Brandywine Realty Trust, one of the largest, publicly traded, full-service, integrated real estate companies in the United States, partnered with I-SITE to create a new dynamic and highly visual corporate website.
The I-SITE team brought its extensive experience in planning and building unique websites that are rich in both storytelling and data. Brandywine’s brought their industry-leading deep-seated commitment to responsible and sustainable environmental and social strategies, and track record of creating physical spaces that catalyze connection, collaboration, and innovation.
Early in planning the teams worked closely to develop a leaner, more relevant site navigation to segment the target audience’s interests. This also included discovery and creation of a technical plan for the building of a robust, flexible section featuring all of the properties in their 24 million square foot portfolio.
The Brandywine team also wished to highlight some of the large-scale, multi-phase, mixed-use developments as well as their focus on corporate responsibility. The I-SITE team organized the content in a clean, flexible navigation and responsive page design that works optimally on all desktop and mobile devices.
Some of the highlights of the website include:
- Clean, attractive responsive design that highlights the properties and developments
- Robust property listings integrated with Brandywine’s back end data systems
- Custom map and filtering for all the properties in the portfolio
- Highly modular templates providing great flexibility for the site editors
Drupal 8 was selected as the CMS based on the expandability, security and administration requirements for the website. The site is hosted on I-SITE’s favored hosting platform Pantheon.
Post-launch the I-SITE team continues to support the website and is working closely with the Brandywine team to optimize the current platform and add new content and features that meet their marketing goals.
Brandywine Realty Trust, one of the largest, publicly traded, full-service, integrated real estate companies in the United States, turned to I-SITE to create a new Schuylkill Yards website to publicize their extensive and exciting developments on the west bank of the Schuylkill river in Philadelphia. This up and coming neighborhood is home to East Coast travel hub 30th Street Station and on the doorstep of the University of Pennsylvania.
The I-SITE team brought their extensive experience in community building and digital design for districts that have undergone major transformation in recent years such as Lower Manhattan and Times Square
As a first step in the project, the team familiarized itself with Brandywine’s portfolio of current and planned buildings that offer over 6.9 million square feet of office, lab, residential, retail, hotel, and green space. The goal for the redesign was to present Brandywine’s impressive property portfolio and neighborhood highlights such as the Cira Green rooftop greenspace.
During the planning phase Brandywine and I-SITE determined that the navigation should be simplified and supported by a dynamic design focused on presenting the benefits of living and working in Schuylkill Yards. The I-SITE team was able to leverage a wealth of video and photography provided by Brandywine to help tell the Schuyllkill Yards story and create a clean and useable design.
Some of the highlights of the website include:
- Clean, attractive responsive design with strong Schuylkill Yards branding
- Property listings with filter by type
- Integration with enterprise calendaring system
- Vimeo video integration
Drupal 8 was selected as the CMS based on the expandability, security and administration requirements. The site is hosted on I-SITE’s favored hosting platform Pantheon.
Post-launch the I-SITE team will continue to support the website and work closely with the Brandywine team to add new content and features.
The I-SITE team continued its long-term love affair with New York with the redesign of the Downtown Alliance’s website for visitors, residents and businesses.
With an extensive set of features, listings and content for multiple audiences, the I-SITE team collaborated closely with Alliance staff on mapping out a new architecture and features set that would deliver a greatly improved experience to site visitors looking for both information and inspiration.
The fully responsive design is rich in vibrant photography that helps communicate the ongoing revitalization of Lower Manhattan for live, work and play. New customized mapping and search tools were developed to deliver easy access to listings and events on mobile devices as well as desktop computers.
Key features of the new site include:
- Custom searchable maps for locating restaurants, hotels, events and much more.
- Full event list calendar with category filtering and maps.
- New My Visit Planner for saving events and listings to share with friends and family.
- Video testimonials from a host of industry leaders talking about the benefit of locating In Lower Manhattan.
- Improved social Media integration for Twitter and Instagram.
Post-launch the I-SITE team suppported the website, working closely with the Alliance on adding new features and enhancements.
In 2010 the I-SITE team paved the way for animal conservation on mobile with iGorilla, the first iPhone app with the sole purpose of supporting the plight of Africa’s endangered mountain gorilla.
The idea for the app came about after CEO Ian Cross traveled to Virunga in 2006 after attending a creative economy conference in Rwanda. On his return Ian reached out to Emmanuel De Merode and Samantha Newport of Virunga National Park to discuss developing a social network for the gorilla families. With the explosion in the number of smart phones worldwide this idea eventually evolved into iGorilla.
Sourcing up-to-date content from the field team of scientists and rangers the users were able to select and follow a gorilla family, read updates and watch videos and donate directly to the park to support one of the many projects dedicated to gorilla conservation and helping the community.
Soon after release the App was featured on the home page of the BBC News website. For more information on this project and if your interested in creating something similar for your organization contact Ian Cross.
Combine fine beer, eclectic Philadelphians and what do you get? I-SITE’s award-winning Holiday Confessionals video of course!
Maintaining the team’s run of producing finely-crafted original content for friends and clients, the 2010 offering was conceived after deciding to host local beer celebs Two Guys on Beer at the I-SITE office to taste and compare an East Coast and a West Coast holiday ale. A wide range of Philadelphians were then invited to the tasting unaware that after ‘a couple’ they would be ushered into a small room to share an anecdote or two.
The loosely scripted video truly came together in the editing suite with the help of local film maker Demian Fenton, a cameo by Rosie the pug and an ending resplendent with Glen Campbell’s Rhinestone Cowboy.
Sing along now and remember the trials and tribulations of holidays past!
Sprout contacted the I-SITE team to create a media rich mobile app to encourage both kids and parents to complete healthy challenges together. The app named Family Challenge is part of a larger ‘healthy living’ initiative called “Be Kind to Yourself“. The app utilizes themes from both Sprout and Iceland-based children’s television program LazyTown programming and presents a parent-child team with ten healthy challenges. Each challenge is comprised of an activity that focuses on healthy eating or exercise. After a parent-child team has completed the activity, they mark it as complete and move on to the next activity. At the completion of a set number of challenges, the parent-child team wins an ‘incentive’ in the form of a music video, theme song or a themed photo frame wallpaper.
The project from concept to development to wireframing to design was highly collaborative. Highlights include:
- Rewards you with videos and other multimedia on reaching milestones
- Creation of custom wallpapers with users own photos that can be shared through Facebook
- Tracks your progress in with a Energy Meter and ‘Trophy Case’
- Reminders to complete the next challenge
The Family Challenge App App received notable awards including Best Family Mobile App at the 2013 IAC Awards. Post release the I-SITE team continued to update the App and issue new releases.
For more information on this project and if your interested in creating something similar for your organization or company contact Ian Cross.
I-SITE teamed up with Josette Bonafino of MYX: Multicultural Youth Exchange to create the Armenian Housing Crisis iPad App in order to raise awareness of the chronic poverty housing in Armenia and to offer support to some of the country’s most vulnerable families.
This storytelling app features an historic timeline of Armenia, an overview of the country’s current economic situation, video interviews with domik families and interactive infographics. The team also created a responsive website to promote the App and a Web page to accept donations for a project that provides free showers to the domik residents.
To date the program has raised over $3,000 with 100% of the funds going directly to the community. MYX recently traveled back to Armenia to continue work on the project and I-SITE will continue to update the App based on new content.
