Shades of Blue and Late Night Bursts of Inspiration
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."
In this case, the client picked out the website references with large patches of dark blue, which gave us a pretty good idea of their design vision:
3. Design Presentation
We then chewed over the design briefing for a while, browsed for relevant stock photography and experienced a burst of creativity on Saturday night at 10 pm (design inspiration has the peculiar habit of following its own erratic timing). This gave birth to the design below:
The client immediately resonated with the design, emailing on the very same day:
Shouldn’t you be out having fun on a Saturday evening? I like what you have done, it looks fantastic...
Together with their feedback, we made some tweaks to imagery and buttons, until the design reached is final format:
4. Programming
Programming began soon thereafter. This involved:
• Converting the design to HTML and CSS
• Testing on major browsers (IE6, IE7, Firefox, Chrome…)
• Integrating with our content management system of choice – OpenCms – enabling the client to make
content updates themselves
• Adding special features and interactive elements
• Testing, testing, testing!
All subsequent pages were designed in line with the home page style guide, featuring different image banners:
5. The Result?
The 3p website was launched end of April 2009. It has received more than 1,600 visits and 4,500 page views within the first month of launch, and enjoys excellent rankings for its chosen keywords.
We have since launched two other websites for the same group, relating to healthcare consulting and community development.
Catch up on other case studies here, or learn more about the website development process.
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