Frank's posts

17 March 2010

Corporate blogging: W + K shows that a little design can go a long way

Frank Harkin Content Strategist | Read all Frank's posts

As someone who comes across a lot of corporate blogs, I am painfully aware that design is often the last thing on a company’s mind when creating a blog platform.

This is especially true for companies that produce a number of blogs.

Take a look, for example at Oracle, HP, IBM, Intel, Dell, or Microsoft. Each uses a blog portal to aggregate and present their many blogs – and in each case it is ugly as sin and almost impossible to navigate.

Thus it was a pleasant surprise to come across the blog portal for ad agency Wieden + Kennedy.

W + K has seven offices around the world, each with its own web site and blog and, as you can see below, it does a very neat job of presenting its various blogs to the world.

With one glance it is immediately apparent how many blogs there are and where they are focused while a clever bit of design lets us know which offices are blogging the most. If you roll over a city, you can click to launch the blog or you can read the latest posts below. There’s even a desktop widget you can download to keep track of W + K blogs without having to visit the site.

With a bit of thought and design know-how W +K has created a really simple and effective way of presenting its blogs to the world. Any company that produces a collection of blogs – especially those mentioned above – should take note.

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Any statements made in these blog posts are the views of the blogger and do not necessarily represent the views of The Group.