Farmers' Market Flats
The Farmers' Market Flats was a residential condominium project in downtown St. Paul. The building was designed to include a year-round farmers' market run in conjunction with the popular St. Paul Farmers' Market. Sweeney Development, the creator of the project, hired Blinc to create a brand and graphic identity for their project and implement that brand in print pieces, signage and a website.
Link to a copy of the Farmer's Market Flats site from the Wayback Machine dated 9/22/2008.
The building project was put on hold in 2009 and website has been taken down.
Responsibilities
- Create information design and site architecture.
- Design navigation scheme.
- Work with graphic designer to create visual layout.
- Manage project deadlines and deliverables.
- Create written content.
- Convert floor plans and architectural renderings into web-ready graphics.
- Build site in HTML/CSS.
- Secure web services and deploy site on new infrastructure.
Considerations
Sweeney Development first approached Blinc on the Farmers' Market Flats project in February of 2007. The client needed the brand, identity, basic print pieces and website completed in 6 weeks for a kick-off event early that spring. Meeting the client's deadlines were going to be a challenge so we had to use an accellerated production schedule to deliver the products the client needed.
Agile site development techniques were used to allow us to begin designing the site's architecture and determine content requirements before the brand and identity were finalized. We framed-in the site and began constructing segments of it while the visual design team put together a logo, color scheme and graphic identity for the Flats project. Our development approach succeeded and we were able to get the site live for the project groundbreaking.
As the project developed, Sweeney Development asked us to research and prepare to set up a webcam to broadcast the construction of the building over the site. We identified the hardware and software requirements for a live webcam and prepared to launch that functionality. The project encountered some roadblocks related to some building issues and the difficulties in the mortgage industry, so the developer decided it could not afford the expense of the webcam so that functionality was never deployed.
