Since 1986, Whitten Architects has been designing thoughtfully considered homes in New England. With a focus exclusively on residential design, the firm’s projects include everything from camps to cottages, new homes to historic renovations. Located in Portland’s historic Old Port, Whitten has won a number of awards over the years and has been extensively published in a variety of residential home design books and magazines.
Over a decade ago, Whitten Architects partnered with us to create a modern, responsive website that showcases their stunning portfolio while highlighting their unique design process. We developed an image-forward site that leverages their professional photography investment and tells the deeper story of what differentiates them: their emphasis on site-specific design, exclusive focus on residential projects, and hand-drawing process.
Our strategic site architecture allows seamless navigation between project categories organized by geographic region, site type, house style, and project type. We overcame technical challenges with their extensive image catalog using advanced caching and content delivery networks to ensure high-resolution images without compromising user experience.
Results: WhittenArchitects.com now ranks #1 for over 25 targeted keywords, including "best architect in Maine," "Maine Architect," and "Portland Maine Architect."
When Whitten Architects expanded its leadership team in 2018—the first time founder Rob Whitten would be joined by two rising principals—we delivered a comprehensive PR campaign that successfully communicated this milestone to shelter magazines, local press, and online publications. Our ongoing PR efforts focus on pitching the firm's completed projects to local and national publications.
We continue to support their growth with PR and strategic communications, as well as comprehensive content creation including project narratives, monthly blog posts, quarterly newsletters, and social media content, all backed by strategic audience research and demographic analysis.
After 15 years of collaboration, we recently helped modernize Whitten's brand ahead of their 40th anniversary. Through strategic sessions, we helped them define their core brand values, particularly their commitment to "site-specific" design that helps clients live harmoniously with nature.
The new brand identity draws inspiration from nature throughout. The logo takes inspiration from sun paths and solar cycles, while the expanded color palette adds sophisticated teal shades to their original black, white, and yellow scheme. We developed unique patterns from the firm's own site sketches for authentic design elements, and selected complementary serif and sans serif typefaces to modernize the 40-year-old brand.
The refreshed identity authentically represents their values and commitment to intertwining design with natural beauty.
"We've had the pleasure of working with Helm for the last several years. With the initial redesign of our website they met our goal of creating an immersive experience for prospective clients that features our design work in the best possible way. The website has since garnered numerous kudos from both clients and colleagues in our local community. They are both professional and kind human beings that genuinely care about us and what we do. We couldn't recommend them more highly."
— RUSS TYSON, PRINCIPAL
We took a strong professional services business and seamlessly built a successful digital marketing plan that communicates their expertise through a blend of local marketing, media buying, content creation, earned media, SEO, social media, and email marketing.