As a project to learn more about company brandings, I asked my local speedskating club IJsclub Otweg if I could redesign their website.
School
It started as a school project where I chose to follow a course to learn more about Adobe Illustrator. The assignment was to make a poster with a font, a custom shape and something 3D. I handed in the poster on the right.
After this assignment I started as ‘competition manager’ to check all results and make certifications for the persons who broke a clubrecord. Instead of using the old designs, I copied the style I used for the posters.
With ‘designer’ as a growing title I got requests from other volunteers to create posters and certificates, so I kept on working with the style I already had and thus started a rebranding, even though I didn’t know anything about making a brand.
Website
The requests didn’t stop and before I knew I started working on new designs for the website. I chose to use WordPress because 1. most of the websites are made with it so the chance that someone else knew how to work with it was big and 2. I only needed to implement the design using a custom theme/plugin, no inventing the wheel and making a backend. Previously I worked on a website using Laravel, but the amount of time it would take to code it and then explain it to someone wasn’t worth it.
The things I wanted to include in the website were:
1. A way to easily show when the ice rink is open in winter periods
I worked on different prototypes, showing when the ice rink was open. The challenge was that somewhere in the evening the rink closes to prepare for the evening, after which it opened again.
2. Automatic changes between seasons, like speedskating in winter and inline-skating in summer
I wanted to break out of the usual shaped images and started using SVG’s of the speedskate and inline-skate icons. Each is shown during their corresponding season to promote the different sports at the beginning of the training season.
3. A design that conveyed movement
Without wanting to reinvent the wheel, I looked at existing designs inside the organisation. Trying out different things worked, but combining everything was a bit chaotic. Eventually I chose to use the sloping red from the jackets and the circles from the club magazine.
4. A logical navigation
The menu on the previous website was weird. Someone once chose how things ‘should’ be found. I approached it differently: I talked to some persons at the ice rink who had to use the site to register their children for a sport, also known as the target audience. With a card for every page I gave them the assignment to make at max. 6 categories and then organise all pages into these categories. The final result has 3 categories in the main menu, they contain pages that are used a lot, like registering or training dates and times. Other info that is less important for regular use, like volunteers and history, can be accessed using search or is stored at the bottom of the website.
Result
Club Magazine
Currently my most recent project, I got to design the new club magazine in combination with the new member cards. The magazines and cards were produced and distributed to 2000 members of the club.
