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Bloomberg.com Redesign

posted by Michael Ma
Michael Ma
Michael Ma

Managing Group Creative Director : New York

topics: Games, Design, Art Direction, Art, and Barbarian

on June 24, 2010 at 03:47 PM
filed under: Art Direction and Design
http://tbg.cm/gCyZ6w
After almost a year of work, The Barbarian Group redesign of Bloomberg.com went live on Monday. At first glance, the combination of Bloomberg and Barbarian might seem like an odd fit. How could the same group that created the Subservient Chicken get along with the company that keeps the financial and business worlds moving forward?
On the surface, it might not seem like we’d get along but it was actually quite awesome. Bloomberg is a dynamic, forward thinking company with a great culture and a focus on innovation. Just looking at the building and stepping into the main lobby is proof of that. They are also the world’s largest private network and one of the first providers of email to their customers. And they came to us with the type of challenge that we love.
Internally, the folks at Bloomberg wanted to think about what their website would be in three to five years and they came to us to bring what they imagined to life. Bloomberg.com delivers 500 news stories a day, aggregates content from relevant third parties and has a different global audience from the Bloomberg Terminal user and thus needed it’s own identity.
So we started by evaluating the user experience; focusing on legibility and scanability, enhancing search, reducing the navigation and clutter and trying to improve the overall quality of the experience.
Bloomberg was really satisfied with the ideas and thinking we showed them for a future site. We can’t really go into the details of that project quite yet since it’s still in the works, but in the interim, there was a need to bridge the gap between what we presented to them for the future and the old amber on black Bloomberg.com. So we came up with what you’ll see today. And as part of the process we got to collaborate closely with the marketing team at Bloomberg on the About section of the new site and really helped them bring the Bloomberg story to life.
All this is to say Bloomberg has been busy and so have we and we’re both excited for what’s to come.

3 comments

Really nice work, Mike. Clean, easy to use, intuitive.
Love it. It's like bright colored information candy -- in a good way.
I know I'm kicking myself right now, but I did some spec work for Bloomberg.com about a year and a half ago for a creative director position they were looking to fill. I'm not exactly sure what they communicated to you in the design brief, but the layout sure as hell looks like what I pitched to them, from the three clocks in the upper right to the 4 gray featured content blocks that sit above the fold on a 1024x768 screen. After submitting the spec work, I was told several weeks later that the position was put on hold and then several months later the position was filled.

Anyway, I just wanted to make a point that no designer should ever do spec work. And as for the Barbarian Group, nice work.