WE’RE SO EXCITED TO LAUNCH THIS SITE, WE CAN’T STOP WRITING IN CAPS!!

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could crack a combination, use lasers to blast open a safe containing a Samsung Series 9 notebook, and carry off $10,000 in solid gold? Well, we did what we always do here at The Barbarian Group when a truly off-the-wall, impossible sounding idea pops up: we made it real, with the help of our clients, Samsung and Intel.

A slew of models and a boatload of champagne are at the office today to welcome the one and only Tweetcracker. Using Twitter to tweet your guess, you get three attempts per day to crack the code that makes the lasers strike the C4 and blast open the safe located in our secret underground lair. (Scouting proved arduous. Apparently bad guys have the monopoly on these places.)

One lucky person is going to walk away with a brand new Samsung Series 9 notebook boosted with Intel technology and $10,000 in gold. As if that weren’t cool enough, over the six weeks that this contest will be live, should someone win the contents of the safe, we’re going to refill it with another laptop and two, around the world plane tickets. Caviar not included; the lawyers had a fit with the tariff laws.

We’ve done our calculations, and the odds of guessing the right number are close to 9 billion to one. To add a little more social media spice to this, we’ll be giving out clues to help crack the code to the followers of the Boosted branded Facebook and Twitter pages. On top of this, users can download a CSV file of every single recorded guess to help them further narrow down their potential guesses.

Tweetcracker is the latest iteration of the Boosted campaign inspired by the Samsung Series 9 with the 2nd Gen Intel Core i5 processor whose powerful specs would make any spy covetous. Just as Intel processors boosts Samsung products to a higher level of performance, our campaign exists to boost a person’s day. Think of it as a branded media channel of truly unexpected things that make you smile.

To say that we had fun building this site is an understatement. Visual inspiration for the experience came from exotic places such as the devious devices of evil-doers from Bond movies, KITT’s dashboard from Knight Rider, the He-Man logo, and a healthy dose of classic 80’s video games.

It’s not often we get to tell people to go out and use Twitter to defeat lasers and crack a code that could win them a new notebook and more than $10,000 in prizes. In fact, who else has ever been able to say that? We are proud to be the first, and are obviously excited to reveal to the world our newest Boosted creation. Visit Tweetcracker now, and see if you can crack the code!

Celebrate the anniversary of Title IX the Barbarian way — on the web! We’re proud to announce the completion of several projects for the Women’s Sports Foundation — an awesome non-profit founded by Billie Jean King dedicated to improving the lives of girls and women through sports and physical activity.

First up, the new Women’s Sports Foundation (WSF) website. We gave them a full overhaul and redesign that began with a deep analysis of over 1500 pages of content they had on their old site. We restructured and redesigned with all this amazing content in mind — to keep it organized; to make it accessible & easy to find; and to present it in a way that invites reading and deeper exploration.

Our graphic design process pulled from a variety of influences to create a look that is uniquely WSF. We looked at old overprinted posters and sports ephemera, the structure of tennis courts and other playing fields, and the WSF itself: its current branding, attitude and athletes. We tied it all together with a strong color palette, tight typographical attention to detail and a large pool of killer sports photography. The result is a modern web design that feels super active and highly engaging — much like the women of the WSF.

Over fifteen unique content templates were created to visually mix things up as you navigate deeper through the site and to suit the wide range of audiences that WSF serves: everyone from pro athletes to high-end donors to academic researchers to young women and parents looking for support to anyone who cares about keeping sports and fitness opportunities accessible to girls and women at any level of play. These templates are all fully modular and easily updated through a CMS — so the WSF can keep their content fresh and promote a new item across their website with just a few clicks.

The S.H.E. Network (sports, health and education — get it?) website is designated as a space where young female athletes from around the world can connect and learn from each other. Keep an eye on that url for good things to come.

We also created a series of seven videos to help introduce the Women’s Sports Foundation’s fresh look and to help them promote their services and programs on their website and on their Facebook page. These 1-2 minute high-tempo videos will introduce you to the Foundation, the meaning of Title IX and a range of heroic female athletes from a variety of awe-inspiring sports. (Now who’s up for some aerial skiing?)

Speaking of Facebook, we also gave the WSF’s Facebook profile a little facelift, and helped them with the design of their Get Your Game On() campaign — a social media-based awareness campaign to help get the word out about Title IX and to encourage the next generation to take notice and show their support.

It’s always awesome to work with people who are working to make the world a better place. We’re incredibly proud to have taken part in projects that will assist the Women’s Sports Foundation in achieving its admirable mission.

Have you ever wanted to see how something you used, something you liked or shared, spread around the world as it went from person to person? We did. We had the privilege of working with Mozilla to launch their first ever mobile browser: Firefox for Android. We needed something compelling, global, beautiful, slightly addictive, and well, mobile, to spread the word: Spark.

Ray Winston talks to us about getting struck by lighting and the beauty of life in this promo film for ‘The Answer’ EP, from the forthcoming album ‘Day Dreaming with James Lavelle’, directed by John Hillcoat.

It’s Absolutely Awesome.

An open letter to art directors around the world, making breast pump promotional materials.

It didn’t take long after our initial meeting with Roush Fenway Racing for us to all become NASCAR fans (except for Noah, he’s loved it since birth). The people at Roush won us over with their enthusiasm, friendliness and passion. You won’t meet a nicer group of people in the sport.

Roush Fenway came to us with an interesting request. They were looking to reposition themselves as an entertainment and marketing entity and not just a race team. So we helped Roush get to the core of what they stood for and really drilled down into what performance and success means on the track and on the web, so we could bring that to life for their sponsors and fans. Of course, this would all start with their website.

This is a big change not just for Roush, but also for the industry, and we wanted to make sure their website had a new look to match their new positioning. The energy and vigor we felt at the racetrack was incredible so we wanted to bring some of that atmosphere and life into the site with color and great photography. The devotion of the fans amazed us so we also made sure we kept their drivers front and center. Furthermore, we organized the content so that it was not only easy to search but also easy to navigate. In addition to the race and team information, we featured their current sponsors as well as case studies to highlight their successful marketing programs.

After eight months in the making and a lot of learning, we are happy to announce the launch of the first part of our efforts. Check it out.

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.

Exciting news late on a Friday!

We are super excited to announce we hired Jay Zasa as our first Executive Creative Director. You can read all about it over at Adweek too! Jay is joining us from R/GA, where he’s been an ECD for a goodly while. Frabjous day callooh callay, yo.