SuperChrome: The future of Spray-Chrome Technology
Click the image to visit the site: www.superchrome.ca
For the Ladies
The images used in this site are of pretty girls, fast cars, and lots of chrome because that is the demographic…so forewarned is forearmed.
How it all started
The owners of this company were introduced to me by another client. They had already fired one designer and the second developer was not doing a good job for them. The project was really daunting in that the site required a lot of technical re-write of both the code and the content. It also required some serious design triage. The principals of the company were really busy with the day-to-day operations of the company and needed someone with some vision, technical skill, and the ability to get things done in a vacuum.
About the Company
This is a international company that sells 3 basic products, imported from abroad and manufactured here, to distributors in foreign and domestic markets for re-distribution to end user service providers in the automotive industries. Those products include:
- permanent spray-on chrome
- hydrographic technology to use over chrome
- automotive tints, paints and clears to work in specialized locations
About the Website
Extensive use of Sliders
This site incorporates many sliders each is styled as a revolving 30 secondish commercial to sell one of the brands this company trades under. Most of the images in the sliders were created by myself, sans photography that was provided by the company. I also did the choreography for the sliders so everything timed, just right. If you are interested in some of the technical details of how to do this, message me, and I will gladly show you how I did it.
Designs by Yours Truly
Each of these products sells under a different brand and as such, required 3 separate logos, these are my designs and registered trademarks for the company. The initial brand SuperChrome, started to be developed by another firm, I took over the design and brought it, along with the others to fruition. There was a great deal of drift in the brand image before I took over and I had to standardize much of the imagery and bring the brand back on track.
Content Writing
Based on copious amounts of information provided by the company, and my own research, I cobbled together the content and wrote the paragraphs in understandable language. This is a lot harder than it sounds – the product is highly technical in nature but is sold to users, usually automotive specialty painters and artists, that have not been educated to the same degree as the research scientists that develop the product for the company. I acted as a bridge between the PHD’s and the laymen.
Video Content
The company had a large cache of raw video from disparate sources that had to be edited. The video has good and not-so-good content on the same “reals”. I chopped much of it into bite-sized pieces, developed and added and consistent intro and outro for the videos. I even played and recorded the opening licks on the guitar that are incorporated into the intros and outros for the videos.
Technical Goodies
There are a few technical goodies thrown into the site that I developed. If you view the page source you will see a couple of JavaScripts in the head.
- Establishes a Fixed-Fluid-Fluid Column design, that was necessary due to the nature of some of the content.
- Resizes the videos to column-width as the fluid columns resize.
- Embeds a live map into a slider and established the map-pins on the map.
Shopping Page
The shopping page uses PayPal’s native shopping cart rather than creating a whole e-commerce system because the company only sells a few different products. I chose to go this route for ease of operation and consistency in design.
Other Collateral
In addition to the website, I designed and printed
- product labels
- brochures
- flyers
- business cards
- postcards
- application guides
- product inclusion usage guides
Next Steps
Currently I am working on a series of education modules that can be sold to end-users and others who want to learn how to do Hydrographing commercially. This skill is seriously sought after, and though, at its base, is quite simple, requires a great deal of skill to move beyond the basics and create the quality demanded in the automotive after-market. The education modules will be a combination of video and text-based learning units housed in a custom, secured, online school with testing and certification for graduates.