To those of you who don’t hail from the city of Brotherly Love, Geno’s Steaks is a true Philadelphia tradition. One of the city’s signature tourist attractions, Geno’s serves up the highest number of chewy, cheesy, sinfully greasy steak sandwiches in the city, with a side of flashy neon signage and Philadelphia attitude.
My agency, Neff Associates, won Geno’s Steaks as an advertising client, and after a few successful campaigns, the client decided we would be a great fit to reface their website. The old site had a laundry list of technical obstacles to overcome. To begin with, the site was built almost entirely using Flash, with very little content and absolutely zero high-res photography. The design was, to put it nicely, lacking, and there was close to zero capability for the website to be used for positive SEO. We couldn’t wait to get to work re-imagining this iconic shop’s new presence on the web.
One of the unique challenges of Geno’s Steaks is its already highly visible “brand”: the exterior of the restaurant is a bright orange color, covered in a barrage of neon signage that are visible from across the city. Its positioning on the corner of 9th and Passyunk Sts across the street from its longtime competitor Pat’s Steaks has lead to a famous rivalry where visitors have heated debates over which makes a better steak.
We wanted to include the implicit parts of Geno’s brand into the website while simultaneously taking Occam’s razor to the old one. Beginning with a motto of “If it’s blinky, neon and rainbow, it’s gotta to go!”, and with the clients blessings, we began crafting a sleek, responsive solution to their web identity, while maintaining the tradition of colorful signage and pizazz that people come to expect from Geno’s.
In the end, I created a website that accomplishes all of our goals: full client-side content management via WordPress, responsive design, simple flat interface design, beautiful Google Web Fonts (no 90’s cursive fonts here!), and of course, stunning high-resolution photography.
This site is currently live and can be viewed here.
Content and design may have been edited or altered from its original state.
