CASE STUDY

ARCHIBUS

UX / Design / Development

Challenge

Update a ten year old design and code it to modern standards, while accommodating hundreds of existing pages and making it easily scalable for more.

User Experience

The first step was to organize all the content ARCHIBUS had. We had to purge what wasn't being used, then organize and update existing content. It was important to keep the user from getting lost and clearly separating marketing content from support and educational materials.

Design

ARCHIBUS was a unique situation in that I was the staff visual designer as well as front-end developer. They didn't have a branding when I started, and since updating the site was an urgent need, we decided to let that drive the branding, instead of vice versa. This first design was popular (and my favorite) but they felt it could potentially be difficult to implement across all marketing materials.

This second design provides far more of the flexibility they were seeking, with a lot of flat color, open space, and clean edges. Ultimately, it was a little too plain, and we decided to bring a touch of the boldness from the first design.

The color palette provides a balance of vivid colors used for highlighting and more muted tones for relaxed, distraction-free reading of technical information.

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Website header

Result

The result is a site that has stood the test of time since 2009. While a re-design is probably way overdue, it illustrates how strong UX principles paired with graphic design fundamentals have a long shelf life. Built with growth in mind, the site's content is easily modified and even with a re-design, the new skin can easily live over the clean code that lives underneath.

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