Gorton Studios - Websites that Work

San Francisco, Here We Come!

admin — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:46:52 -0600

Gorton Studios will sponsor, present and attend this Spring. Join Us!

Gorton Studios: Now +1 Better!

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:18:38 -0600

Welcome Chach—our newest team member.

Northrop

admin — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 10:38:51 -0500

Northrop is one of the University of Minnesota’s major icons and its central ceremonial and presentational space. As an organization, the Northrop must present an attractive, compelling face to its many different audiences and do so in a way that allows them to showcase beautiful videos and imagery, share lots of information and promote ticket sales.

Gorton Studios worked with the staff of the Northrop to design and develop a media-rich website. The site has ample room to showcase upcoming artists, events and news, both on the homepage and throughout the site. It also ties into Facebook, Twitter and MySpace and cross-connects content within the site to facilitate lively after-show discussions of events and performances.

Northrop staff are ecstatic with the results (we've heard words like “Glorious”). And, not only did Gorton Studios deliver on their short-term needs, we also provided them with a flexible structure to continue growing the site and the training to be able to do so.

The new site is built using the Drupal framework, which is increasingly being embraced by the University of Minnesota for a tremendous range of web needs. It also happens to be Gorton Studios' favorite tool to make great things happen for our clients.

http://northrop.umn.edu

Life (Part 2)

admin — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:01:07 -0500

Life (Part 2) is a PBS television series by and about the 26% of the American population who are 55 and older. Host Robert Lipsyte, an Emmy winner and former New York Times columnist, uses his tough-minded journalistic instincts, ever-ready wit, and very strong opinions to ensure that baby boomers overcome their denial and face facts: the time to do something about age-related issues is right now.

Gorton Studios worked with the staff of Life (Part 2) to design and develop a media-rich website as an online complement for the tone and content of the series. In addition to providing a blogging platform, lots of video, exclusive essays, interviews and more, the site also hooks into social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook. And, on top of it all, we built it in a way that makes it very easy for the show's producers to manage and extend as needed.

The new site is built using the Drupal framework, which makes it (to the best of our knowledge) the first Drupal website used for a PBS show. PBS has previously used Drupal in it's Engage platform and associated tools; it's great to see that they're continuing to adopt this flexible, responsive tool.

http://www.pbs.org/lifepart2/

We're in ELLE

admin — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 10:10:19 -0500

And it's the Miley Cyrus issue!

Award of Excellence

admin — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:18:03 -0500

Gorton Studios wins another award!

Bike Walk Twin Cities

admin — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:11:37 -0500

Bike Walk Twin Cities (BWTC) is part of a federal initiative, the Non-Motorized Transportation Pilot Program to increase biking and walking, and decrease driving.

Bike Walk Twin Cities came to Gorton Studios needing to create a one-stop shop for information about Twin Cities biking & walking that played well with like-minded organizations. The site needed to be easy to administer and extend as additional activities and information became available. BWTC acts as the information and community hub for increasing biking and walking throughout the Twin Cities.

Gorton Studios designed and developed the site appeal to a broad audience and effectively expose the significant breadth and depth of the content BWTC has to share. The site, built with Drupal, also has an interesting technical feature in the homepage banner. As the weather is an important consideration for biking and walking in this region of the US, the homepage imagery and messaging are weather-aware. Different backgrounds (e.g downtown with rain falling), foregrounds (e.g. people walking with umbrellas) and message are managed by BWTC site admins and automatically change as the weather changes. This allows the site to have pertinent messaging year-round, without having to place an additional burden on the people managing the site.

http://www.bikewalktwincities.org

Drupal / Tessitura Integration

admin — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 15:36:18 -0500

The Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM) is a large regional science museum located on the banks of the Mississippi River in downtown St. Paul. The Science Museum's programs combine research and collection facilities, a public science education center, extensive teacher education and school outreach programs, and an Imax Convertible Dome Omnitheater. They provide science education to an audience of more than a million people per year.

The SMM needed to integrate their new ticketing system, built on Tessitura, with their Drupal-powered website. After an early implementation by a different vendor had very mixed results, the Science Museum turned to Gorton Studios to do the job right. Our first task was to make it possible to register for classes online.

In order to give Science Museum programmers and staff the flexibility they needed, Gorton Studios developed three Drupal modules:

Drupal/Tessitura: handles communications in a generalized fashion between Drupal and Tessitura.

Tessitura Productions, Performances and Checkout: handles listing and selection, cart management, checkout and payment processing.

SMM Business Logic: handles the specific rules needed by the SMM for online class registrations, such as age verification, parent/guardian requirements, emergency contact information and validate all other class-specific rules.

https://www.smm.org/classes/

Taking Charge of Your Health

admin — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 15:10:35 -0500

The University of Minnesota's Center for Spirituality & Healing (CSH) enriches health and well-being by providing high-quality interdisciplinary education and research on the topic of integrative health and healing.

In that capacity, CSH needed a flexible, easily-managed site to house their growing library of content; the building blocks needed to be simple and extensible as the Center continues to grow and expand.

Gorton Studios designed and built the new website and it's companion health planner with the Drupal platform, allowing us to expose the breadth & depth of CSH's content without compromising design, navigability, ease-of-use or features.

http://takingcharge.csh.umn.edu/

Logic Product Development

admin — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 09:26:39 -0500

Logic is a product development, fulfillment and lifecycle management company dedicated to helping customers design, develop, and deliver innovative products. In additoin to product design, engineering and manufacturing services, Logic is a leading supplier of system on modules (SOMs), development kits, and single board computers.

Logic's existing website was a hodge-podge of different systems, tied together in a bewildering mix of technologies and corrsepondingly amazingly difficult to manage.

Gorton Studios worked with Logic to architect and build an attractive, functional and navigable site. The new site is built in Drupal and has given Logic the ability to have their content reflect their continuously updated product catalog and evolving strategic vision.