Office of Creative Services wins 3 ‘Golden Globes’ for Web

It’s the Golden Globes for online awards, said Rebecca Salerno, associate director of IU Creative Services. This year, IU’s Office of Creative Services won three silver W3 awards, or “Golden Globes.”

The office won these prestigious awards for its work on the Celebrate IU site http://celebrate.iu.edu/, E-Science site http://escience2008.iu.edu/ and Kelley School of Business Department of Marketing site http://www.kelley.iu.edu/.

The awards are issued yearly by the International Academy of Visual Arts and are judged on creativity, usability, navigation, functionality, visual design and ease of use. With more than 3,000 entries to compete against, the Office of Creative Services is proud of its accomplishments.

Salerno said she thinks it makes everyone feel special, and it shows to their clients they’re doing quality work.

“We’re very proud of all the people who work here,” she said.

Kathleen Chmelewski, who led the work done on the Celebrate IU site, said she is also excited about the awards they received.

“It’s always a lot of fun to have your work recognized,” she said.

She also mentioned that their work is completely a team effort.

Keith Roach, who also worked on the Celebrate IU site, agrees.

“It really is amazing when you step back and realize how many people work on these sites,” he said.

The reason behind their team effort is that it takes plenty of time and hard, dedicated work to produce these award-winning sites. Chmelewski said it usually takes anywhere from six months to a year to produce a Web site.

Chmelewski and Salerno agree that the first step to designing a site is figuring out what the client’s goal is and who its targeted audience will be.

After that, Chmelewski said that everything is broken down into smaller and smaller pieces. One major aspect they focus on is making the Web site appeal to the viewer.

“We want to do things that are innovative,” Salerno said.

Ultimately, she said they want the viewer to get a great impression of IU so they want to visit and meet the current faculty and students.

When working on the Celebrate IU Web site, Chmelewski said she took into consideration that this celebration is a marker in time.

“(The celebration) is on the cusp of the old and the new,” she said.
She also focused on tradition, realizing the strong emphasis placed on it at IU.

The office has also won awards in the past, including a silver W3 award last year, one gold and one silver W3 two years ago, a Webby award in 2007, an honorable mention Webby in 2006 and various Council for Advancement and Support of Education awards in the past.