Even a global brand like Tiger Beer needs a online place to call home, so we chat to the guys at On Screen Creative who created the new UK site.

Lately, here in the Web Designer office we’ve been reminiscing about all the great sites we’ve reviewed in the past and the people we’ve spoken to who are responsible for them. Well, during our trip down memory lane we remembered the chat we had many moons ago with the On Screen Creative team about the first UK site they built for Tiger Beer.
Even if you missed the last time this creative agency was featured, we reckon a lot of you will be familiar with its work, with site designs for the likes of Zero 7 and films such as Love Actually and Johnny English to its name, it’s obviously a creative force to be reckoned with. With that said, we thought it was about time we caught up with them once more, and seeing as the latest UK Tiger Beer site has just gone live – there really was no better time to invite its top dog for a chat!

TD: Tim Dillon, Creative Director

WD: First off, welcome back to Web Designer, we’re always happy to have a chat with familiar faces! A while back we had a look at your first Tiger Beer website developed in 2003 and now you’re back with another Tiger Beer site – so how did that come about and how do you feel about it?
TD: Hi and it’s great to be back! We designed, animated and built the new Tiger Beer UK website with our technical partner – Marotori (www.marotori.com) They’re a development agency we’ve been working with for a long time on a number of projects.
Tiger are re-focusing all of its consumer communication. This year it’s much more centred online, with the new site being far more of a community site rather than merely an ‘online brochure’. Tiger asked us to design and build the new site for it to coincide with other parts of its marketing strategy, we of course were delighted to oblige, as it’s a great brand to be a part of.

WD: The site looks typically fabulous, which obviously we come to expect from you guys. It’s full of oriental charm in terms of the general aesthetic. What kind of design research went in at this level – many agency team trips to Asia perhaps?
TD: Unfortunately not, that would have been great though! Saying that, I have travelled around Asia over the last few years and it does help to know what to reference. The design was an evolution from the previous site (that we also built back in 2005) and the brief from Tiger really led how we approached the design. We were asked to focus on making the site more active and content driven, so we brought all of that to the foreground. The idea is to get far more of a contemporary urban Asian feel to the site, rather than the old-world look and feel of Asia.

WD: Overall it has much more in common visually with your previous Tiger Beer project than the global site at www.tigerbeer.com. Did the client specifically ask for this, and how did your working relationship fit together?
TD: Tiger has a slightly different approach in each of its markets, like a lot of big brands it knows it needs to speak to its customers directly. Tigerbeer.com is the mother-ship site for the brand. The new UK site has its own look and feel, which is all about communicating with its customers here. As ever, it’s important to ensure brand consistency globally, so we work closely with Tiger to make sure that what we design here works globally too.

WD: Some of the component content looks familiar. Was it a nice luxury to be able to reuse sections of the original site you produced, such as the Tiger History sequences, or did this simply present problems, in terms of keeping the overall integration seamless?
TD: The client really wanted to concentrate on creating new sections to hold exciting new content, so this is why we now have the Travel, Film, Food and Events sections. The History and Culture sections have some great content so the client opted to keep them but slot them into the new look and feel. We think it’s great that they’re investing in good content – they update the articles in the sections weekly and run a lot of competitions to keep things fresh. We also set up a new blog that we named ‘Tiger Talk’, the whole team at Tiger contributes to it.

WD: What kind of success did your work on the Tiger 2003 website bring in the period after its launch and do you have similar hopes for the latest Tiger offering?
TD: We did receive an award nomination in Ireland for the animation work which was part of the first site we did for Tiger, unfortunately we didn’t win, but it was nice to go to Dublin and be part of the O2 innovation awards there. The 2003 Tiger site was also published by Taschen Books in 2005 as part of a collection of websites they chose – the book was called Web Design: Flash Sites, you can check it out at the following link: www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/books/design/all/facts/03950.

WD: In terms of site development from start to finish, what kind of constraints in terms of staff numbers or time frames were involved?
TD: We work as a small team and manage a precise production schedule. We had a very tight timeline on this project, as the site was part of a larger marketing plan. We had everything ready on time and we launched as planned. In total, from planning to production, the site took approximately four weeks to create.

WD: Similarly, which core development technologies were put to good use on the site and did any of the technical implementation cause any hassles at all?
TD: Our development partner Marotori (www.marotori.com) has been working alongside us since the beginning. The PHP content management system has evolved with the design and become more sophisticated. The client can log in and update or create content via a selection of designed HTML templates. They can also view logs on all traffic activity and save reports. Marotori handles the hosting for all Tiger sites in the western markets – so this gives us full access to set up and control the way the site works.

WD: What elements of the site bring On Screen Creative most pride and can we glean any hints of what future projects might hold for you guys?
TD: On Screen and Marotori are proud that we continue to deliver everything that Tiger challenges us with in a creative way. We like to think we over-deliver as much as possible and offer a more ‘boutique approach’ than larger agencies that maybe have their eye on the bottom line. As Tiger grows bigger and bigger in the UK, we hope that it will continue to work with us and we look forward to more creative challenges they can thrown at us.

Well that just about rounds up our chat with On Screen Creative, we’re sure you’ll agree that www.tigerbeer.co.uk is a brilliant example of how much the web can solidify brand identity. After all this chin-wagging, we’re gasping… beer anyone?