Polar Design Continues Tradition of Interactive Innovation with Two Horizon Interactive Awards, Banking Interactive Demo

[Woburn, MA] – June 22, 2007 – Polar Design (polardesign.com) today announced significant contributions to interactive design in the first half of 2007. The company took home two Horizon Interactive Awards, including a Gold in the E-Commerce/Sales category for the Cheers Boston E-Commerce Site (www.cheersboston.com/storeindex.htm) and a Bronze in Public Service/Non-Profit for the Massachusetts Laborers’ Secure Benefit Funds Portal (www.mlbf.org). Additionally, Polar completed an interactive floating Flash presentation to announce a new product for Florence Savings Bank, a regional community savings bank.

The Gold award in the E-Commerce/Sales category for Cheers recognizes Polar Design’s state-of-the-art integration of a Flash-based interface with its highly adaptive Web 2.0 e-commerce platform, InsightBuilder® ECOM. The dynamic, animated interface reinforces the Cheers’ brand, yet remains mindful of usability and SEO concerns. This balance ensures the site captivates with an immersive environment without compromising on ease of use or search engine visibility.

The bronze award in the Public Service/Non-Profit category for Massachusetts Laborer’ Secure Benefits Portal recognized Polar Design for combining an intuitive and unique dashboard display of union members’ benefits data, ported from legacy databases and secured on Polar Design’s servers. Michael O’Neil, Project Manager, noted, “the Massachusetts Laborers' Benefit site combines aesthetically pleasing yet easy to use and informative interfaces with technology that protects members’ security and privacy – we are proud to have enabled the Funds’ to provide members best of breed access to information and online customer service in conjunction with their benefits.”

Finally, Polar Design recently launched an interactive “floating” Flash presentation for the Florence Savings Bank (www.florencesavings.com) that balances many constraints, including the existing branding, as well as the need to increase conversion of visitors to prospects for the bank’s new checking account product. Nathan Bedrick, the lead Interactive Developer on the project, observed that, “the Flash piece accomplishes its goals without compromise by breaking the rules – it has retained the bank’s classic branding but still attracts attention by breaking out of its boundaries and floating above the page for first time visitors.” A case study is available on the Polar Design web site at http://www.polardesign.com.

About Polar Design
Polar Design (www.polardesign.com) is a mid-sized interactive agency with offices in the United States and Europe, founded in 1999 with the mission of elevating corporations' and non-profits' Internet communications. Our 30 employees serve the web marketing and e-commerce needs of Fortune 1000 and small businesses alike through their diverse specialties, from identity and concept development, to graphic and multimedia flash design, to programming and database development. In addition to custom design and development, Polar Design provides a range of marketing solutions, an affordable “hosted” content management and e-commerce platform, as well as application hosting with twenty-four hour support.

About the Horizon Interactive Awards
The Horizon Interactive Awards are an international competition recognizing outstanding achievement among interactive media producers. Each year the Horizon Interactive Awards reviews entries from hundreds of interactive media producers around the world. A panel of industry professionals determines what work is to be recognized and therefore distribute awards to those who exceptionally produce and develop interactive media. Further information is accessible at www.horizoninteractiveawards.com.

About Florence Savings Bank
Founded in 1873, Florence Savings Bank has been committed to provide its customers with the best service in banking. Being the largest independent Hampshire County bank and one of the fastest growing banks in their area, Florence Savings Bank has gained its role as a community-based banking provider with a substantial emphasis on customer service. With almost one billion dollars in assets they have been the number one mortgage lender in the past nine years essentially giving them an immense opportunity to rapidly grow.
www.florencesavings.com

Flash is a trademark of the Adobe Corporation.


**Interviews with Polar Design available on request.

Polar Design
600 Unicorn Park
Woburn, MA 01801
www.polardesign.com
Teresa Lo Contro, Marketing Associate
teresa@consultims.com
781-404-4000 Ext. 300

This release was published on openPR.