James Schriber Furniture originally came to Seaver Interactive for the firm's first website back in 2006. The business was a marketing "basket case" of materials, delivered in a paper bag: tattered but stylish flyers and business cards, and gorgeous coffee table books filled with post-it notes. Schriber had two assets that more than made up for it: astonishingly beautiful work, and the foresight to photograph it.

Working with gifted photographer John Kane of Silver Sun Studios, they had created an admirable portfolio of beautifully staged and lit images of Schriber's work. It was all analog on 5" x 8" dye-sub chromes, not digitized — so we knew our work was cut out for us.

We began with the logo, refining what Schriber had created himself on a xerox machine, decades earlier. It didnt need much, just a little tweaking and polishing. Next we tackled the website, working hand in hand alongside James to make best use of his reputation as a brilliant designer himself.

Schriber's propensity toward simplicity and minimalism helped guide the home page design toward a spare, white open look, using tiny typography and placing a single 1" high image in the center. I told James, "Congratulations, we've just designed the Beatles White Album." It didn't look like a website any more and when I brought that up, he replied "I know."

This approach began a major revolution in how we looked at design of client websites. In short, the rule was "anything but a website." Put another way, we came at every new project as if our job was to create The Coffee Table Book of You. This was long before the mobile revolution shook website design to its core, and it led to some wonderful results that really stood out in that era. It worked then, and we've stayed with it.

The web world has come a long way since then, and so has Schriber's company. The firm went from bedroom sets and kitchens to coomplete installations for luxury retails stores on Fifth Avenue in New York City, and top-to-bottom built-in designs for every room in fine residences along Connecticut's famed Gold Coast. Schriber's site – and marketing – has evolved a few of times as we keep up with advances in technology (such as responsive design) and changes in their catalog. Luckily, his firm continues to produce some of the most sought-after high end custom furniture designs in the world.