We've had quite an exciting start to 2012. We'd love to share some highlights with you.

We added fresh new talent to our team. They include: Matthew Ortega (designer), Patrick Kunka (developer), Molly Sugar (designer), and Jan Cantor (designer).

We made some drastic changes to our space. We knocked down the walls of the "Executive Suite" and embraced an open seating format.

We added a second conference room (we're calling it "Baby Conf" for now).

Our ping pong table became an integral part of Barrel culture.

We were the first non-restaurant/bar in Manhattan to get wine on tap. Thanks to City Winery for providing delicious wines in kegs.

We bonded over several team outings including a ski trip to Hunter Mountain in early March, St. Patrick's Day happy hour at Slainte, and a night out at Ten Bells.

We enriched ourselves with a team visit to The Whitney Museum and a screening of Jiro Dreams of Sushi.

We also made some really cool stuff including a beautiful Thank You card (letterpressed by Studio on Fire), a polo shirt for our ping pong players, and an official Barrel t-shirt.

It's been an incredible start to 2012. Stay tuned for more!

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We're very pleased to announce the launch of ProjectFlow, a new web app that gives users a simple way to track projects on a drag & drop board interface.

The Backstory

At Barrel, we typically have anywhere between 20-30 projects going on at once. Back when Barrel was a 4-person shop, we used a whiteboard to track projects. When this became unwieldy and impossible to access away from the office, we switched over to an Excel file on a shared Dropbox folder. While access was better, we never grew fond of using a spreadsheet to get a "big-picture" view of our workload. We even went back to the whiteboard a few times just to be able to take a step back and feel all the work we had on our plates.

One weekend in early 2011, Sei-Wook, with help from Eric, built out a prototype of a drag and drop interface with multiple columns. We called it Projects Under Management App (PUMA). It was a single web page that utilized some JQuery and AJAX and allowed us to get a nice visual of all our projects-in-progress. PUMA quickly became an indispensable tool. We even bought a large touchscreen television that permanently displayed the PUMA page.

From Internal Tool to Product

Encouraged by our friends and clients who told us that they would love to use something like ProjectFlow, we decided to devote some of our resources into making it a product. Our goal was to produce a very simple and easy-to-use application. We knew that there were similar kanban-style apps out there and some had some really rich features. So we decided to go in the other direction and keep out as many features as possible, distilling the web app into a single-minded product that would do one thing right: give you a clear, big-picture view of the things you're working on.

Finding precious time in-between client work and overcoming some doubts, we finally reached a point at which we thought we could share the product with potential users. We took feedback from various users tests and made a bunch of tweaks to improve the experience (we highly recommend using YouEye for usability testing). Earlier this week, after getting a marketing page together, we finally launched ProjectFlow. We'd like to thank our talented developer Kevin Kneifel for sticking it out over a stretch of 8 months and making the most of the small pockets of time to build out the web app.

What's Next

Right now, ProjectFlow is 100% free to use. We're pretty sure that we'll always offer a free version of the web app. We don't have plans to offer a mobile version, but the site is fully responsive (although we have some kinks to work out). We do have plans for a premium offering and this might involve features like multiple boards for accounts, sharing, and the ability to prioritize blocks within a column. We're still brainstorming a ton of ideas, so we're very excited about what's in store. Our hope is that people will find this tool as useful as we do. Not only do we use it internally for tracking our client work; it's also used for keeping track of our office ping pong leader board.

Try ProjectFlow; create a free account today: www.projectflowapp.com

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Mémé LAFLEUR is an upcoming womenswear line born out of Sarah LaFleur's desire to rid the world of the pantsuit. After teaming up with a former runway fashion designer, Sarah created a line of eight beautiful dresses for the workplace. All the dresses are made in New York City, using only the finest fabrics from Italy and Japan. 

We worked with Sarah to create a pre-launch website that gives visitors a glimpse of her new clothing line launching this Fall. The website features a video trailer, a blog, and a Launch Effect-powered newsletter sign-up modal. The website is built on WordPress.

Visit: www.memelafleur.com

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4sight Inc. is a NYC-based industrial design firm specializing in strategic product and package innovation. 4sight is behind the revolutionary packaging for Wrigley's 5 Slim Pack, Heinz's Dip & Squeeze Ketchup, and Gatorade's new slim and easy-to-grip bottles. 

We worked with the 4sight team to design a new website that reflects the company's modern and innovative design work. We focused on improving the portfolio section by making it easier to browse by categories and read detailed case studies. The website also features an animated infographic that illustrates the 4sight design process as well as sections for news and blog. The site runs on ExpressionEngine.

Visit: www.4sightinc.com

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To celebrate Earth Day last week, we decided to make a very big change: we replaced our Poland Springs large bottle water cooler with a bottleless filtered water cooler.

Our new water cooler connects directly to our plumbing system and goes through a filter, providing freshly purified tap water. And here are the instant benefits:

• we save about $200/month now that we don't have to have Poland Springs deliver 24-28 5-gallon water bottles
• we save a ton of room now that we don't have to store those bottles
• nobody has to hurt their back trying to carry and switch out a new water bottle

We wish we had done this earlier, but we're very glad we were able to make the switch. If your office is interested and in the New York area, check out Empire Filtered Water.

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Based in Honolulu, Shenzhen Knives is the leading online retailer of high-quality ceramic knives and knife sets.    

We worked closely with Shenzhen Knives to redesign and develop a new e-commerce website that would improve the online shopping experience. Using LemonStand, a PHP-based eCommerce platform, we made it easy for customers to browse products and read product reviews. We also provided the product photography.

Visit: www.shenzhenknives.com

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Postable is an address book web app that allows people to collect mailing addresses for wedding invitations, birth announcements, holiday cards, or just because it's handy to have them. The free app organizes your address book alphabetically and also allows users to export contacts to Apple Address Book, Outlook, Gmail, Excel, and even print mailing labels.

We worked with Postable to design and develop an easy-to-use custom app that brings fun to the mundane task of collecting people's mailing addresses. We also created the logo for Postable as well as the graphic elements used throughout the site.

Visit: www.postable.com

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Handshake is a B2B sales order and catalog web app that simplifies the paperwork process for sales teams and reps. With its ability to sync with the iPad and iPhone, Handshake makes it fast and easy to write and manage orders, upload new products, store customer info, and export order history anywhere, anytime.  

We worked with Handshake to redesign and develop a new marketing website that would present the app's many functions and capabilities in a clean and easy-to-follow way. The new website features a visual tour of the app's features, a rundown of its possible integrations, and an improved sign-up and customer reviews page. 

Visit: www.handshake-app.com

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Leveraged Loan offers real-time news, trends and insights on the U.S., European and Asia-Pacific leveraged loan and high-yield bond markets.

We worked with Leveraged Commentary & Data (LCD) of Standard & Poor's to design and develop a new site that provides news and introductory information to the world of leveraged loans. The site features custom jQuery charts and tables, an easily searchable/sharable online version of LCD's comprehensive Loan Market Primer, and a directory for finding jobs in the leveraged finance industry. The website is built on Wordpress.

Visit: www.leveragedloan.com

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CraigMichaels is a leading producer of senior level business events such as the Sustainable Operations Summit and the Retail Facilities Summit. They specialize in providing intimate and high-quality educational and business networking opportunities.

We've worked closely with the CraigMichaels team for over a year now, helping them build websites for their various summits. We were asked last Fall to redesign their corporate website and tasked with bringing a bold and modern look to their online presence. The new site features a video of an event scene as the hero image on the homepage, an interactive infographic that illustrates the unconventional approach of their events, an improved News section, and a visually engaging showcase of their upcoming events. The website is built on WordPress.

The launch of the website coincided with the celebration of the company's 10-year anniversary earlier this month. Congrats!

Visit: www.craigmichaelsinc.com

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We worked with Dauphine Press to design a clean and inviting new website that would make it easier for customers to browse their wide selection of suite options and customizations. The new site features Google Maps integration to help locate nearby retailers, an Issuu integration that allows customers to view custom options as an embedded PDF, and a blog powered by WordPress. We also took careful measures to preserve the high SEO rankings of the existing site, following best SEO practices throughout the site. The site runs on ExpressionEngine.

Visit: www.dauphinepress.com

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We recently launched two redesigns of websites that we had previously built for our clients. The first is a redesign for The Sustainable Operations Summit, the premier forum for leading organizations to share best practices that benefit both the environment and the bottom line, run by event marketing company CraigMichaels. The 2012 summit will bring together some of the world's brightest minds in sustainability in New York City during Earth Week to share innovative approaches to reduce impact on the environment with a focus on energy, the built environment and resource conservation. Former president Bill Clinton will be one of the many distinguished speakers. We created an illustration-based design to play on a green and patriotic theme for this year's summit.

Visit: www.sustainableoperationssummit.com

Enfatica develops enterprise solutions for the retail industry. Their new solution is Fusion, a cloud-based platform that offers a wide range of features for retail enterprises. We worked with Enfatica to help explain the advantages of Fusion over traditional retail IT solutions.

Visit: www.enfatica.com

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Art + Life Photography is a duo of photographers—Debbie McGeorge and Denise Guerin—who specialize in weddings, engagements, bar/bat mitzvahs, and portraits.

We worked with Debbie and Denise to redesign and create a portfolio site showcases their photography in a clean and organized way. The new site features a homepage slideshow, a portfolio page that categorizes their work by type of event, and an image-rich blog. We built the website on WordPress.

Visit: www.artpluslife.com

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We worked with Pilot to redesign and develop a new website. We built out the site on WordPress to make it easier for the client to update their portfolio and integrated all the videos with Wiredrive. The site features various JQuery effects to highlight the fun and quirky personality of the Pilot team.

Visit the site: www.pilotnyc.com

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The Columbia-LSE Dual MA/MSc Program in International and World History offers graduates two connected degrees: a Master of Arts from Columbia University and a Master of Science from the London School of Economics. The two-year, research-intensive program was created to give graduates a deep understanding of globalization while serving as a launching pad for careers in government, journalism, NGOs, and international organizations.

We worked with Columbia University to redesign and build a new website that would streamline information in an accessible way. The new site features information on courses, bios of faculty members, and details about student projects. We implemented ExpressionEngine to allow the client to make updates to the site.

Visit the site: www.worldhistory.columbia.edu

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Lux Capital is a venture capital firm that invests in emerging technology companies in the physical and life sciences. From cancer therapies to petroleum replacements, Lux Capital helps launch companies that can change the world while offering the potential for extraordinary investment return.

We worked with Lux Capital to design and develop a sophisticated new website that showcases their investment portfolio. The website features image-rich slideshows and detailed case studies. With ExpressionEngine as the content management system, we made it easy for Lux Capital to add new content.

Visit the site: www.luxcapital.com/

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Launch Effect, our viral campaign WordPress theme, has been downloaded over 6,000 times since August. We've seen hundreds of sites using the theme in various ways and are finding new ones every day (check out the gallery we put together on the homepage). It's been very inspiring to see our theme in use, and we've received great feedback and many wonderful requests for new features. 

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