So, the best airline on earth and hometown hero Southwest Airlines asks you to design a blog to be the face of their online community. What’s going to be the theme? Big powerful 737 airplanes*? Corporate colors? Pilots typing on laptops with a toothy grin?

Thankfully, no.

After reading everything I could about Southwest, looking over their advertising history and talking with their marketing department, I found a company with a history of Internet firsts and a history of simple, clever advertising. In our meetings, we discovered that this blog would be the first direct online feedback Southwest customers have ever had with the airline.

With all that in mind, we came up with peanuts —­ the little complimentary bag of peanuts offered on every Southwest flight torn open and spilling out all over the page. Southwest is famous for those little guys. I felt they were really the unofficial mascot. So right alongside Southwest’s employees talking to the world, it seems appropriate to have a bunch of peanuts.

A good deal of the design I see on the web seems to be an afterthought. It is simply decoration for the content. At RD2, we try to make design that is beautiful and helps our clients tell their story. That goes way beyond using company colors and fonts. We always try to design to the spirit of the message. With a little effort in research, a concept-driven design can be one of the most powerful communication tools on the website.

I have really enjoyed the entire process of designing this blog for such a great client. The Southwest team has been fantastic and very appreciative of our efforts to design with their message in mind. As always, our development team’s work has also been exceptional. Even when I asked to have no definable masthead, no real grid structure and peanuts all over the live content, the coders came through with flawless CSS. I’ve never been happier with a completed online project.

I look forward to more projects with Southwest and more opportunities to push for concept-driven design on the web.

*Full disclosure: we presented a concept with an airplane on it. Thankfully, the Southwest team saw beyond the traditional choice and went with the peanuts.