If you have stumbled upon this entry, you will realize that Suitefin now has a blog. Not only a blog, but a new site design! Over time, Suitefin outgrew its existing website design. A decision was made that the design needed to be re-hauled to incorporate new elements: blog, homepage announcements, and much more content.
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Revision #1 with Yellow
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Revision #2 with Yellow
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There were some crucial initial questions that needed to be answered: how should the navigation function? What did we want to highlight on the homepage? What kind of feel did we want to portray?
The navigation was easy. We knew we wanted it to be simple (less than 5 categories) so users would not have to wade through a ton of categories. Simple and streamlined. Therefore, it was determined a horizontal navigation would be used, with a vertical navigation for the sub sections.
The color scheme was perhaps the greatest challenge of the redesign. The obstacle for me was that some Suitefin website users mentioned they didn’t like the orange. Others didn’t like the blue. Some wanted a whitespace design. Every individual will paint their house a different color.
One thing to keep in mind w. a redesign is that one should not switch up colors you are already branded to. For example, what if Pepsi designed a purple-themed website? I would imagine users would feel they were lead to a phony Pepsi website, simply due to the color choice. Therefore, I knew we couldn’t stray far from our established colors.
The shades of blues greatly differed throughout the design process. We ended up with a blue shade that produced a lighter, airy design. More along the lines of a whitespace design, while still incorporating the colors Suitefin is branded to.
When a cooler color palette is used, such as blues, an eye-popping “accent” color is favorable to add zest to the design. What is a good accent color for blue? Orange
is the direct complimentary color of blue, so orange was the natural choice. However, I also tried to cater to those who disliked orange: I experimented with using red and yellow as accents (see graphic). In the end, the design ended up back to the orange accent color. I have found that most individuals will have a strong distaste for a certain color, but a designer can often reverse this adversity. For this design, orange can be beautiful if used minimally.
The design is also all about the details! A designer can truly spend an absorbent amount of time on the fine points. I tried to incorporate some current web design trends: handwritten fonts, icons and push-pins and subtle shadows, which add a personal touch to a website.
We hope you enjoyed learning about the processes behind our new Suitefin website redesign. Our blog is continuously being updated, so please check back often!
-Christy Costello
Senior Graphic Designer, Pyron Technologies
Posted by ccostello on Thursday, June 18, 2009 3:18 PM