Understated elegance. That was our only direction in establishing a site for Realstar Group, one of Canada’s leading privately owned real estate investment and management companies.
Realstar Group contracted Ove Design & Communications in 2007 to restructure its brand architecture. For the online component, Ove hired Pear for full-turnkey design and build services. At that time, the organization’s visual identity was largely undefined – accelerated growth had led to an expanse of uncharted territory and host of inconsistencies. No matter our design solution, Realstar’s identity would need to be solidified. This put enormous pressure on our work to perform holistically, outside of the site for which it was intended. It also demanded the necessary funding for design exploration and the generation of new visual assets – primarily staff photography.
Working with a blank canvas, we developed a design system to bring balance and unity to the organization’s three divergent operating units. The system accommodates a consistent array of assets for each. This includes a series of rotating badges, intended to demonstrate the scale of Realstar’s activity in each sector, and the means to showcase the team, philosophy and partner relationships driving the subsidiary organization. Structurally, these three units facilitate a logical ‘back-door’ entry into the larger organization.
The cornerstone of our design solution is an interactive timeline. The Realstar Story collapses four years of continuous development into a malleable, user-driven experience. Our interface design for this feature is sensitive to spacial restrictions. The telescoping Flash-based presentation lets visitors expand and contract decades independently of one another, keeping the visual reasonably contained while offering a maximum in physical real estate for text content.
