Continental Midtown

The lobster mash potatoes are like nowhere else, except at the AC, NYC and Old City locations

How’s it go again? “If Norman Rockwell spent his weekends jet-setting with Hugh Hefner, he’d be chilling in the upstairs lounge here on thursdays.” The Continentals have popped up in various places along the Eastern seaboard, but none so enigmatic as our local Midtown spot. Colorful, fun and just a tad tongue in cheek, the web site looks to reflect all that the Rittenhousites live for. Money and drinking.

The more work I add to this site, the more I realize how dated my digital work gets. Not so much the print stuff, just digital. Why is that? Shouldn’t design be timeless? I’ll chock it up to technological constraints. Why not. Regardless, this flash site utilized positioned popup windows for a cheeky user engagement. Since pop ups at the time were more “SURPRISE!” than spyware, it seemed like a relatively good idea. Plus passing variables from a flash movie in one window to flash movies in another was blowing our minds. Oh how times have changed. Oddly enough, the site is still active, check it out at continentalmidtown.com.

Launched: 2004
Client: Starr Restaurant Group
Agency: 160over90
Designer: Giacomo Ciminello
Copywriter: Brendan Quinn
Creative Director: Darryl Cilli
Associate CD: Jim Walls
Developer: Ryan Blain