing different data elements in the center. We also worked to define how they should extend their newly-created corporate identity into the product.
For years, Songbird had been developing an alternative desktop music organization/syncing tool that could integrate with Android and other digital mobile players. The product was built on top of the Mozilla browser platform and was host to an incredibly active group of developers building “add-ons” for the system. The product had not caught on with consumers, though. We were asked to help develop a new brand for the company and look & feel for the product – not to mention design features to make the product more attractive.
A popular brand for the last 40 years, Follow Your Heart is a privately owned Southern California vegan food brand that started in the ’70s and fast became loved because of it’s attention to quality, environmental practices, and great taste.
Roost began as a social media tool for real estate professionals as an auto-publishing tool that sent content to Facebook Fan pages. Realtors could use Roost to help source useful content for clients – and on a regular, recurring basis. When Roost decided to adjust their strategy and speak to a broader audience, we were asked to help strategize on functionality as well as completely overhaul the interface design.
Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf knew their packaging and collateral just did not measure up to the competition. Seeking to be that ultimate “third place” in consumer’s lives, they asked us to find a way to stand out and still stay true to their long history of simply the best coffee and tea. Our solution highlights that hand-crafted quality and richness associated with their high-quality products made simple.
In 1992, when America only knew about Celestial Seasonings, Good Earth Tea, and Lipton, a small group of “Zentrepeneurs” decided to try and shake things up. I was fortunate enough to be part of this small team that forever changed the way America thinks about Tea.