Congratulations to Visit Oakland, Visit Rhode Island, and Experience Columbia SC who were recognized by the 2018 Communicator Awards, the largest and most competitive awards program honoring creative excellence for communications professionals.
The Communicator Awards honor creative communication works that make a lasting impact, and three destination websites were chosen as standout winners out of thousands of entries. The websites for Visit Oakland and Visit Rhode Island each won an Award of Excellence in the General Travel/Tourism category, while Experience Columbia SC took home an Award of Distinction in the same category.
“We’re so proud to see the results of the strong teamwork, communications, and creativity that went into these sites honored in such an impressive and competitive arena,” said Lisa Love, Executive Director of the Experience Design Group at Simpleview. “Each of these destinations truly deliver an inspiring online experience that encourages a memorable real-world travel experience.”
Visit Oakland worked with Simpleview on creative conceptualization and lively expression of the destination’s brand to capture the spirit of the destination, including inspiring website content suggested by the DMO, built on a platform allowing for more innovative options as the site and the DMO’s goals evolve. The design is mobile-first and features implementation built on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, ensuring that the site is technologically advanced today and remains that way in the future.
Visit Oakland hosted Simpleview’s experience design team for an incredible destination immersion trip that influenced the website creative. Thrilled with the overall design, Visit Oakland team members mentioned that after four site designs, they had never seen anything like it.
Visit Rhode Island worked with Simpleview to create an inspirational, responsive, and helpful state website. User testing told our experience design team that they had opportunities to help users become better oriented with the unfamiliar Rhode Island regions, so they designed several custom map solutions that supported the content strategy for the site. The site features lots of wayfinding, a compelling video header, vibrant user-generated content and much more.
Experience Columbia SC provided Simpleview with some excellent brand assets to work with when creating their responsive website with mobile first design. The site features a strong events focus, with user-generated content vividly illustrating the variety of activities and sites the area has to offer.
The Communicator Awards are judged and overseen by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts (AIVA), a 600+ member organization of leading professionals from various disciplines of the visual arts dedicated to embracing progress and the evolving nature of traditional and interactive media. Current AIVA membership represents a "Who's Who" of acclaimed media, advertising, and marketing firms including: PureMatter, Condè Nast, Disney, Republica, Sesame Workshop, MTV, Starbucks, Time Inc., Tribal DDB, Yahoo!, and many others.
“We are extremely proud to recognize the work received for the 24th Annual Communicator Awards. This year’s class of entries embodies the ever-evolving marketing and communications industry” noted Derek Howard, director of the AIVA. He added, “On behalf the Academy members, I’d like to applaud the entrants this season for their dedication to producing outstanding content as they continue to push the envelope of creativity.”
