Featured Project: Online Virtual Tours for Universal Technical Institute

Kitchen Sink Studios, Inc. has completed and launched a spectacular new online marketing site for Universal Technical Institute that brings its campuses to life for potential students.

The first of the newly launched campus tours can be viewed at www.utivirtualtours.com. The site was built with HTML5 technology that allows it to be viewed on both desktop and mobile devices (including iPhones and iPads), and includes a combination of cutting-edge 360-degree videos, videos of UTI instructors and students, and interactive use of still photography to bring the campus’ incredible facilities to life for prospective students.

The recreations tie in the company’s brand with the specific features of UTI campuses across the country through robust and immersive visuals. Everything will be able to be tracked and tied into social media campaigns and other marketing efforts.

Josh Prior, Chief Marketing Office for UTI in Phoenix, said the school was looking for ways to showcase its facilities at its 13 campuses across the country, and the solutions offered by Kitchen Sink provide a unique and interactive way of demonstrating the company’s capabilities in educating students.

“We wanted to take the way we represented our campuses to a different level through the use of technology,” he said.

Kitchen Sink is working on creating similar online experiences for the other campuses across the country, further helping UTI’s recruiting efforts. The Avondale campus is live now and the Phoenix MMI facility will be up and running in the next few weeks.









Another component of the campaign will include an augmented reality feature that will show a 3D, interactive representation tied to printed campaign piece. The recreations are designed to attract potential students and solidify the company’s presence in the highly competitive technical education industry.

“This is a great example of how our studio can help our clients tell their story through memorable interactive online experiences,” said Nick Hower, Partner and Founder of Kitchen Sink Studios. “We have greatly enjoyed our relationship with UTI and are extremely proud of the unique virtual tours we’ve been able to create to help them reach out to their target audiences.

Look for more UTI virtual campus tours as we roll them out in the coming months!

Featured Project: Environment and Natural Resources, Phase 2 building at the University of Arizona

How do you depict one of the most ambitious green building projects ever contemplated in Arizona? That was the task for the Kitchen Sink Studios team when we were retained as part of a collaborative effort between the University of Arizona, richard + bauer architects and several other groups to create the University of Arizona's Environment and Natural Resources, Phase 2 (ENR2) building.

University of Arizona officials are kicking off a capital campaign to raise the money to build ENR2, which will house six university departments. They wanted the kind of fundraising presentation that literally would bring the building to life for prospective donors and show just how much thought went into its incredibly sustainable design. ENR2 is inspired by a natural slot-canyon design to help minimize the impact of the desert elements, and when completed, will be one of the most environmentally sensitive structures ever built in Arizona, with the goal of obtaining coveted LEED-Platinum certification.

The Kitchen Sink team created three groundbreaking products to illustrate how ENR2 will work and truly bring the structure to life:

• An interactive, web-based presentation that opens with a tour of an animated slot canyon, showing just how it inspired the design of ENR2. The opening presentation then transitions into an interactive learning environment showing five different viewpoints of ENR2 and depicting some of the many features that make it such a sustainable project.

• An "augmented reality" presentation of ENR2 that allows anyone with a web camera on their computer to experience a three-dimensional, interactive version of the building that can be rotated in their own hands. The augmented reality presentation literally brings the building to life and allows the viewer to experience the building from any angle.

• A printed piece, which was printed on 100 percent FSC certified paper to ensure its sustainability, that tears off into postcards featuring the complete set of renderings of ENR2 and background information on the project, as well as the placard needed for the augmented reality presentation.

All told, it was a great example of how Kitchen Sink's 3D and animation capabilities can be used in both web-based and printed pieces to create tremendous communication tools. It's also a great example of just how much is possible when you have an open-minded client like the UofA, a top-notch design team like richard + bauer, and the creativity of the Kitchen Sink team come together.

Kitchen Sink Studios' Work Featured on Cover of AZRE Magazine

Kitchen Sink Studios, Inc.'s visual depiction of the Rockefeller Group Chandler 101 was used in the cover story on the project in the January/February issue of AZRE Magazine.

Rockefeller Group Chandler 101 is a 24-acre mixed use development that will include three office buildings, a 300-room hotel, a conference center and significant retail space. Kitchen Sink Studios provided Rockefeller Group with a stunning interactive web site that provides shows the project's look and feel, provides key project demographic information, and serves as an important tool for the leasing team as they identify potential tenants for the project.

The profile of the mixed-use project, located near the intersections of the 202 and 101 Freeways in Chandler, featured several renderings and animations the studio developed to bring the project's vision to life. Part of the team's work on the interactive web site included the creation of renderings and animation that visually depict the overall look and feel of the project, including its superior architecture and attention to the creation of a mixed-use environment.

Congratulations to Rockefeller Group on the great profile in AZRE Magazine! We are proud to have helped bring the project to life through the use of our animation and web development expertise.

Featured Project: DuPont Air Products NanoMaterials Web Site

This week’s Featured Project is a unique Flash web site Kitchen Sink Studios©, Inc. developed for DuPont Air Products NanoMaterials earlier this year. We wrote about the initial concept for the site on this blog about a year ago, but the site is now fully built out and functional.

DA NanoMaterials is the world’s foremost provider of electronic polishing products, which are critical to the manufacture of computer chips and silicon wafers. Therefore, their target audience is companies that are on the cutting edge of current technology, and many of their customers are located in Asia.

The products are not very visual in nature, so Kitchen Sink Studios’ challenge was to find a way to create a web presence for them that incorporated a high-tech feel. The creative team came up with the concept of using hexagons as a visual element to represent the chemistry involved in DA NanoMaterials’ manufacturing process. The hexagon elements allowed for the creation of an interesting, interative navigation menu as well.

We then took it a step further by incorporating a “spectrum” background that constantly changes color as you view the site, providing a sense of motion and life while again emphasizing the product technology. And, the content is presented without the boxes or constraining elements found on most web sites, making the design feel more open and interactive for the site visitor.

We’re always working to develop the most visually captivating ways to convey our clients’ messages, whether through branding and identity, animation, video or web sites like the one we developed for DA NanoMaterials. This colorful solution is one we’re particularly proud of. 

Featured Project: Redwood City Saltworks

The Kitchen Sink team has been involved in a number of exciting projects in 2010. Over the course of the next few weeks, we’ll introduce you to some of them through a “Featured Project” series of posts.

Kicking off the series, Kitchen Sink was retained by DMB Associates, Inc.’s Pacific Division to conceptually depict their ambitious Redwood City Saltworks project as it will appear in the future. DMB is one of the most prominent development groups in the western United States, and this project will be one of their largest undertakings to date.

Redwood City Saltworks is currently a 1,400-acre industrial salt production site — bare land covered in thick layers of salt — located on the San Francisco Bay.

Using proprietary software and photography techniques, we helped DMB to unveil their vision for the project to the public with stunning presentation materials that show how it looks now, compared to how it will look upon completion. Our work to bring Saltworks to life included everything from computer animation to a PowerPoint template to a project binder to an interactive HTML5 map of the current and future site. We geared our work to their specific target audience — residents of Redwood City, as the entitlement process is getting underway — with the goal of creating a positive first impression within the community. 

Our initial work was completed on an extremely expedited timeline to meet their needs for an October 19 presentation for the Redwood City Planning Commission, and is now featured on their project web site.

It’s been a fun and interesting project to work with, and one that allowed us to flex our cerebral muscles a bit when it comes to designing and crafting a presentation of this type. Sometimes the way in which you tell a story is just as important as the story itself.

Introducing our exciting new venture: Sodapop Gang!

Kitchen Sink Studios is proud to announce that it is moving forward with an exciting new venture! It’s called Sodapop Gang, and it’s a fun, interactive and educational experience where preschoolers and their families can discover, explore and learn.

Sodapop Gang is an educational and entertainment brand for preschoolers featuring an interactive, photo-realistic and safe online experience that is fun for both children and parents, and including a wide variety of enjoyable merchandise and products.

The main platform for Sodapop Gang will be www.sodapopgang.com — which you can visit right now to view a Beta version of the site. Keep in mind that we’ve only built out a small fraction of the site and it would be refined as we go along. We’re also examining other Sodapop Gang products, such as mobile applications, toys, merchandise, games and puzzles.

We’re currently in the process of raising capital to make our vision a reality. Once we have the dough, we anticipate the full buildout of the web site will take about a year, although other Sodapop Gang products may be available in the meantime.

We invite you to keep in touch with the progress of Sodapop Gang by becoming a fan of our Facebook page. We’ll send out frequent updates on our progress, as well as related news and links and even some games and activities for kids. And, we’ll be asking our Facebook fans in a couple of weeks to participate in a quick survey to help guide our efforts to create the best experience possible. So spread the word!

We hope you enjoy the web site and share our excitement about the potential of Sodapop Gang to become a safe, enjoyable activity for children and their families. Thanks!