Monday, August 13, 2001		Article

HERE'S taking a look at the site of a Chandigarh-based company that makes sites for others. 3BD, an interactive-media development company, is venturing into the US and European markets, offering complete development services for Web and multimedia projects.

Visiting their site (www.3bd.com.), created in both HTML and Flash, users get a choice of the versions on the home page itself. The high-bandwidth Flash version of offers a rich media experience.

It features a new concept of "animated illustrations" that has been developed by 3BD to illustrate the services they offer and highlight design skills. The home page has a login for the client project collaboration extranet. Clients login here and review their work in progress. This extranet is developed using Java Servlets and JSP with MySQL as backend.

The site is completely optimised for search engines and fast downloading. The company has avoided making the site completely in Flash and has, instead, opted for a blend of appropriate technologies. Each animation has its own pre-loader to ensure smooth performance on the user's computer.

Say the site's designers, "Inspiration for the animated illustrations came from a study of Edward de Bono-the father of 'Lateral Thinking.' The colors used on the Web site are important because they communicate non-verbally and bypass the intellect to work directly on feelings. The bright animations coming to life from foundations of solid metallic grey deliver a message that may be overlooked in mere slogans. Overall, the site design reinforces feelings of strength and solidity and works as a whole to communicate professionalism and perfection."

The primary target audience is international companies with a particular profile. The site has been visualised with this audience in mind, for that is where the business lies. It is designed to be scalable and easily updateable.

The team has experience in delivering computer-based tutorials, multimedia content and Web development. They already have bagged a decent international portfolio of Web projects, character animation and multimedia production. However, to get full details of their portfolio, one has to login and get a password from the site administrator. —TNS