Bacardi

Client:
Bacardi Brown Formans Brands

Design:
Anthony Tillirides

W3C Standards Compliance:
Full compliance not attempted

Special Requirements:
'Web 2.0' asynchronous interaction

Active link
http://www.bbfbresource.co.uk/

Overview:
Bacardi Brown Formans needed a way to provide access to their large portfolio of image and logo assets to design studios, bars and publications around the world from one central location. Branding was high priority during the site design as each of BBFB's products has a very carefully maintained presence that needed to be reflected in the product's section within the site. With each brand being maintained by a different person, the site had to be very easy to use and administer as well as keep logs of user activity in order to later check that access to assets meets brand guideline requirements.

The asset management aspect of the site is built on top of a custom framework I developed inhouse called Hekate which acts as a bridge to Xinet's well-respected FullPress and WebNative asset management software. While a very powerful, enterprise grade pre-press and asset management system, FullPress lacked an API to allow the development of the highly complex styles of site we were demanding of it. Hekate hooks into FullPress in multiple ways to open up the functionality for our use.

The site itself is highly 'Web 2.0': Much of the interaction with the site happens without needing to load full pages. Instead, background communication with the server allows update of only the parts of the page needing new information, making the browsing experience more fluid. The fundamentally different ways in which you can design using Web 2.0 technologies have allowed us to include a number of time saving and ease-of-use improvements over traditional site designs both for the user and the administrator.