Branding & Website Design

Audio Engineering Society

AES logo design

FEATURED PROJECT

Audio Engineering Society

The largest website in the audio industry. The Audio Engineering Society is the only professional society devoted exclusively to audio technology. Over 70 years old, with over 12,000 members, it sets the standards for the audio industry all over the world.

At over 27,000 pages, it also has the largest website in the industry. Built on an ageing platform and with a history of countless additions and changes, it was long overdue a review. We were asked to re-build the site from scratch.

A brand refresh

Before we started on the website, we took the opportunity to tidy up the AES branding. We designed a new logo and issued updated branding guidelines. With so many different people using the branding, we needed to make it clear and easy to ensure that the AES look is consistent across the web, at events, social media and in the many publications and papers it delivers.

A new website

We agreed that it would be impossible to roll out an entirely fresh site in one go, so we built an updated site with new hosting, ensuring that the new platform kept the navigation and most important pages. Pages still on the old site were accessed seamlessly from the new site navigation.

Over time, we converted more and more pages from the old to the new site, until the old site withered away.

Integrations

We had to integrate into a number of different systems. This included giving access to special event and convention websites and institutional access. We also rebuilt the E-library of tens of thousands of papers, presentations and publications and integrated seamlessly into the website.

Sub Sites

The AES has dozens of local sections across the world. Previously these were managed and hosted locally. We created a template for all Section sites to work as a subdomain on the new platform, each with their own local administrators. This gave each site a consistent look and feel. It also allowed us to automatically integrate any local event into the main site, to encourage better communication and participation.

Section Website Mock up

The completed project

The new site is faster, is easier to navigate and makes it easy for administrators to add and change content. We saved the client thousands as it no longer uses dedicated servers or specialised support for day to day website changes.

It also finally brings together all the sections worldwide so they are more connected to each other and the AES.

All of this work was completed with no site downtime and with universal praise from our client.