Glad Works, a print, Web and multi-media advertising agency in Pawtucket, recently unveiled two New York City Fire Department-sponsored Web sites, the New York City Fire Museum, the history of New York City’s firefighters and Fire Zone, an interactive site on fire safety.
Shortly after the terrorist attacks last year, the firm formed a partnership with the FDNY in order to revitalize the two sites, which needed a new look and maintenance. The museum site was unveiled on the one-year anniversary of the attacks. It can be viewed at www.nycfiremuseum.org.
The company volunteered its services for the project.
After Sept. 11, the New York City Fire Department was operating its official Web site, but didn’t have the time or resources to operate the other two, according to Callum Grieve, a Glad Works partner and its marketing director. The official department site has had more than 182 million hits since Sept. 11, 2001, and the department’s Web team has had to divert their energies to maintaining that site. Glad Works contacted the fire department to ask how they could help following the attacks and realized they could revamp and maintain the two Internet sites.
“We sort of sat around and saw people giving generous gifts and we just didn’t know what to give them,” he said. “We couldn’t send them bottles of water, so we thought maybe there was room for design” in the relief work.
The ad firm traveled to the FDNY headquarters in Brooklyn about a month after the terrorist attacks and in that time members of the FDNY Technology Development & Systems had already researched the Rhode Island firm and its work, and were ready to accept their offer for pro-bono work on the two Web sites, Grieve said. The two entered into a partnership with the understanding that it was to be a long-lasting one and that Glad Works would continue to maintain and update the sites, free of charge.
According to Grieve, Glad Works was the only design firm in the country to be chosen to work on Web-based projects for two FDNY-sponsored Web sites. The firm plans to redesign the museum Web site’s existing material, making it flow better and be more user-friendly. Glad Works looked to other museum sites for guidelines for the New York City Fire Museum’s site.
The Fire Zone Web site, an online version of the real Fire Zone in Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center, will offer online visitors a similar experience to the real thing, where children can become part of the firefighting team and learn how they can play a part in preventing fires and making their families safer. The Fire Zone site is still under construction and is scheduled for a November launch.
