Work

Overview

BitFire is an end-to-end live video transmission and production solution built by broadcasters for broadcasters. A brand new company, we helped build the brand and the website to showcase their years of experience in broadcast and to introduce a new point-to-point live video transmission product and service.

BitFire is both a production company and a live video point-to-point service, making them very unique in the broadcast world. We needed to highlight the technology and the service level that's required to make seamless point-to-point video transmission possible. 

Brand Process

Because of an aggressive timeframe, we needed to concurrently work on content strategy, design and the brand. We had just over six weeks to create an entire system from web to print to powerpoint.

BitFire came to us with a bit of a homemade wordmark. We created multiple directions of modifications to explore the different ways a wordmark could feel, and invested the time connecting the terminals and normalizing the descenders to make a more cohesive and carved mark that allowed us only to feel the differences between marks. This allowed our highly technical audience to be fully involved and be able to talk about the abstractions we were showing.

Because of our concurrent discovery process, we also found a logo that can be used optionally with the wordmark in print and online, in the same area as a lock-up or in different areas, on the other side of the business cards, say. Brands for a more technical audience can have an amount of delight, and we wanted to get the bits and the wordmark to have fun, and we created a more inventive brand even despite the more muted color palette. 

Near the end of the branding process we then created sub-brand wordmarks of FireBridge and FirePower, and found ways to integrate them into the main brand, being both recognizable and distinct. We also found the rest of the patterns and colors that work across media, and checked for contrast ratios and accessibility standards. From all of this we built a complete design system that's being honed as more and more business collateral are being created.

Site Design

As mentioned above, the site design started before the brand was finished. We wireframed out the ideas we knew we wanted to cover, and then built a design based on the proto-brand we were working on concurrently. Nothing was finished, and while that might not be ideal, it was a great way to paint the broad strokes and let the site design inform the brand as much as the brand informed the site design.

One of the things we wanted to add was a good amount of discovery and delight to the design. We added a hamburger menu to show the less important menu items, but wanted to find a delightful way to show it. We found that we could find an unexpected trove that shows the full menu at once, and even add a flame to the top of the BitFire logo, which is the first time that logo configuration happens.

The site design itself followed the common theme: by broadcasters for broadcasters. We used elements of historic and modern broadcast artifacts, like the color bars that paint the headlines. The icons were all custom drawn and the applications tool on the home page and context navigation harkened to a video switch.

We found paint and arrival animations that would also add to the delight, and since this was a broadcast-oriented site, we paint the headlines in color bars and have the color bars exit quickly. We also have bit dots that introduce the color bar headlines in some places, and dots that paint down the page as the visitor travels.

Lagniappe

Every site we build something a little extra, some candy at the bottom of the bag. BitFire's point-to-point transmission works by sending packets across networks in a more efficient and failure-protected manner, so we wanted to animate the website a little more with the bits of BitFire's logo. We created motion throughout the site, and built a homepage interactive that lets people play a little with the bits right on the screen.