News

Much like TV antennas, eight-track players and pet rocks, the days of separate website designs for desktop, laptop, mobile and tablets are numbered.

The recent edition of North Bay Business Journal features a story about our leading edge work in Responsive Design, which automatically reformats a site to best fit the device on which it's being viewed – from large monitor to slim smartphone. It’s pretty cool if we do say so ourselves. Read the full North Bay Business Journal story for the details.

Firefly Creative Company, a premier North Bay advertising and marketing agency, today announced the launch of a new responsive design service aimed at helping small and medium sized businesses engage consumers effectively on smartphones, tablets, and other devices.

"More and more, consumers are interacting with a company on smartphones and tablets instead of desktops and laptops, so it's important for brands to deliver outstanding user experiences across all screen sizes," said Firefly Founder and Creative Director Christine Martin.

"We're excited to offer companies a way of delivering those strong user experiences while minimizing cost and complexity," she added.

Responsive design automatically reformats a site to best fit the device on which it's being viewed.

"This is web design for the post-desktop era," said Jim Shoop, head of Firefly's digital division. "In most cases, responsive design virtually eliminates the need to develop additional mobile websites or apps, which can be costly and resource-intensive."

Five of Firefly's seven new clients will launch websites using responsive design this summer.

"We noticed a growing percentage of our website traffic was originating from mobile devices, so we knew it was time to make a change, but we wanted a cost effective way of doing it," said J Vineyards and Winery Vice President of Digital Marketing Stacy Bennett. "Responsive design was the answer."

Major brands that have embraced responsive design include Jack Daniels, Microsoft, and The Boston Globe. In June 2012, Google officially recommended responsive design as a mobile design strategy.

Click here to see the Firefly responsive design video.

Matt Villano shadowed us for a day on behalf of Entrepreneur Magazine to gain first-hand insight into our website design process. He followed Firefly's Jim Shoop and Christine Martin while they worked through the Round Pond Estate website redesign. Matt did a great job of capturing the challenges and joys of designing for the web and our efforts to create an engaging, intuitive site. Check out the online version of the article here, and the new Round Pond site here.

Kistler Vineyards, considered by Food and Wine Magazine's Wine Guide to be the "Best of the Best" among "Star Producers", had us redesign their website to better articulate their philosophy of winemaking. See the results here.

Littorai Wines asked us to create a new website and corporate image. We based the site on an old farm journal because of the very close relationship Littorai has to farming, biodynamics, and sustainable agriculture. And, it looked really cool.

Round Pond Estate had us rethink their website from the ground up. We jumped at the opportunity and are proud of the results. Thank you, Olaf Beckmann, for the beautiful photography.

Skipstone Ranch asked us to rethink their website. The new site almost designed itself, given the stunning photos of Kelly McManus.

Captûre Wines website design was a great opportunity to work with a wonderful new client and show off the beautiful photos of Olaf Beckmann.

Parkpoint Health Clubs asked us to update the look and functionality of their website. We were happy to oblige.

Sift Cupcake & Dessert Bar asked us to give them a fresh, new look and we were more than happy to oblige. Check out their website and, if you're near any of their locations, check out their sweeeet menu!