Gatorworks | Baton Rouge Web Design & Development

Last Fall our team, led by Creative Director David Link, developed an innovative flash-based web application targeted to children called Santa’s Online Wishlist. The Christmas website invites children to dress a snowman, read letters from other children in Santa’s mailroom, add toys to their wishlist in Santa’s Toy Factory, and best of all write emails to Santa Claus himself. The child’s experience of Santa’s Island can be guided by an elf if they so wish. The helpful elf gives pointers to the child on where to click and what can be done on each area of the site.

Here is a quick tour of the main areas of the site:

Once the child creates an account, he/she will be greeted by the elf and see this home page. This is Santa's Island where the child can begin their journey!

If the child clicks on the snowman, he/she will see a naked snowman with a box that contains various articles of clothing and accessories. The child can click and drag the items over to the snowman to create one of their own. If an article of clothing doesn’t look just right, then the child can drag the item over to the trash can to remove it.

We decided to make a cowboy, bowler Snowman!

If the child goes over to Santa’s Mailroom, he/she will see a very active room with letters being sucked down a pipeline and being dropped into a pile in the center of the room. A friendly elf is quickly sorting the letters into “naughty” or “nice” pipelines that go directly to Santa’s office. If the child clicks on the colored letters on the ground, he/she can read a letter written from other children to Santa.

The Elf in Santa's Mailroom quickly sorts letters from children across the world.

Santa’s Toy Factory is my favorite part of the website. This is where children can see the worker elves in action making plenty of toys. There’s a countdown to Christmas on the wall at the top right, and the child has the option to click on a toy of their choice on the conveyor belt. If the child clicks on a toy, a window will pop-up that pulls the actual image of the product from Amazon. Then, the child has the option to add the toy to his/her “wishlist.”

Toys are quickly being assembled by elves in Santa's Toy Factory.

The final component of the site allows the child to email Santa Claus, and the child has the option to include items in the email that they selected from Santa’s Toy Factory.

So, as you can see, this was a rather involved project that required a great deal of custom illustration and then custom animation (and action script) using Adobe Flash. We were very excited to win an ADDY for this project at the 2010 awards show this year.

I invite you to visit the actual site so you can see these screenshots come to life and hear the jolly Christmas music we have playing in the background. If you have children, I encourage you to let them visit the site and have some fun next Christmas!

Do you like this site? Check out some other completed projects by our award-winning team.

Last week I had the pleasure of attending Mele Printing’s 7th Annual “Krewe of Kookies and Kakes” where I had the opportunity to make my very own king cake! The day started off with a quick meet and greet with the 20 or so other business professionals participating in the king cake class. My friends Trammie Anderson and Mendi LeBlanc from Lamar happened to be in the class as well, so it was great seeing them. After knocking out a cup or two of coffee, we were ready to tour Mele Printing’s impressive 33,000 square-foot facility where we learned about their state-of-the-art prepress as well as digital and offset printing equipment. One of the things that really stuck with me was the cleanliness of their facility. I’ve been in a few other printing warehouses in the past, and they weren’t nearly as clean and organized as Mele. I felt like I could eat my lunch right off the floor!

Mallery Mele leads the king cake cooking class

After the shop tour it was time to make our homemade king cakes. Now, for those of you who don’t know, Mele Printing bakes thousands of cookies each month for their clients. Many of their clients plan to receive their printing order on a Monday or a Wednesday so they’ll be sure to also receive a nice batch of fresh cookies. Anyway, each of us was given a log of dough with cinnamon rolled in the middle. We worked our dough in the form of a circle and threw it in the oven.

Once we took the cakes out of the oven, we dug out a few holes with our fingers on the bottom of the cakes to create a canal to insert fillings. I put strawberry and cream cheese in mine. Then, we flipped the cakes over and drenched them in hot icing and topped them with sugar. It was a masterpiece!

The event was an innovative way for Mele’s clients to learn more about their company all the while celebrating the rich history and culture of Southern Louisiana. We’re proud that Mele Printing is one of our vendors, and we look forward to fostering a long-term relationship with them!

Brian Rodriguez bakes his first Mardi Gras King Cake

Our team just had the pleasure of finishing up the People’s Choice Awards website for the local design competition. Here are the details from the American Advertising Federation of Baton Rouge:

Here is your chance to decide on the elite creative advertising work in Baton Rouge. American Advertising Federation-Baton Rouge has created online voting for four different categories – print, radio, broadcast and interactive – to be awarded at the 2010 ADDY® Awards.

Voting is held online at http://www.aafbr-pca.org/. You can vote once per entry every 24 hours for as many entries as you want in each category. The entrant with the most votes wins! Voting closes at the end of the day on February 14, 2010.

Winner’s will be announced the night of the 2010 ADDY® Awards show on February 20 at the Louisiana State Museum. Tickets are available online at http://www.addy2010.com for $60 and $30 for students. Doors open at 6:30 for a cocktail reception prior to the show.

All entries into 2010 People’s Choice Awards are property of each owner. All entries included were entered properly using the guidelines placed by AAF National and AAF-Baton Rouge.