Small town business are at the heart of our client base. When Bippus State Bank, a Huntington-based bank in northeast Indiana, said they needed a refresh, we were excited to work with them! Their long history and commitment to their community in Huntington, Roanoke, and Manchester, Indiana is laudable. In a time when banks merge with each other to gain profits, BSB stays independent and local.

One thing was clear – BSB needed and wanted a content management system so they could be in control of their content. Instead of editing static HTML in Dreamweaver, we upgraded them to ExpressionEngine, a PHP-based CMS complete with CSS styling to promote a consistent, modern look and feel, with beautiful, bold typography.

Beautifully styled tables with easy-to-update rates and product matrices.

Some other great features:

• Special content types for bank and ATM locations, that dynamically interact with Google Maps to provide custom directions. This increases the scalability and longevity of the site, as BSB expands and adds locations and ATMs.
• Specially-styled rate tables that display interest rates, product matrices, and structured information in a consistent and easy-to-read manner.
• A Javascript rotating banner and promotion carousel on the homepage, so BSB can constantly display new and refreshed information.
• A restyled portal to their online banking system — allowing customers to login from the homepage without interrupting their user experience.

We’re glad we can help the great staff at Bippus State Bank take control of their content and stay on the leading edge with their website.

Check out their site at BippusBank.com! And click below to see some additional screenshots from Bippus Bank’s website.

Our designers have been talking a lot about responsive web design, a concept we became excited about after reading A Book Apart‘s book on Responsive Web Design. On their website, they quote John Allsopp’s article, “A Dao of Web Design“:

The control which designers know in the print medium, and often desire in the web medium, is simply a function of the limitation of the printed page. We should embrace the fact that the web doesn’t have the same constraints, and design for this flexibility. But first, we must “accept the ebb and flow of things.”

Basically, he calls for an end to thinking of a website as an extension of a static, print brochure, and acknowledged that web traffic is trending to a higher percentage of mobile browsers. So many websites that are “optimized for mobile” are pieced together, as a stripped-down afterthought to a desktop browser-width site.

Responsive design changes that. A responsive website designs a layout for a desktop/laptop, tablet, and mobile browser alongside each other, and uses media queries to determine what type of browser is loading the site. Best yet, it’s a fluid, dynamic layout. If you resize the window in your desktop browser, it will reorder and rescale in front of your eyes. (Click the website screengrab and try for yourself! If you make the window narrower, you can see how it scales and reorders information.

If you scale the Jeffrey-Mohr website smaller, you can see how the header image, slow-loading on a browser running on 3G, switches out, and the phone number displays more prominently on the screen. And if your mobile browser is a phone, the phone number becomes clickable so you can call their office right from the website.

This is the future of web design. We’re making a commitment to make as many of our web projects as responsive as we can to give a site longevity. Right now, we’re at the forefront of this technology, and we hope that more in the industry will follow. We’ll be talking more and more about responsive design here.

Meanwhile, we’re excited to launch this site! If you ever need a dentist in the Van Wert Area, go meet Dr. Jessica Mohr. She’s friendly, gentle, and community driven. Cruise on by her and her father’s website, whether on your desktop, laptop, tablet, or phone, and check them out!

Recently, we were honored with the opportunity to work with Wells County, Indiana’s Chamber of Commerce to redesign their website. The Wells County Economic Development Commission, whose site we’ve done previously, took notice and talked with us about a refresh.

We love Wells County. Not only are they primed to be a regional economic force (being so close to Fort Wayne International Airport) with a diverse and dynamic industry base, but their motto rings true: Where ideas and success converge. So, naturally, we jumped at the chance to get involved!

Check out their site for more information about Wells County. Notice the clean, green, blue and white color scheme. Explore this top-to-bottom customized website, built on a dynamic ExpressionEngine content management system. We truly believe its custom functionality truly reflects the diversity and vibrancy of Wells County.

Check out a few other page designs below, or check out their website!

District 79 State Representative Matt Lehman needed a website to make him more accessible to the general public. We designed a new site for him to discuss his stance on various issues, publicize events, offer volunteer opportunities, and give people the opportunity to learn more about him and his campaign. We also placed the site in ExpressionEngine, so that Matt could easily edit the site himself to stay current with the latest issues and events.

Check out the site.

Sharp Shooter Sports Photography is an exciting and unique business serving the sports communities of Fort Wayne and the surrounding areas.  Sharp Shooter focuses on capturing the action in all sports — inside or out, day or night, rain or shine.  In creating their new website, we focused on an innovative approach to drawing attention to these “action shots” by incorporating a large interactive slideshow on both the home page and galleries pages.  We also made it easy for them to update photos by incorporating ExpressionEngine as a content management system.  The site also features a proofing area for clients to go in and privately view their photos.

Check out the site.

Virtual Umbrella needed a brand new design to help them showcase their professionalism and expertise in virtual machine server environments. We used a simple gray and blue-green palette for the layout. The site boasts news, a member section, and great information about the business. The site is wrapped into ExpressionEngine for easy content management.

Check out the site.

Wells Chamber of Commerce needed a redesign to unify the entire site in a content management system and give them a fresh look. We used rich blues and vivid greens to build a modern site with modern appeal. We used Typekit to create better web fonts throughout the entire site and ExpressionEngine to manage the content.

Check out the site.

The City of Berne wanted a modern website to help them communicate news, events, and other general information to the citizens and visitors. Berne has a rich Swiss history that permeates through the entire city. We modeled the website after this style with wooden textures, embellishments, and more. We wrapped the entire design into ExpressionEngine to help manage content easily and effectively. The site features news, a calendar of events, and much more.

Check out the site.

Adams County Indiana Government needed a redesign that would allow them to easily edit content and give them a modern look. We made a crisp, professional design and wrapped it all within ExpressionEngine so content could be easily maintained. The site features Adams County news and information about the Adams County offices.

Check out the site.

NACCAP needed a new site designed and placed into a content management system that is easy to work with and make appropriate changes to recent news, upcoming events and job opportunities. We designed a new template for them and integrated the site into Expression Engine for easy content editing.

Check out the site.