Services Rendered:
Our Services
The Project:
When The
Radio Network (TRN) looked to re-platform and repower their
on-line brands their requirements challenged our approach to web
design.
After a world-wide search US based Mediaspan's broadcast media content management
system (CMS) was selected to power the websites. We won
the Information Architecture and Design job leveraging off our 8
year history successfully designing TRN's station websites.
TRN and The Australian Radio Network (ARN) are commonly owned by
a JV of Australian APN News and Media and US based Clear Channel
Communications so to get maximum return for the investment a
single project was agreed to design and build 18 new websites
across both businesses on the common platform.
TRN brands ZM, Newstalk ZB, Classic Hits, Coast, Easymix, Flava,
Radio Sport broadcast to various regions across New Zealand and are
household names loved by their listeners. Each website needed to
leverage their individual brand, meet the needs of their target
audiences and required the utmost flexibility to deliver rich media
and engaging content with looks that could kill.
We took a different approach to the website architecture by
adopting a component methodology rather than a template structure
giving TRN the ability to customise each page to their liking. We
did a lot of heavy thinking in the discovery phase to lay the
foundations for the component design and work out the modules that
would be used across all of the sites.
We designed a look for each brand and applied this to each of
the components such as polls, image rotators, media pods, etc. Many
components needed different sizes to expand to a 1, 2 or 3 column
base grid. All in all we had about 40 components with 80
combinations opening up the creative potential for ARN to mix and
match components to build customised pages.
The brand designs evolved from one to the next and as the basic
structure of the sites were the same, the home page designs just
came naturally. Anne, our obsessed #Glambert designer truly had a
blast designing with her pop icons as daily inspiration. Our goal
was to retain the brand integrity but also give each skin a fresh,
modern look on the home page - add the pizazz and all the lipstick
too!
The TRN Digital team and station managers were stoked. Anthea
Whittle, TRN's Digital Development Manager "Terabyte's
understanding of our different brands and their various audiences
have delivered exceptional designs which are on-brand within a
restricted framework. Not a simple undertaking, which they handled
elegantly."
The component approach is a real benefit to the smaller stations
in the group as they now have high end functionality with their
limited budget by leveraging across the whole group.
Even though the sites have the same components on hand, each
website looks unique and caters to the station's target audiences
and regions.
Here are the new TRN websites:
ZM, Newstalk
ZB, Hauraki, Classic
Hits, Coast, Easymix, Flava, Radio Sport.