WHITE PLAINS, NY – February 9, 2006 – Berlin Productions (BP) has completed an intensive, three-pronged branding project for the White Plains Times, a community newspaper serving White Plains.

BP created a new logo, editorial design and web site to support the newspaper’s transformation from monthly to weekly and help foster the newspaper’s brand. Formerly known as the White Plains Watch, the free newspaper increased its circulation from 5,000 to 25,000, coinciding with the name change.

The new logo incorporates images of a skyline of high-rise buildings and homes, and depicts the city of White Plains as a metropolis. “It emphasizes that the newspaper’s focus on White Plains includes not just the downtown area, but the residential neighborhoods and outlying areas, too,” said Steven Klapow, a creative director at BP who managed the project. The logo is also featured prominently on several dozen newspaper boxes around the city.

BP also developed a new layout and design for the newspaper, strengthening its identity by adding more color and greater definition to the paper’s new and expanded sections. To help the newspaper’s staff create layouts more quickly, BP developed drag-and-drop elements and built a number of shortcuts that would make the paper more attractive but take less time to produce.

BP’s vice president Dylan Wood and multimedia developer Joe Faraci designed and programmed a new web site (www.wptimes.com) that maintains the look of the print publication and can be customized quickly and easily by the editors. “Breaking news doesn’t have to wait for the next print edition,” Klapow said. “The editors have a web-based interface to do all of the updating themselves, whenever they want. We built a custom-programmed updating tool that’s specific to editors’ needs. We also injected some personality into the site, with touches like an animated White Plains Times logo that changes with the season.”

Patricia Casey, president and publisher of White Plains Times, said, “When we decided to take the newspaper from monthly to weekly and changed the name, we needed to create a whole new brand. The team at Berlin Productions not only created a new logo and newspaper design; they helped us get the technology in place to move forward with a complementary web site design. The look created by BP captured the spirit of White Plains, and the attention of readers and advertisers, as well. This jump-start has helped us to grow our business and gain the recognition of the important members of the community.”

Because BP is based in White Plains, the production team felt a special connection to the project. “Our office has been in downtown White Plains for nearly six years,” says BP’s president Rick Berlin. “The fact that the city now merits a weekly news publication says volumes about all of the things here that have changed for the better. We’re very proud to have brought our print, graphic design and web-development expertise to a strong resource like the Times.”

About Berlin Productions
Established in 1982, Berlin Productions is a full-service digital communications agency that produces Web sites, video, CD-ROMs, DVDs, kiosks, animation, presentation, illustration and print services for corporate, educational, medical and government institutions. The company also offers a full array of traditional and digital illustration and print services. BP’s founder Rick Berlin and creative director Dylan Wood are two-time winners of AV Video Multimedia Producer magazine’s annual Top 100 Producers competition, and they have also won several InVision Awards from New Media magazine. BP’s clients include Kraft Foods/Starbucks, MCI, Pepsi, SoBe Beverages, Columbia University, Prudential and Sony.

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