Fender

# Fender Musical Instruments Corporation — Website Concepts (2008–2009)

In 2008, Fender Musical Instruments Corporation (FMIC) wanted an online makeover for an early 2009 launch. This was before CMS and WordPress platforms swallowed the industry whole — and one of the last sites I built in straight HTML with Flash (AS2).

The project came to me through Steve Pitkin of Pitkin Studio, headquartered right here in my hometown of Rockford, IL. Steve had been photographing Fender products and roster artists for the better part of 30 years, and he was looking to expand his studio beyond photography into full marketing services for his blue chip accounts. He called. I said yes before he finished the sentence. Working on a globally loved brand I’d grown up with was an absolute thrill.

The first five concepts show exactly where my head was: full-screen, product-forward, immersive. Bold for 2008. The later rounds show where the project landed after multiple stakeholders weighed in — a more conservative, boxed-grid corporate approach.

I fought for the bigger vision. I believed full-screen, product-centric marketing was where the web was headed, and that the grid layout already felt dated. But there were a lot of voices in the room, and the client knew what they wanted. That’s the job sometimes. The customer gets what the customer wants — though I’ll always argue you owe them your honest case for long-term success before you build exactly what they asked for. I made mine. They made their call. The site launched.

The Fender work kicked off a domino effect of additional projects with Pitkin Studio and other accounts Steve contracted my way. By the end of 2009, I’d retired Flash entirely and gone all-in on CMS development — HTML/PHP/MySQL and WordPress — the technology that now powers most of what every living organism sees online, on any device.

Looking back, the project taught me something I’ve carried into every engagement since: advocate hard for what serves the brand long-term, then execute the client’s decision like it was your idea all along.