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Site of the Week
SeanTracey.com
What exactly makes a web site "classy" I cannot say. But I know classy when I
see it, and it’s rare on the blinking, spinning, information carnival that we
call the Web. So just go see the Sean Tracey Associates (STA) site and you will
know.
Visit the
Sean Tracey Associates web site
I ran my own video production company in this town for almost 15 years, so I
know when I’ve been bested. Sean Tracey’s name was a synonym for high-quality
video and film production. Translating that regional reputation into a site for
a national first-time audience on the Web is no easy task. But I’ll be dipped
if STA hasn’t pulled it off.
Firstly, the company has honed its message, The Portsmouth-based production company
makes TV commercials—clean and simple. Their web site is brimful of evidence that
their work is as good as anything you can find on the tube. The samples pop right
to life, thanks to Quick Time’s Fast Start. In seconds visitors learn that the
company has mastered fine lighting, camera movement, rich audio, excellent casting.
This is a true video portfolio on the Web, unencumbered by patter and clutter
and blather and bluster. You are only as good as your last commercial in this
dog-eat-dog business, and for STA that inevitably means prime rib.
What gets you is the homepage. Webmaster RJ Balch says the group spent fully
two months just talking about what the homepage had to accomplish. The debate
paid off. In a superb bit of Flash artistry, the color face of a girl appears
against a gray backdrop. She opens her eyes and smiles Mona-Lisa-like as the company
name and a miniature navigation bar assemble onscreen. Then the camera freezes
as the portrait goes grayscale. That’s it! But in five or six seconds the opening
animation says volumes about the quality of the company’s work in the time-challenged
industry of TV commercials.
The STA credit list adds up to one web developer per second. Besides the boss
and webmaster RJ, Dartmouth grad Zhan Xaio programmed the homepage spot while
interning at STA. Brenda Dziadzio designed the sequence and Scot Villeneuve orchestrated
the Flash action, smooth and watchable and – well – classy.
Rather than name drop the company’s client list, I’ll let you go and see. The
five person team now works from a classy location on Bow Street. And we should
be glad for that. The Seacoast has an increasingly big reputation to uphold as
a web design capital and an artistic destination point. Web sites like this, emanating
from this little spot, can only enhance our image to companies that might otherwise
spend their clean non-polluting dollars in Boston or New York. While they are
here, they spend more of that green in our restaurants and hotels. In a city that
doesn’t do much economic development on its own – well crafted web sites like
this make us all look classy.
Please visit these SeacoastNH.com ad partners.