dots and lines

Following the advances in the branding industry of the Middle East where Arabic type-setting and identity design has reached interesting milestones we’ve received requests for pitching on converting Print ads and Material to web optimized versions given that it has to be exactly the same, not just content and branding styles but litterally everything and you might’ve guessed it, the guidelines have been coming from the Branding/Advertising agency that worked on the print project. So the request is: Convert our InDesign/Photoshop canvas to HTML and that’s it.

Just get it web-enabled

From the first impression we believed it’s a PDF or Flash conversion of a brochure/catalogue that would need nothing, so it didn’t appeal to us, but after a short discussion it turned out a Full website that we’re talking about but steered by the Print agency, weired.

dots and lines, as you know is a web-agency, yup, we do all kinds of web related work, so we took the project canvases and converted it into a proper navigatible website with a structure intact and a proper interaction model. On the presentation day, guess what? The Print agency was there to do the judging work :S

What confused me were two things:

1. Why didn’t the Print agency just get it done through a partner and not just consulting with the project on-site?
2. And the most obvious, Print, judging for Web? And the subject is no Type or Branding coherence, but content transition.

We were turned down because, well, let me quote:

The site menu does not follow the catalogue’s line-by-line index.

You serious? We rest our case and withdrew from having to rework for the second round of pitching.

A catalgue’s index page is a menu or perhaps website’s information architecture, to my amazement, she was so firm on her views too, even though it ain’t her field or arena, and worst of all her client was so approving. Weired mix.