Detroit Symphony and Media Genesis Team up to Challenge the Way Orchestras are Seen Online
Troy, MI (Media Genesis) September 2008 – To anyone who has thought of the symphony as stuffy: Think again. The Detroit Symphony Orchestra is eclectic, engaging and interactive in a way that could only be pulled off in Motown.
The world-renowned Detroit cultural institution sent this message loud and clear this summer when they hired a cutting-edge web developer to re-imagine the online presence of the DSO. Troy, Michigan-based Media Genesis is a web development and marketing consultant, and what they’ve done for the DSO’s digital identity is nothing short of revolutionary.
“When the DSO first approached us, their website was a little disjointed, but it still worked and presented information in a manner that was consistent with what we’ve seen with other major orchestras,” said Antoine Dubeauclard, President of Media Genesis.
What Media Genesis and the DSO agreed on was, that if nothing else, the symphony’s new website (www.detroitsymphony.com) needed to embody the same sense of energy that concert goers could expect when strolling down Woodward Ave. towards the open doors of the Detroit Symphony’s Orchestra Hall. There is something seemingly vintage about the experience. While Media Genesis wanted to maintain the history of the organization in the design of the site, it was crucial to also capture the urban flare that comes with the diversity of not only Detroit, but the genre spanning guests and concerts of which the DSO plays host.
Early concepts began as sketches and collections of photographs taken at the DSO and surrounding areas. Media Genesis designers, programmers and project managers immersed themselves in the music, the ambience and the message of the DSO. Ultimately, the collaborative team came up with a concept that would literally take visitors of the website on a virtual tour of Orchestra Hall and beyond.
“The challenge didn’t really end with this street-level design,” Dubeauclard said. “We knew that some pages would be rich with content, and would need to exist separately from the Flash animation driving the experiential part of the site. But, we still knew that we needed the two aspects to be cohesive.”
Interior pages for the DSO were carefully planned and mapped out by Media Genesis’s project management team. They were designed and assembled so users were always one click away from buying tickets, finding donation information or hearing the music of their favorite performer.
The DSO’s website has a programming backbone that leaves little to be desired. That is to say, that nearly every facet of the website – be it the marquee on the homepage or the artist profiles in the backstage section – is completely controlled by a content management system (CMS). Media Genesis was able to empower the DSO with a website that goes beyond its good looks. The technologies firm built a custom CMS from the ground up, so that orchestra officials could have total control over workings of the new site.
“Making a site that is pretty, and making a site that has a lot of dynamic elements and data-driven content can often be two separate things,” Dubeauclard commented on his team’s approach to the DSO project. “In the end, you could casually go through the entire site and have fun with the interactive environments or scope out the shows. All the while, you’d never have a clue that you were getting information from several unrelated systems or that some of the more impressive graphical elements were being loaded dynamically.”
Dubeauclard is most proud of the fact that the technology and the art really seem to harmonize in a way that represents Media Genesis’s strengths well.
“We are really thrilled about detroitsymphony.com,” he added. “What is perhaps the most exciting thing for MediaG is that we have this living, breathing website that we can look forward to nourishing – along with the DSO – over the next few years. It is the sort of internet experience that will keep you on your toes even after many months.”
