With radio shows carried on over 220 public stations in 145 countries and television broadcasts across the Muslim world, America Abroad Media eschews soundbite-driven content in favor of in-depth coverage.

With the goal of creating an alternative channel for audiences to tune-in, this media company’s site is an ever-expanding online archive, to which every single broadcast is added, that enables an online community to access, comment on and share programming. Content is supplemented by a visitor comment feature for all programs and a share module that allows publishing to del.icio.us, Digg and Newsvine. (While it's become relatively standard, it's particularly useful to enable dialog for this site's international, and especially broad, audience).

The interface is elegant with type, colors and a visual design based on the the brand’s collateral materials. A clear top-line navigation creates context and placement at all times and a CMS creates meta tags and dynamically links all content. It’s an information structure that emphasizes relational content linking. Video content can run inline or in smaller windows (a nice touch since programs typically run an hour). Also noticeable is the attention that’s been paid to creating alternatives to the clichéd media player interface.

This redesign coincided with the two-year-long development of a new brand strategy and identity.

• The seven-month timeframe was aggressive given the extensive custom back-end development.

• The creative team included one information architect, two designers, three front-end developers, two backend developers and one project manager.

• Typography relies on sIFR for stylesheet-driven text replacement that allows the use of the brand's typeface. All headlines, subheads, and display paragraphs are dynamic, rather than static graphics that remain compatible with HTML/CSS content management systems.

• The CMS is built on an open-source Symfony framework.