Making, Building & Developing

Becoming “The Maker City”

To round out Designsensory’s 15th anniversary celebrations, we decided as a team that we wanted to reinvest in our community. When we approached the City of Knoxville leadership, we were presented with an opportunity so perfect, so fitting of our team’s ideals and mission, that we knew we had to seize it.

Over the last few months, we’ve been working with the City of Knoxville Mayor’s Maker Council and the Knoxville Entrepreneurship Center to provide an identity for the city’s maker movement—the people who design, craft, build and manufacture goods and products in our community.

“Knoxville is a great place for entrepreneurship and creative risk-taking and a home that has nourished our own growth for many years,” said Designsensory Principal and Creative Director Joseph Nother about the project. “This is a defining moment for Knoxville and important to our collective growth—I’m excited to see how people embrace the mantle of being The Maker City and how they will build on this momentum.”

Our hats are off to the internal team that worked tirelessly to get this logo ready for launch at the Maker City Summit here in Knoxville on September 19, 2017.

Stretching Our Legs

We’re expanding! That’s right, since we moved to our current office in late-2009, we’ve occupied roughly two-thirds of the building. We’re currently in the process of building out the remaining area. With a few months of construction comes additional communal work spaces, new offices, a multimedia studio and more. Expect more updates, as everything should be finalized around the first of the year. Until then, you’ll have to settle for some office demolition.

The Website Round-Up

And last, but not least, we always want to shine a light on our recent web projects to commend our immensely talented tech team:

• College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR) needed a website that would be rich with online resources like a comprehensive Knowledge Center. The finished product became a thorough and intuitive experience for its members.
• A longtime client, The University of Tennessee Medical Center has been working with us on a new website since we first held focus groups back in December 2015. The site, rooted in research and deep-functionalities, is a powerful tool for the medical center and the community.
• In the same entrepreneurial spirit as our Maker City project, we recently finalized a website for the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development (TNECD). To further the support the department provides small-businesses, it brought it’s SmartStart guide, a tool that connects entrepreneurs with relevant state resources, to an interactive platform. Check out the platform or watch the website launch trailer we developed.
• Continuing our work with Outward Bound School, we developed a website for Colorado Outward Bound School (COBS). With the addition of COBS, we’ve now created seven websites for the regional chapters, alongside the national website for Outward Bound USA. But it doesn’t stop there.
• In honor of the North Carolina Outward Bound School’s 50th anniversary, we created a sprawling storybook-like website filled with archival photos, video and audio, as well as modern designs, transitions and effects.
• Smoky Mountain Tourism, another longtime web client, got a refreshment to their visitor-focused website.