Nine innings, six games, two teams, one city. A site for the story of baseball fandom in Chicago.

A Crosstown Classic Story is a 30-minute documentary about the unscripted rivalry between Chicago Cubs and White Sox fans, captured in 2008 when passions were high as each team ranked first in their division. The film was well received at its downtown screening and had the potential to reach a wider audience outside Chicago, if only it had a place to live.

To measure success, the site needed to generate buzz and legitimacy for the documentary, and communicate that energy to three specific audiences who could spread the word using the inherent tools of their post: promoters, viewers and members of the press.

It was important the design feature the city of Chicago and its people, since this character-driven documentary captured scenes from a specific time and place with strong visceral associations (Wrigley Field and Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008, to name a few). To keep users informed about developments, the site immediately offers a mailing-list signup and links to the movie’s presence on social networks—allowing users to choose how to receive their updates.

The “Media Kit” option gives journalists and bloggers a visual cue that the film is legitimately marketable with supporting materials to back that claim. The online media kit is a bare-bones information center: No fancy UI enhancements, all pages are printable and images from the movie are available in a variety of formats to download, one by one, or all at once. Physical promotional materials (stickers and a press kit) reused line-drawings from the web site for consistent visual branding.

The priority here was to convey information quickly by conforming to customary press formats. For fans and promoters eager to see more of the movie, a video blog showcases trailers and supplementary cuts from the thirty hours of footage that never made it into the thirty-minute movie. The installments were released weekly on social networks with links back to the movie’s site, encouraging people to internalize the movie’s release date, sign up for updates, and coordinate screenings.

A trailer for the movie.

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