Case Study

Big Duck Media

Overview

If you travel around Hillsboro, Oregon, you’ll see benches scattered about the area with advertisements on them. Who takes care of them? Who does the design work for them? Big Duck Media is a full-service outdoor advertising company. They are “your local source for bench advertising.”… and they are the company who manages the advertising placed on those benches, which are professionally maintained to confidently frame any brand message. They have a team of experts who offer quality service and attention to detail that is bar none. And they are particularly fun people to talk with, and do business with!

In June 2021, I “met” Ray Ayers, the President of Big Duck Media, on the phone. I was referred to him by the Washington County Chamber of Commerce. They were looking for someone to do occasional graphic design (for those amazing benches), and eventually wanted someone who could redesign their website to fit their needs. More on Big Duck Media projects below:

Details

The Muhly’s Benches

The first project I did for Big Duck Media was the design of some transit bench artwork for a company working with them – Muhly’s Garage Doors. We did some roughs of the item, adjusted the text in the advertisement, then, after a couple of revisions and some design “edits” which they loved, and the Muhly’s Garage Doors Bench Artwork was complete! You can see one of the locations in the project photos section on this page.

The Big Duck Media Logo

Big Duck Media used to use a photo of the feet of a sports duck mascot (think big orange webbed feet). He decided he wanted to find some nice artwork of a wood duck. Once we found that image and purchased it, I paired the graphic with two lines of text – the business name, where I used the same font he had on his old logo, and a subtext line with the location done in a simple, easy to read text in all capitals. Once that was done, I did multiple outputs so he has versions that can work on dark or light backgrounds, and with or without the duck, or with/without the secondary text. We both really liked how the logo came out. That informed some of the decisions made in the website redesign.

The Website

Once the logo redesign was complete, we started on the website. One of the things both Ray and I really liked about the logo was the colors in the Wood Duck. So I started out by creating the color palette, which consisted of colors pulled from the duck artwork:

Big Duck Media – Color Palette

Note: Colorpeek is a fantastic tool that I use frequently to share colors with clients, or to create code for my website design work. Check it out!

Those five colors are there in a nice color bar accent at the very top of the website. They inform the rest of the site colors and are found throughout. Green and blue are the main colors, with Green being the color used for Call to Action. We also used lots of eggshell white and dark charcoal, plus various tints and shades of the main color palette. A fun palette to work with and a bit tricky to keep the look and feel of the site consistent, but in the end, it all came together beautifully.

The website has the important stuff right up front; information about bench advertising with a link to the contact page, plus a section that explains the benefits of bench advertising (“Why bench advertising?”), and more. They also wanted their coverage map (which the team updates regularly), a page that has photos of past work, so clients can see the locations and what their ad might look like in a particular location, then information about the team and some frequently asked questions.

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