When it comes to a symphony, I prefer the playfulness of Ravel or Debussy to the ponderous progress of a Beethoven Symphony—like No. 5’s DAH, DAH, DAH, DAAAH. (You know, the heavy stuff.) But whether our hearts flutter to the flute or the sudden drop of an imposing bass note, I am captivated by the seamlessness of great music.

The difference between good music and great music—true for all art forms—is the attention paid by the creator to the details which illuminate the whole. Effect and affect are both in the details.

The quick, playful interactions between the fingers of a pianist and the keys. The harpist’s hands tracing back and forth over the strings like they were skimming water, appearing to do nothing. It’s a kind of behind-the-scenes magic happening right in front of you. And every piece of it determines the whole.

Think of the Traffic Department as the agency maestro. Except we’re not ensuring that every piece is played in the right chord. We leave that to the players. (Also, there are ACDs and CDs for that.) We don’t tune anyone’s instruments or clean anyone’s spit valves. What we do is move the creative parts to the players to let them apply their expertise before returning it to us where it can be exchanged for the next motion. Some people say their door is always open to the agency. Ours is always revolving. The process has to be seamless. God forbid it moves like DAH, DAH, DAH, DAAAH.

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The mobile revolution is upon us. We all walk around with these devices practically sewn into our hands, and smart marketers are beginning to realize implications of the tectonic shift happening in the digital world. According to Gartner Research, by 2013 mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide.

So when Full Sail University, one of the most prestigious entertainment-media schools in the country, picked us to design and produce the mobile site for their mobile development program, we ran around high-fiving. Then we sat down and got serious.

The site’s purpose is simple: generate prospective student interest. But in order to attract the minds that will architect the future of mobile, we needed to innovate rather than simply build.

The result is a mobile site that performs like a native application. Clean iconography, sophisticated navigation movement and sliding infographics deliver a fresh experience. However, the feature we’re most proud of is the “content shift.” We designed the site such that the content changes upon shifting from portrait to landscape mode. Why not create an alternate path of information that the visitor can discover? The landscape mode also allows us scale to flow in additional content, such as graduate profiles and videos, as the site grows.

Here’s a little overview of the project. Results have been great so far—we’ll share some stats soon.

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We’re very excited to announce that we’ve been selected to work with Hilton Hotels & Resorts on a global creative assignment. The work will cover more than 550 Hilton properties in 78 countries across six continents.

Red Square is honored to be partnering with one of the most famous hotel brands in the world. We’ll share more soon. In the meantime, you can quote us as saying this.

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We’ve recently been privileged to work on various e-commerce sites. The fundamental purpose of these sites is to transact business, so a cardinal rule must be: make the payment process as painless as possible. Conversely stated, each hoop a user must jump through lessens the probability of purchase completion.

Usability expert, Paul Rourke, may have said it best, “Provide the visitor with all they need to know for them to be happy to progress to checking out, without any un-answered questions.”

We think ASOS does shopping carts justice. According to their e-commerce director, James Hart, one small change to the first step of their checkout process resulted in a 50 percent decrease in abandonment of shopping carts. What was this magical change? Simply allowing the user to continue unimpeded to checkout without having to create an ASOS account.

“People talk about the number of steps they will have to go through, all the extra information they will have to provide, and the fact they haven’t got time to be creating an account. What I find most fascinating is the response I get from people when I ask them ‘what additional information do you expect you will need to provide if you create an account compared to a guest checkout option?’”

The only additional info required is a password. ASOS asks users to create accounts in the checkout form, by including “password” and “confirm password.” The new UX design cuts out steps that waste the user’s time and makes account creation way more approachable.

The definition and use of traditional shopping carts still apply online. The cart should be a tool, provided by the shop, for transporting the user’s merchandise to the checkout counter for purchase. It should help users, not delay them. Spending time upfront on usability and focusing on the sole function of the shopping cart will aid customers in completing purchases without distraction.

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New Year’s Eve is the Ron Burgundy of holidays. It’s kind of a big deal. As such, we work with our gaming and hospitality clients to go all out for the big event. This year, we’d like to share two projects that were especially fun.

For Hard Rock Hotel and Casino Biloxi, which is having a rockstar/superhero themed party, we created an elaborate comic book for the invitation. Our creative team concepted the characters and storyline, art directed, wrote fantastic dialogue, and storyboarded. Then our production team partnered with a talented comic illustrator to deliver the final goods. Have a look at it here.

Hard Rock Hotel and Casino Tulsa is having a 70s themed party, so we wanted to produce something authentic to the time period. We licensed the Bee Gees’ “Night Fever” and cut records for the invites. Check this bad boy out.

It would be fitting to close this post with the words of Mr. Burgundy: “we’ve been coming to the same party for years, and in no way is that depressing.” All thanks to our great clients.

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