Agency Spotlight: Mindsmack
Headquartered in the New York area, MindSmack is an award-winning company that specializes in virtually every phase of web design and development. With services that range from advertising design and video editing to 3D graphics and ASP programming, the firm can deliver anything imaginable to bring out the best in internet websites. MindSmack has garnered a number of prestigious honors during its tenor, including being voted “Best Web Design Company in the U.S.” by TopSeo for August 2009. The agency was also awarded the #257 spot on the 2009 “Inc. 500″ List and stands firm at the #6 position in the “Media” category.
To find out exactly what makes the MindSmack tick, DMB’s Contel Bradford spoke with CEO and president Samuel Feuer for some in-depth feedback and expert insight on the world of web creation.
It seems as if everyone from professional firms to freelancers are specializing in web design and development these days. What distinguishes MindSmack from all the rest and how has your company been able to flourish in such competitive markets?
MindSmack has been creating websites and visual experiences for over 12 years. We have won hundreds of awards over the years including Adobe Site of the day awards, FWA awards and DesignFirms.org awards. The core staff we have, all who work full time, are best-of-breed talent who have been part of extremely high-level, successful web, mobile and television launches year after year.
Most of our readers understand the basic concepts and elements that go into design and development. How can more advanced features such as 3D graphics and character animation benefit the presentation of a website?
One of the things I stress to every client is to look at the potential of assigning a character to their brand, or if they have a character, to make that character more influential to their brand. The biggest factor for this is brand association, which equals money over time for the business who has a memorable logo. If a character is part of the logo and it is done professionally, you have a strong foundation to not only get your name remembered but also a face or icon to represent your company vision emblazoned in a potential consumer’s brain, which in turn leads to stronger conversion.
Social networking appears to be at the pinnacle of popularity right now. Please give our readers some insight on the type of applications your company creates to power these platforms.
MindSmack has created hundreds of applications under varying names due to non-disclosure agreements, not much in the way of applications or facebook games/twitter apps that are under our own brand. However, that is changing big time as we are very close to launching our first branded in-house iPhone application that we all believe will be one of the coolest apps ever developed for iPhone. Post launch we will port it over to Android, Palm and Blackberry, but I cannot go into further detail on that now, I will let you know once we go live in the Apple app store soon.
The key to what we are developing under our own brand is a mix of immense functionality mixed with brilliant, award-winning type graphics that will captivate most iPhone users. Part of integrating the social experience of Facebook and Twitter, for example, is a huge factor since there is such a great user base all under one umbrella that can share in the amazing platform of social networking for the future of what we produce for any client. Anything that launches now has to be connected to Facebook and Twitter in one way or another and soon enough all will have iPhone and mobile applications as part of the basic scope of any project.
Where do you see the web design and development fields in the next 5-10 years?
I believe mobile devices will take over in countless ways, along with interactive websites on intriguing levels such as seen in the movie, “Minority Report,” and on CNN where you have the ability to move things around on a screen. I honestly believe we will all utilize visual experiences that will incorporate smells and touch all through a virtual world in real time. So for example, I love fresh, sweet strawberries, but can never find them. I read recently there is a company looking to perfect the smelling internet where you have X scent and type it in and then smell it. Imagine tasting the internet? Sounds insane, but could be a reality. Lets say you have a loved one who is away on business or really, anywhere, imagine projecting that person right into your room next to you. I don’t know about touch/feel but besides that, they will be there. I truly believe we are in our infancy technology wise and in our immediate lifetimes the entire planet will change for the better in terms of technology and advancements in functional internet and mobile devices that will captivate humanity as we know it.
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