We began our design process by creating a site map that would serve as our guide for the navigation and user journey. Keeping the navigation within a sticky (always visible) hamburger menu, allowed for an uncluttered and inviting design while maintaining clear navigation and uninterrupted user experience.
To develop the brand for the site and future collateral, we drew inspiration from the Plainly Speaking logo itself. We used their rounded square shape and speech mark as motifs and implemented them wherever appropriate. We designed rounded corners throughout the site, from the section breaks to the custom iconography.
Animated details in the menu, homepage stats, parallax (an animation where the background moves at a different speed than the foreground) and timeline sections extended the dynamic, elevated and custom qualities of the website.
The Plainly Speaking website's goals were multi-faceted; it served as a branding piece and was also an example of the team's expertise writing web copy – a portfolio piece. For this reason, they wanted an easy to read, user-friendly layout and design that exceeded AODA compliance levels in terms of contrast and text size. The design needed to match their company philosophy of uncomplicated, accessible content, and, above all, needed to highlight their writing. We implemented a clear type hierarchy, an appropriate amount of colour contrast, adequate spacing between paragraphs and between lines of text, and clear differentiation between what was interactive and what was not.