Choate Hall & Stewart
Brett led this project during his 17-year tenure as Thinkso’s founder and executive creative director.
Choate is a single office law firm located in Boston. As they approached a redesign of their website, they looked for a creative partner who would be able to effectively reflect their catch phrase “built different” in the site design. We wrote and designed the site, art directed a custom photo shoot, and worked closely with their development partner to bring it all together.
They made sure that the distinct personality of our firm was reflected in the editorial tone and visual design of the new site. We were given plenty of opportunity to provide input and feedback — and always felt listened to.
The “Built different” tagline is stated boldly and clearly across the top of the homepage, coupled with a photograph of Choate attorneys interacting within the distinctive interior of their Boston office. Upon scrolling, the unique story of Choate is told, accompanied by a diverse selection of imagery.
A “mobile first” approach was taken for the design of the Choate site—ensuring that it functions on a range of phones and tablet devices.
Unexpectedly, the main nav is located along the left side of the page. Each section is accessed through a simple takeover page designed to highlight key content and efficiently move the user to the information they’re seeking.
An effort was made to push key information to the top of the page as well as to provide jump links, content drawers, and other devices to easily access content farther below.
We devised an effective system for creating attorney portraits that gives the firm the ability to do much of the work in-house—adding new attorneys whenever they need to. A selection of stock backgrounds were created, and detailed photo and cropping guidelines were provided to ensure quality and consistency.
We introduced Choate to veteran photographer Joe Mikos who created a cache of images that features the firm’s people in their work environments—celebrating their culture of hard work high above Boston Harbor.
