Open Exchange 2.0

Open Exchange is a successful web conferencing platform for financial communications. They host remote conferences, involving many corporations of the financial services and professional investment industry, as well as public and private companies.

The Ask: I was brought on to help visually brand the front end of OEs latest conferencing platform. This involved designing with visual accessibility in mind, and creating a highly flexible and intuitive template, easily customizable for any corporate branding. Specifically, this also involved improving upon the OE blue and the general appearance which had become stale, and to bring the functionality up to date.

The Challenge: Because the conferences that OE hosts often span several weeks, there was a need to design for a somewhat complex schedule, and for users to be able to easily navigate between events spanning diverse topics, many speakers and their bios, and dates on the calendar. Thus there was a need to combine an array of complex user architecture and interface options with varying content. From a visual standpoint there was also a need for client logos and potential color palettes to be clearly visible without having to adjust the template significantly, and for type to pass AAA color accessibility.

The Solution: I developed templates that allow for customization according to client requests, without detracting from the structure. The interface allows for the colors and images to be switched out without interfering with the legibility of the content. The adaptability of this template is demonstrated with the studies of Citi Bank and Wells Fargo branding, as you can see from the examples I’ve included at the end. There is sometimes a need for slight adjustments, but the user experience and architecture remains generally intact.

You can view my previous post, Open Exchange to get a sense of the baseline that I was designing from and improving upon.

The following demonstrates the template in action, with examples of corporate branding plugged in. These templates were not actually used for conferences, they are intended to test the adaptability of the designs. In some instances I’ve experimented with different formatting, as a client might come up us with a specific request for content and styling.