vivid timeline
February 01, 1998
Brian Bell and Drue Miller jet off to Japan, where Drue gives
a talk about the U.S. Web development scene at Macworld/Tokyo.
While there they visit the Web design firm Kinotrope
in Tokyo's version of Multimedia Gulch, dine on oden
in the Ginza and sushi in Tsukiji (the world's largest fish market),
and manage to not get arrested.
April 01, 1998
CEO Craig Wingate starts his day by patiently defending vivid's
special April
Fools' Day front door to the kindly lawyers from CNET. Humor
triumphs in the end, and the page stays up.
April 02, 1998
Lazard Freres, a prestigious invesment bank, hires vivid
to design its first website.
In preparation for the deregulation of California's energy utilities, PG&E Information Systems hires vivid to prototype a new energy management application for corporate operations and facilities officers. We name the site and develop its identity. The system uses the most advanced technologies available and allows managers to customize the application to show them an incredible amount of information in the form most relvant to them.
May 01, 1998
Greentree Nutrition hires vivid to design and engineer
their first website to sell nutritional supplements over the
Net. vivid helps name the firm and develops the identity,
then builds the taxonomy for their products and research area,
the interface, and the commerce system. Everyone swears that
it wasn't the Kava that got them through the project.
June 01, 1998
Arthur Andersen hires vivid to redesign their award-winning
website for corporate professionals, KnowledgeSpace. The subscription
site gets a new interface, including a new taxonomy, new customization
features, new interactions, and a facelift. This corporate community
site becomes even better and more successful.
July 1998
AltaVista hires vivid to redesign their search system
to be faster, differentiable, and easier to use.
August 01, 1998
Kellogg hires vivid to create some prototypes for a next-generation
website.
As part of our continuing relationship, Bank of America hires us to redesign the homepage to reflect new changes and features.
vivid redesigns a Unisys site for executives, called Exec Mag. The site promptly begins winning awards.
September 02, 1998
A vanload of vividians and their friends head for the alkali
playa in northwestern Nevada for the annual Burningman festival.
One week later they return, giddy, sleep-deprived, and coated in a thick layer of dust.
October 01, 1998
vivid helps Charles
Schwab rebrand a portion of its intranet and redesign and restructure
it so that it serves employees better.
October 31, 1998
Not content with just one day of celebration, Tom Haan wears
a different costume every day of the week leading up to Halloween.
Come Friday, the office is filled with witches, goblins, ghouls,
goth girls, and even G-O-D himself.
November 01, 1998
vivid helps the health
insurance giant, Provident, launch its first website. This is
one of the first full-service health eCommerce sites and allows
customers to explore options and sign-up for insurance over the
Net. vivid's involvement included the company and service
branding, identity, design, and engineering.
As part of our continuing relationship, Bank of America hires us to redesign the homepage to reflect new changes in features and content and to add the capability for placing highlights on the homepage of content in deep areas of the site.
November 20, 1998
vivid throws a party
because, frankly, we haven't had one in too darned long. Goddess-like
hostesses Victoria and Alisa (who put those Tupperware-hosting
lightweights to shame) cook up a delightful evening at a local
warehouse. Highlights include a rousing round of "vivid
Jeopardy", tables piled high with sushi and sweets, bartenders
serving up special drinks (you haven't lived til you've tasted
a "Virgin Nathan"), and an unexpected visit from five
lasses in short skirts who can't sing or dance worth a damn but
managed to make the crowd cheer anyway (when they left the stage).
Mark "Sporty" Brotherton, Victoria "Scary" Vitalie, Ryan "Posh" O'hearn, Kristen "Ginger" Bottrell, and Drue "Baby" Miller do things that should never be done in public while accompanied by band members Zachary Smith, Alex Smoller, Victor Barclay, and Dan Lederer.
December 19, 1998
In a move that they'll probably reconsider next year, PLATINUM
invites us to attend their annual holiday party at the Westin
St. Francis. A swanky entourage of vividians turn out for the
dinner-and-dancing affair (as well as a few other company's parties
that were held in the hotel that night -- hey, can we help it
if we're curious?)
Upon exiting the hotel, the
group gathers to applaud the arrival of a just-wed couple (meanwhile,
a quick-thinking Mark Waldo makes a beeline for their chauffeur
and, after a few minutes, waves the rest of us into the back
of what must be the longest white stretch limo to cruise the
streets of San Francisco. How very senior prom of us. After an
hour of tooling around playing with the sunroof, the interior
lights, the bar, and anything else we could get our hands on,
we wind up at Michelle Kensinger's home for a final round of
nightcaps (which, by then, were morningcaps). The story gets
pretty ugly from there, so let's just call it a night, eh?