Shades of Blue and Late Night Bursts of Inspiration

Posted Tuesday, 2 June 2009  |  Category:  Design spotlight  |  Comments

A Web Design Case Study

"I'm new to this web design thing. How does it work exactly?" is a question we frequently hear from new customers. In this series of web design case studies, we hope to demystify the process - starting with our latest web launch, 3P Consulting.

1. Meeting

It all starts with the briefing meeting. After sending through a rough proposal with cost estimate, we went to the 3P Consulting headquarters to chat about the website scope. The company provides consulting services to the public sector and wanted a fresh web presence in line with their new branding. The brief was to create a website with a "dynamic look" and dominant blue hues.

2. Electronic Design Briefing

Now there are as many shades of blue as there are fish in the sea! We sent off a few design references via email to get a feel for right combinations of blue-ness. It's important to note that we used industry references and online templates – this speeds up the design process and gives the client the freedom to say "I hate X… but I like Y."

Design Showcase: Puo Educational Products

Posted Saturday, 17 May 2008  |  Category:  Design spotlight  |  Comments

We recently created the web design for Puo. This dynamic company offers educational products – ie. puzzles, flash cards, games and books – for children in major African languages. Their mission is to promote African languages – and African culture – in a contemporary context.

The brief was to create a design that would appeal to both parents and children, and blend with their existing set of characters:

Since we mostly create photography-based websites like ALA this was a bit of a stretch! However, we embraced the challenge and hit the net for some preliminary research.

1. Research

If you have a look at children's websites, you'll notice that many developers subscribe to a “more is more” philosophy when targeting young audiences. We were surprised to find pages and pages of rainbow coloured menus, flashing elements, dancing mascots, blinking fonts – in short, it was more disorientating than an 80s psychedelic disco!

                                                                               Web Research

We immediately set to developing a specific brand palette that would inform the design choices. Beige-orange would be used as the dominant colour to emphasize the 'Puo orange', while blue would act as the counterpoint hue. Colours were chosen according to their 'calming' properties: