Client: Bijan Pakzad

Project Title: Bijan Flash Site

Industry: Fashion Design

Service Brief: Full site redesign Complete Flash based website Introduce Bijan - Fashion Magazine

Website Address: www.bijan.com

Requirements:

Bijan Pakzad, the designer to the world's wealthiest men, needed a new look to compliment the image he has already established. He wasn’t interested in selling his products, but more so his image. His old website lacked creativity, focus and most of all looks. Bijan and his daughter Daniela Pakzad who consider themselves to be at the top of the Fashion Design industry wanted to bring their image online and provide users with a medium from which they can learn and more so experience the vivid taste of Bijan. Attracting constant media attention with his array of clients, the website should serve as the main focus point for learning more about Bijan. We accepted the challenge of a complete website redesign.

Lt: Client Bijan Pakzad, Rt: Designer M. Safaraz Ahmed

Solutions:

We started by studying our client very carefully and visiting his elegant Beverly Hills showroom on Rodeo Drive. We got a taste of what Bijan’s image was all about. His flamboyant personality and the vivid use of colors in fashion design led us into dreaming up a masterpiece that can only suit Bijan himself. After taking a quick tour of his multi-million dollar store and seeing pictures of his clients, we very quickly got the hint that he wanted more than just an informative website. After realizing that the website would primarily be to boast his success and not to sell his product we knew we had to come up with our best product yet. After discussing the aesthetics of what technology should be used for the website, we decided that Flash was the way to go. After collecting more than 200 magazine and media pictures and ads we were on our way to dream up his dream.

11 Days later, the layout was ready. Dripping with creativity we hurried back to Beverly Hills to show him that he had good reason to choose us. Designed in the form of an elegant European magazine, the rich flash-based website gives its viewer an interactive and eloquent experience. Thoroughly impressed, Bijan applauded our creativity and agreed on the design. This idea of the website sprouted other ideas and one of them being the production of an online magazine. With a different cover every few months, it would be displayed as the entrance page for the website.

Now the dream has been thought up and put on paper, implementation was the next step and pulling through with the ideas. Flash can either make or break a site. With its unparalleled abilities, Flash can be used to create incredible works of art and to create a full turning magazine with page folds and the works, we had to use Flash to its full extent. Getting our best designers and animators on it we slowly but surely brought it to life. One challenge we did face was making the site incredible but keeping the loading time to a minimum. A situation, which many designers overlook and in turn drive away the users due to extended loading times. Using advanced Action Scripting and XML to load high resolution images and animations from the server, we gave the information on the website to the user on a request only basis. This minimizes the initial load time and will allow access to the website a lot quicker. The website boasts Bijan’s vivid taste, yet maintaining its sheik simplicity.

No flash site is complete without audio. Bijan was very specific on what type of audio he wanted while displaying his products. Similar to his store, Bijan suggested a track that was elegant yet perfect for browsing the site.

In summary, the 12-week project for Bijan exemplifies the use of Flash technology for the Fashion Design industry. The perfect tool for the industry that loves to show off.

Client: ‘Baba’ Ali Ardekani – Ummah films

Project Title: Ummah Films media site (Flash/HTML)

Industry: Entertainment / Video

Service Brief: Full site Architecture and Design

Website Address: www.ummahfilms.com

Requirements:

Humor is a powerful emotion, and using it is indeed an art form. That’s exactly what the year’s most promising start-up film company -- Ummah Films -- has accomplished, taking a lighthearted approach toward Muslim-based entertainment. Taking the Internet by storm, Ummah Films' first video blog series, “The Reminder,” has been a major success with more than a million page views in less than two months. Season One of “The Reminder,” which can be found at www.ummahfilms.com or youtube.com, has been praised as creative, witty and thought-provoking, sending a powerful message that reaches all races and religions.

Ali started UF with an ordinary blog that quickly demanded attention along with its growth. He needed to expand, while the blog was doing great it wasn’t enough. Ali approached Iman Studios in hopes to create an online entity that will showcase his work to people interested all over the world. He required the site to look creative yet professional and easy to navigate. Users should be able to find all the videos on his site and be able to link to his video blog or watch them on You Tube. He wanted it to be a dynamic site but to utilize Flash elements to provide users with a bit of interactivity. Being a web designer himself, he knew the ins, outs and how big of a role functionality played when designing a website. Designing a website for a web designer is always a bit of a challenge. Why? Well, every designer strives for perfection and competes with other designers to be the best. We knew we had to pull a rabbit out the hat with this one.

Lt: Designer M. Sarfaraz Ahmed Rt: Client Baba Ali

Solutions:

Video blogging is fairly new and with You Tube it has really become the median of video message communication. We created a layout that used the vivid dark tones to give it that movie-watching feel along with rich contrast colors to accent it and make the main sections of the page stand out. The header was given a very abstract out the box type of feel. This brought out the designer element within the site. By creating the tear in the banner, it was as if breaking through the imaginary barrier of political and religious views that have contradicted the religion of Islam, on which the videos are about.

The interior pages to follow were all designed with a palette of colors chosen by both Ali and us. With a different color highlighting each page, the user is able to better identify and have a more interactive browsing experience. The whole was delivered to his server and went live immediately after its testing phases. We created and easy to use interface so Ali himself can edit and modify the content, images and videos on all the pages as he pleases. If he every ran into any problems, we assured him that we would be right there to help him out.

The Splash page of the site allows user to choose what they want to do. They can either enter the site or go to the blog and post their comments and involve themselves in discussions. To date the web site has had a little over 1.5 million unique page imprints (visits). The Ummah Films videos that have been posted on YouTube have reached the 2 million mark.

Baba Ali was thoroughly impressed and had this to say; “Iman Studios did it again! The quality of work is OUTSTANDING! They are very quick, inexpensive and produce excellent designs. The combination of creativity and high quality has me hooked a loyal customer.” We got more than just a loyal customer, we earned his trust and respect.

Client: Iman Studios V2

Project Title: Iman Studios Redesign V2

Industry: Web Design

Service Brief: Full site Architecture and Redesign

Website Address: www.imanstudios.com

Requirements:

Iman Studios has been known for creating the “WOW FACTOR” in all its designs. With the new IS V2 the main focus was to make it completely search engine friendly but of course still keeping it real as far as the look and feel goes. We wanted to create a company site that infused our compelling designs along with the latest in programming technologies. The site was designed around its content and user experience.

Essential to our redesign effort was the ease of navigation within a stimulating and interactive user friendly environment. With the previous site designed using a lighter color scheme, we wanted IS V2 to spruce up some rich colors along with the contemporary gray tones to give it a very warm yet modern theme. We wanted the user to be able to access the home page immediately without having to go through the splash page. The header would be something that we wanted in flash to give the home page some life.

Solutions:

Our designers started brainstorming to come up with inspirational concepts that would supercede all expectations of what the next Iman Studios should look like. We went through many design concepts, each of them failing to meet certain detailed requirements that were necessary to step up our game.

Sarfaraz Ahmed – President of Iman Studios, took personal interest in designing the new image of Iman Studios. Who better can envision the success of it, than the founder himself. Sarfaraz took it upon himself as a challenge to exceed his own expectations from his previous design versions. The idea was born. V2 was now visible in the distance. Once the foundation was set, creative input was needed from the Iman Studios design and programming team to help put the pieces together. A table less design would power IS using CSS and XHTML. Keeping a user-friendly interface in mind, we utilized AJAX to its fullest extent to make our sub-pages easily accessible.

A fluid deep-sea animation was used for the main graphic. A steady flash-based navigation header would oversee the entirety of the site. Presentation was very important, and we needed to grab the user’s attention at once. The various stimulating colors of the site did just that. The dark tones of gray with the use of subtle greens definitely made the IS site eye candy for users.

The table less designed was used primarily to accelerate our rankings on powerful search engines such as Google and Yahoo. The goal is to stay abreast with the current web standards while delivering immaculate designs. Lightbox, a simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on the current page, was used to display certain elements of our portfolio page. This eliminated the need to have pop-up windows that most browsers would tend to block. The goal was to keep the user on our site while giving them productive content to read.

The overall design has turned many heads and has even led a lot of other Web Design companies to utilize our services to satisfy their client needs. The design exemplifies our advanced skill set in design and development technology to provide users with a truly remarkable experience while showcasing our many talents. Iman Studios V2 communicates its goal of offering its clients quality work and great service at a competitive price.