The new Fretted Americana website is a full e commerce site, showcasing an impressive inventory of thousands of rare guitars. The site also features an extensive and popular video archive of in house produced spots of each guitar in action.

www.frettedamericana.com

Sign the Pledge | view site

Lightray launches Born Again American site for Norman Lear www.bornagainamerican.org. Born Again American celebrates a song featuring musicians from across the country rediscovering their patriotism and what it means to be American.

“The most unique part of the site to us is the Sign the Pledge feature,” says Lightray Productions founder Kimberly Brooks. “Everyone is trying to get people to sign up and give their email addresses but people have newsletter and spam fatigue and are much more reluctant to do so. By making their names appear in a different cursive styles on the Declaration of Independence, something they could print out and hang on their wall, makes signing the pledge to Born Again American far more meaningful.”

The new site will be the centerpiece for the distribution of the song and video, executive produced by Norman Lear. The experience of the video was enhanced with an animation of the most poignant lyrics. The site is also peppered with viral components such as send to a friend, Facebook connectivity, iTunes downloads, and a YouTube presence. The goal: to reach as many Americans as possible, so they can be born again.

See it on Bill Moyers Journal PBS

Normal Lear has created People for the American Way, Declare Yourself and now Born Again American.

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Lightray Creates Warner Music Group Artist Website Library. Designs Used for Artists of Different Genres in the US and Abroad.

Lightray was tapped by Warner Music Group (WMG)  to develop creative concepts for artist websites based on musical genre. The resulting designs showed multiple concepts for each genre using different artists. Lightray worked with WMG to establish the key components needed for an artist website such as music player, email collection, artist bio, and tour information. The resulting designs were then customized  to promote hundreds of artists internationally and in mulitple languages.

“The WMG artist project was dream job in that we could be totally creative and imaginative. says Jessica Thompson Lightray Creative Director. We explored everything from Hip Hop to Latin Rock, to Alternative, and Christian Rock, all the while considering iconography, history, and audience demographic. It was truly a blast.”

Below are some samples from the project.

Lightray designs and builds comprehensive technology solutions for one of the largest music companies in the world with over seventy eight labels in sixty countries, culminating a new design for the IPO of the business.

The project involved several large scale company wide projects which extended across the Warner Music Group both nationally and internationally.

WMG Global Site Creation:
Lightray collaborated with Warner Music staff to create a broadly used administrative tool that would allow employees at 78 labels in 68 countries to easily build websites and music players for their Artists. The project included the planning, design, and user interface for the admin tool as well as templates that could be customized for artists and translated into 5 languages.

WMG Corporate Website & Intranet:
Warner Music Group commissioned Lightray to design 3 co-branded sites that would reflect their broad roaster of ground breaking artists, creative excellence, and corporate vision. Lightray launched 3 consecutive sites: WMG.com, WarnerMusic.com, and company wide Intranet for staff to stay up to date on the latest news internally.

WMG Genre Templates:
Lightray designed templates for use in all different musical genres including: Rock, Pop, Hip-Hop, Alternative, Jazz, Classical, and World Music. The templates were designed to capture the aesthetic of each genre while also providing flexibility for Artists to have their own look and feel while fitting into an effective framework.

Warner Music Group Goes Public:

Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story on dvd

Warner Music Group under new leadership commissioned Lightray to redesign their corporate website in time for their IPO. Lightray worked closely with key management at WMG to create a look and feel that would present the company to new audience of future investors. The new site was a streamlined presentation of the Groups breadth, history, and diversity in the music business.

“Working with Warner Music Group so intimately over the course of several years has been exciting for Lightray. Allowing us to exercise our wildly creative muscles and our technological savvy. says Kimberly Brooks, Lightray CEO. The projects were pivotal to the trajectory of the company and Lightray is proud to have been at center of it.”

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Lightray launches website for iconic songwriter Carole Bayer Sager. Carole Bayer Sager’s songbook spans nearly 40 years and contains some of our most beloved and popular songs. From  “That’s What Friends Are For,” the Oscar-winning “Arthur’s Theme,” Carole’s songs are pop standards.  Lightray worked closely with Carole Bayer Sager to make her enormous collection available, and accessible.