As happens every year about this time, the calendar gets larger by a factor of one, and Substance celebrates another year in business. So what happened at Substance in 2012? Excellent question!

Oregon’s Adventure Coast: oregonsadventurecoast.com

Continuing our love affair with the Oregon Coast, we kicked off 2012 with the launch of a new website for the Coos Bay/North Bend/Charleston area – Oregon’s Adventure Coast. Through the structure, design and content of the new site, we focused on building awareness for “Oregon’s Adventure Coast” by introducing the concept of Adventurability. Read more about this project…

The Intertwine: theintertwine.org

The Intertwine is Portland/Vancouver’s regional trails, waterways, and park network that spans four counties and two states, creating a unique network of greenspace that interlaces the cities and communities that surround us. Substance was faced with two challenges: to help the site’s visitors make sense of the complex array of parks and trails, and find a route that was interesting, relevant, and appealing; and to help educate the community about this treasure that exists in their own backyards. Read more about this project…

Travel Oregon: traveloregon.com

“As the official guide to Oregon travel and tourism information, this new site integrates inspiring content with trip-planning information. It’s a responsive site that works equally well on desktop and mobile platforms.” At least that’s what Communication Arts had to say about the new site we designed and developed for Travel Oregon. Read more about this project…

Travel Oregon China: traveloregon.cn

With a growing international tourism audience, we worked with Travel Oregon to create a framework for their new brand and site to work around the world. The first international outpost of the new Travel Oregon brand launched in China, providing travel information and inspiration for visiting our great state.

Leupold: leupold.com

Leupold & Stevens, proudly headquartered in Oregon, is the world leader in premium sport optics. We created a site that would enable Leupold to do three things: tell the story of Leupold and its products, showcase how their products enable their customers to enjoy the outdoors, and make it easy and intuitive to find the right product for the right use. Read more about this project…

Travel Oregon Scenic Byways Enhancements: traveloregon.com/trip-ideas/scenic-byways

As part of our “continual enhancement” strategy, in August we launched some additional functionality to the Scenic Byways section of the Travel Oregon website. Adding turn-by-turn directions, a Google Earth flyover of the route, and additional nearby resources, the Scenic Byways section continues to be more than just an idea for a road trip, but an inspiring adventure with actionable results to get you on the road.

Leupold Golf: golf.leupold.com

Building upon the launch of Leupold.com, the Leupold Golf website aimed at providing specific information around their line of golf rangefinding products.

All Hands Raised: allhandsraised.org

All Hands Raised brings together local business, government, non-profit organizations, faith community, parents, students and community stakeholders to ensure the sustained success of every child in Portland and Multnomah County from cradle to career. Substance is proud to be involved with an organization like this through the design and launch of their new website. Besides being our downstairs neighbor, we love working with clients like this who have a direct and positive influence on our community.

Timberline Lodge site enhancements: timberlinelodge.com

In our ongoing relationship with Timberline Lodge, this year’s seasonal updates helped give visibility to annual snowfall totals and their involvement on Instagram. Using the Google Graphs API, we created a set of Historical Snowfall Data graphs to track annual snowfall year-over-year, and ways to compare the current year to previous years. We also created a Today / Past 24 Hour / Past 48 Hour / Past 72 Hour graph so visitors can get a better sense of how much snow has recently fallen on the mountain. And in order to give people a sense of what things are happening on the mountain, we integrated an Instagram feed into the site which showcases all the photos that Timberline has liked on Instagram.

Things happened at Substance this year beyond site launches. We started the year with the concept of “Interaction is Brand.” We went to South By Southwest. We spoke at the 140edu Conference and attended the Future of Web Design Conference in New York. We built a 4th long table. We asked a taxi driver go through an In-N-Out Burger drive-through. We had an open house during Design Week Portland.

We participated in (and came in 42nd out of over 300 companies with 5 – 24 employees!) the Bike Commute Challenge. We had a massive Substance Chili Cook-Off. We raced go-karts.

And we ended the year by having Rethinking the Web Comp featured on SlideShare.

There were a bunch of new hires over the course of 2012 as well… a large part of our success this year was the addition of Kim, Brent, Annie, Shawn and James to the team. Welcome, one and all. And if you’d like to be on this list for our 2013 recap, we’re hiring a back end developer…

Looking ahead in 2013, we’ll be launching some new projects for some of our existing clients in the spring and some top-secret new stuff that will launch later in the year. From now until the end of May, we’ll be enjoying frequent visits to our client up at Timberline. As mentioned above, we’ll be hiring a back end developer. And as always, there will be some other surprises along the way.

Lastly, January 19th marks our SIXTH YEAR in business. To our families, friends, clients and colleagues: we can’t thank you enough for the support and opportunities you’ve given us over these last six years. We sincerely appreciate all that you do for us.