Kiwi digital design agency Salted Herring picks up

Kiwi digital design agency Salted Herring picks up international awards

Creative digital agency Salted Herring picked up two international web awards this week, competing and winning on the world stage in a competitive market dominated by large players. The quirky, engaging, and direct website the Wellington-based agency created for eco-toy company Wishbone Design won the Favourite Website Award (FWA) Site of the Day, and has also been chosen as a Webpick of the Day for Commarts, a prominent American design inspiration platform.

The Favourite Website Award is the most visited website award programme in the history of the internet. It has become the industry’s way of recognising the most creative and cutting edge websites being created around the world. The Wishbone Design website will feature on the Commarts site on May 13.

Kate Handley, Salted Herring Business Director, said their success was a great example of a Kiwi Exporter upping the ante. “The competition for these accolades has become intense in recent years, with big-budget international sites dominating the winning entries. It is really exciting to see a little Kiwi interactive agency up there again,” she said.

“While this is our fourth win of the FWA Site of the Day, it’s the first time we’ve won for a New Zealand company. The FWA win has driven an increase in traffic to our client’s website, demonstrating the flow-on benefits of our success.”

Wishbone Design Studio is Wellington based, and they make transitional eco-friendly toys for children. Their flagship product is a 3-in-1 wooden bike which goes from a 3 wheeler trike for a toddler, to a high rider balancing bike for a 4 year old. Their bike recently featured in Time Magazine’s Top 100 Product Designs. Pep Zuijderwijk, Salted Herring Creative Director, said that Salted Herring enjoyed translating the Wishbone Design products into an engaging website.

“They wanted a site to express the idea of the ‘Joy of Transformation’ their key brand positioning statement. The site had to draw on all the strong, simple and smart, (BeST award winning) brand material already developed by Degree design,” he said.

“It also had to communicate down to earth human values, views on sustainability, views on community, and of course inform about the products. The audience is worldwide, sophisticated, environmentally conscious, and design aware. Parents, children and grandparents alike all need to be able to relate to the site,” he said.

“The site brings the ‘Joy of Transformation’ idea to life with all the functional aspects such as navigation and scrolling animated in a very low-tech mechanical manner with sounds to match.” “ We used a recycled brown cardboard texture as the key design element linking it back to printed graphic material, and then layered a mix of strong bold documentary lifestyle photography and animated illustrations over the top,” he said.

Even before these awards, the Wishbone Design site has been popular with international audiences, attracting 18,000 visitors this month so far. The average time spent on the site, seven minutes, is significantly longer than the usual length of time spent at a brand site.

“It is a very successful example of consumers engaging with a brand online,” Kate Handley said. “It is interesting to identify what has made this one in particular so special. We think it is the combination of quirky animated creatures, down to earth design, a 'cosy' atmosphere, oodles of interaction and sound effects, a great brand and some snappy copy thanks to Jenny (Wishbone) herself. Oh and Viriginia Woods-Jack's great natural and lively shots of the Wishbone family too. Put altogether it has come out quite raw and fresh, with a lot of detail to explore.”

Meanwhile another site created by Salted Herring, for the Splore festival has also had international success recently. Splore, a 3 day music and arts festival near Auckland held every 2 years has been named finalist in the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive awards (music category) as well as finalist in the cultural and lifestyle category of the AIMIA (Australian Interactive Media Industry Awards).

ENDS

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