Featured
Diploma Information
This site delivers information about diplomas offered by the AQA and City and Guilds partnership.
It was a complex site to put together in that we worked on behalf of City and Guilds but also had AQA as a stake holder. On top of this the creative was supplied from another agency and not initially intended for web usage.
We had to balance dominant imagery and a limited colour pallet with focused navigation and clear content. I worked with the designer to architect a clear link language and sign posting system.
Key to bringing content to the fore front was having it as the primary item, against the left hand margin. This placed the navigation on the right as supplementary options for when the content isn’t your intended focus. If the content is read through you are presented with large footer containing links to supplementary or complimentary resources; thus reducing the “what next?” scenario.
Going back to the dominant imagery we were able to balance this by utilising white space and transparency. With each section having its own primary image and theme I setup the site to reduce the effort in maintaining these. This was appreciated by City and Guilds internal team who were implementing the site in RedDot.
Links
Creative Soup
14 August 2008 - No comments
I am lucky to work within a very creative team. Each of us adds something to the creative pot from which we all draw inspiration. Being an expressive bunch we’re always looking to show off our creativity. This has taken the form of sticking images onto walls, group emails, photo journeys and many more. Some of these idea fizzle out and some last but they’re all meaningful.
With this in mind we’ve been looking for a way to express our internal creativity publicly. I setup an internal creative blog based on the Munny’s but it didn’t really kick off. Then I suggested we expand the blog into something that records our ideas, be it long or short in life. Combining some old creative with the Munny blog idea led to the Creative Soup site.
Within the site a idea can be setup and its life tracked by the posts added to it. Each journey is tracked via a horizontal interface, enhancing the timeline idea. Its an experimental approach to community blogging but its created a real buzz in the office.
Update: I’ve recently added post via eamil functionality via flickr. This allows the team to cc a flickr address in an email and the image shall appear on the Creative Soup site.
Links
Marston’s Inns and Taverns
Redevelopment of Marston’s Inns and Taverns public website and an associated intranet for pub landlords. The size of this project, budget and timescales led to me being involved at an early stage with Information Architecture and site concepts.
I worked with the project IA to bring the number of wire frames and unique content modules down to a number that we could reasonable cater for in design and build time. This is the first project I worked on with our newest Senior Designer, Sam. We sit opposite each other so were able to have frequent and frank discussions about the design and interface throughout the project. We focused on building a design system that could be shared across the website and intranet whilst allowing each to maintain its identity.
The interface and site architecture reflect the collaboration between the IA, senior designer and I to deliver appropriate user journeys.
Links
Alstom Corporate Website Refresh
I was enlisted on the Alstom corporate website refresh project initially to produce templates (HTML and CSS) for their internal development teams. Alstom’s corporate site contained vast amounts of information and we were limited to working within the remit of the existing CMS system, Pollen. They required a set of templates that were flexible enough to cater for their existing content and multiple themes.
During the scoping phase of the project I met with the client and their internal development team to ascertain the remit of what we could do within their infrastructure. After the initial set of templates were released Alstom informed us that they were no longer going to be adapted for use by their internal team but integrated by the third party CMS provider, BT.
I was flown out to Paris multiple times to work with at BT’s offices. Whilst there I help them understand our vision for the site and put together implementation documentation. It was a very interesting and demanding time working in a non English speaking office. By being on site I was able to keep the ball rolling and save a lot of time.
Links
ICI.com
I was primarily involved on the ICI dot com project as an accessibility consultant. Being a FTSE 100 company they put accessibility high up on their list of requirements.
Around the same time that this project came in I was in the process of providing in-house training for the company on accessibility. I used the opportunity to organise formal training for the developers working on the project.
With the external training and support I provided we were able to deliver a site that not only met Web Content Accessibility Guidelines but also gained accreditation with Shaw Trust.