Emeryville, CA 04.05 - 11.05 - Direct Trade hired Busse Design for a typical website and logo redesign. Logo Development focuses solely on the definition and design of the company’s brand as it is represented in the logo. The Busse Design team went through several exploration rounds to help define what style and imagery would be most appropriate in representing the company’s products and goals. The end result would be a logo that is designed to work effectively across multiple media to enable us to create a unified brand experience throughout the other project phases.

The website redesign was comprised of five main stages: discovery, site map, UI sketches, visual design, and HTML coding. During the discovery stage all necessary information about the client, their goals, and opportunities is gathered and compiled. The Site Map defines the overall structure of the content within the site. In this document, navigation conventions are established, and the inter-relationships between application features and any role/user-specific interface differences are identified. During Site Map phase, we also identified where anticipated future site extensions might reside to ensure that the structure would grow gracefully.

User Interface (UI) Sketches are black-and-white wireframe representations of select pages within the site. The purpose of the UI Sketch phase is to determine the optimal layout of the various elements within each of the unique page-types in the site, without the distraction of visual design. The conventions established during this phase will serve all pages required for the site. The purpose of the visual design phase is to develop a look-and-feel that extends, strengthens or establishes the brand, while being visually appealing to the target audience. The Busse Design approach to visual design exploration involves multiple designers applying visual treatment to the UI sketches that have been developed for the project. The designers work within the parameters of your overall identity guidelines to create distinct visual design directions for your website.

In this phase Busse defined the HTML and coding requirements for all pages of the site. Working in accordance with the client’s production requirements, Busse created the HTML coding structure, set up CSS and create basic JavaScript. The HTML code created was lean and easy to read and integrated into Direct Trade’s back-end structure. The production phase further included the creation of all required graphic templates (Photoshop) and other necessary graphic production processes.

About Direct Trade
Direct Trade Futures is a deep-discount futures and options brokerage - and one of the most active futures commission merchants in California.

Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, Direct Trade uses advanced technology to give traders immediate access to the world's markets - yet still maintains one of the industry's most-competitive rate structures.

As active futures traders ourselves, we know what it takes to succeed in these markets: high-performance execution - because effective strategies demand it, deeply-discounted commissions - to keep investors in the market over the long run, and a complete trading package - trading station, research, news and quotes. For more information, please visit http://www.dtfutures.com.

About Busse Design USA
Busse Design USA Inc., founded in 1997, and Busse Design Ulm GmbH, founded in 1959, together form a full-service design agency. Busse Design USA provides a wide range of services for their clients —including user interface design, product design and development, branding and packaging design, and a wide range of usability testing services. Working from a human factors perspective, Busse Design USA combines compelling design with strong process methodologies that result in superior user experiences for both its clients and their customers and partners. Headquartered in a restored 1913 building in Emeryville, CA — home to one of the largest populations of artists studios in the San Francisco Bay Area — Busse Design USA employs accomplished designers, Human Computer Interaction specialists, information architects, as well as brand and marketing experts. More information about Busse Design USA can be found at http://www.bussedesign.com.