It's a little over a year since we launched our new website and throughout the year we've made some nips and tucks to smooth off a couple of edges. In the summer we decided that we needed to make some slightly bigger changes, both on the surface and under the hood. Finally, after months of fiddling, tinkering and fine tuning between client work we're pleased to say that we've finished! We're calling it an early Christmas present to ourselves!
So what's new?
Under the hood
Even though much of the site looks the same, we've done quite a lot of work in the engine room. A lot of time has been spent streamlining the markup and we've introduced new semantic HTML 5 elements where possible. We've used Wordpress as our CMS for a number of years. Constant, regular improvements to this system mean we can now create and use 'Custom Post Types' for each major area of the site. This helps both from a maintenance and usability point of view and makes keeping the site regularly updated really simple.
Our new site is adaptive, so it changes depending on the device it
It's now adaptive
If you're reading this on a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet, you will probably have already noticed the biggest change. Our website is now adaptive (or responsive). This means that the layout and form of the site changes depending on what sort of device you're looking at it on to provide a better user experience. We've also made the site adapt its functions to fit the device. For instance, our numerous slideshows throughout the site change from a 'click to scroll' function to a 'swipe to scroll' function when viewed on a touch screen device. We'll be writing a lot more about adaptive design on our blog in the coming months, so make sure you check back soon.
We've improved the typography, which is now using Museo Sans, served up by Typekit
The devil's in the detail
Since we originally launched the site, we've had nothing but good feedback so never intended for this to be a redesign. More of a realignment really. That said, virtually every pixel has been looked at, critiqued and polished. The main change (although still pretty subtile) is in the typography. Since the site was first built we've been using Typekit to serve up a fine selection of fonts for our websites. We thought was about time we practiced what we preach, so have moved from our old favourite Effra, to our new font Museo Sans. We've also added some new content to the 'meet the team' part of the About section which gives a bit of an insight into each member of the team.
Our services page has finally been given the little bit of love and care it deserves!
The biggest visual and content change is in our services page. We were never 100% happy with the old one and really wanted to, not only bring more vibrancy to the page, but to also offer much more information about what we actually do. We decided to split our services in to two types each containing 6 parts. For each of these parts we wrote a small bite size piece of copy and created custom illustrations and graphics. Take a look >
There's also been a couple of other tweaks, but we'll let you discover those for yourself. Why not have a look around the (mostly) new (and hopefully improved) site and let us know what you think in the comments. Enjoy!
