Our brief: Build a brand and design a website that allows users to get guided insight on suburbs. Suburbs would be reviewed and uploaded, by the client, as content and images, with some stats. It also needed to allow for real estate ads as the main revenue.
My role on this project: Lead Designer
The problem
People need insight on a prospective place to live when they’re going to move. They need help understanding about the suburbs they’re interested in.
The work
After a workshop with the client, we uncovered the brand values and leading persona. This was integral gaining new insights, and to the challenge of creating a trusted platform people would want to engage with over the competition.
Research
Our research included a competitor matrix, interviews with potential users, and trends.Obvious issues with competitors made it easier to figure out what we needed to focus on for points of difference.
Among many other aspects of the comparisons, the most interesting discovery here was that there were only a few competitors, and most lacked an easy flow or interest, or were just not very opinionated.
Through our interviews, we found:
The most important factors in general of what the users wanted to see/have were proximity to amenities, convenience and the overall feeling (the vibe).
Moodboards and style
Our moodboards were somewhat of a mashup. Something like Lululemon meets art deco. We started in this direction and explored.
We threw out a number of ideas, such as a 'cut paper' style or overly complicated art deco patterns. Besides, there were enough decent geometric shapes in a good photo.
Typography & Logo
The name changed from My Suburb Review to Why Live Here through our recommendation. We felt that there wasn’t enough authority in the former. The latter made sense as a question and the answer, like a guide trying to help. We used Hanno as the display typeface, a geometric mid century modern sans serif that’s clean, light and attractive. Using this, and after many iterations, we built the logo.
The logo took on many iterations, especially since our original name was My Suburb Review. After changing to Why Live Here, it came together in a way where the shapes played well with each other and felt opinionated and whimsical, something that lived together well.
Graphic Assets
Then we found something interesting. When exploring mid-century images, we found shapes we could use as graphic assets, which weren’t the usual art deco clean geometric shapes.
Exploring further, we found that more organic shapes were a little more on trend for the audience, expressing more personality and authentic opinion. We took some inspiration from certain places (mostly the logo) and evolved the brand language.
We looked into adding an icon to go with the logotype, but instead opted for a more subtle addition, using one of our new graphic assets.
Wireframes
We moved on to wireframes, designing for mobile first, though all devices were considered. And for desktop we decided on a blog style design for a more opinionated platform.
High fidelity website mockup and branding
Our research showed that there was an appreciation for micro-assets, when applied with a little more subtlety. These would inform the language of the brand within the webpage, along with a candy colour palette to add more fun and engagement. Of course we utilised the organic shapes in certain areas as well, which helped to further communicate the brand.
Completion
Restraint was really the biggest challenge here, as there was massive opportunity to play. However, the brief was for a completed brand with high fidelity website mockups for developing the client's business. Included was a brand styleguide. With the guidelines firmly in place, there is still plenty of opportunity to develop the brand further and change up the use of colour and assets with each different new page, while maintaining recognition of the brand and brand values.
