AREA 17
AREA 17 is a branding and digital product agency profiled in the current issue (Jul/Aug 2023) of Communication Arts.
The piece opens with high praise from client Michael Beirut at Pentagram:
"AREA 17 does three things very well. First, it really understands what a digital product has to do, and what it delivers is suited to the task. Second, it’s able to handle complexity and make information understandable. Finally, it has a team of great designers; when we work with them they never fail to take our ideas and make them better. Some people are good at one or two. What a pleasure to it is to collaborate with AREA 17, which is is so good at all three."
The profile references beautiful digital work for AREA 17's client list which includes some of the top culture-shaping brands in the world including:
Open AI
The New York Times Co.
Fondation Louis Vuitton
The Getty
Harvard Art Museums
Oxman
Opera Nationale de Paris
Princeton University Press
Pictured above is a page from AREA 17’s style guide for breakthrough brand Open AI, maker of ChatGPT.
In 2023, Open AI and ChatGPT became household names with the generative AI product gaining 1 million users in only 5 days (Statista via Interbrand).
AREA 17 played a critical role in that amazing story, and you can read more about it on their website or in Interbrand’s recent “2023 Breakthrough Brands” report.
One thing that differentiates AREA 17 is their approach to enabling clients to manage their products after handoff from the agency design team.
This is an inherently difficult transition, and one way that AREA 17 has found to prevent decrescendo is to make it as easy as possible for the client-side operation team via a proprietary CMS tool called Twill.
“Throwing it over the wall” is not something that AREA 17’s clients will experience.
The name AREA 17 resonated with me for a moment, and while reading the CA profile it occured to me why.
They did the original media design work for a number of early digital media brands including GOOD and Quartz.
As a media strategist, I was close to both of these brands when they launched, and have good memories of the pride that both publishers (Ben Goldhirsch and Jay Lauf) took in getting them off the ground.
IMO, the UX standards that AREA 17 put in place for brands like these strongly influenced the digital products in the news and publishing industry that we have today.
AREA 17’s impact goes beyond media, as their practice expands from media brands to museums, foundations, AI companies, and whatever comes next.
Here are two case stories that I like (Open AI and NYT Co) that show AREA 17’s capabilities well -
https://area17.com/work/openai-brand-and-website
https://area17.com/work/the-new-york-times-company-website
Here is the Interbrand “Breakthrough Brands” report -
