Proof was the project where we could almost treat the brand as our own. The client was into all the craziness, we were pushing the boundaries, not just on the technical side, but it was hard to keep the boundaries on a creative level. We allowed room for craziness, while not losing focus on the fact that Proof is a serious business and needs to be embraced as such.
Proof is a sub-brand of Splendex Ltd. Splendex was founded in 2015, by two friends in a garage who started developing because they wanted to create better online solutions than anyone else had done before. Since then, they've been joined by many brilliant people who are passionate about delivering first-class solutions to their customers while also building a receptive community. Today, the company is becoming better known and is involved in bigger and bigger projects.
However, the company also has a business that gets its clients from outside the enterprise sector, and these projects no longer fit into the tighter, more rigorous business communications.
We were approached by Splendex with the problem that the company works mainly with enterprise solutions, but they have a number of projects that are not in an enterprise environment, but they don't necessarily fit into their basic communication. Through brainstorming and workshops, the idea was born to develop these projects under a bolder sub-brand.
Although the client himself asked us to come up with the most crazy solutions possible, we had to take into account that this "madness" should still be commercially viable and not becoming too self-serving. Accordingly, the team had to be reined in on many occasions and in the process we had to get rid of many fripperies that tipped the scales towards madness.
We experimented with several directions during the design process and finally decided to start with a simpler typographic version of the logo. We also hid the brand icon in the logo, the exclamation mark, which later became the main symbol of the brand. We prefer to use it in pattern solutions and hide it here and there in the artwork.For the brand, we designed a more mixed-style graphic look. We often mix real images with illustrative drawings or the question mark icon mentioned above.
The graphic materials also got a grounge texture satination, which made the pictorial and the drawing worlds more integrated and gave the materials a depth.
As the site is more of a show of force, the UX has been pushed to the background and the design has taken centre stage. However, it can't be said that we didn't pay attention to usability. The site structure is as simple as possible and follows the usual portfolio site line. However, we have improved the user experience with minor improvements. In the section following the hero, we made the services clearer so that the user knows where to go straight away. In the featured projects section, we stopped the vertical scrolling and the projects are now displayed horizontally. This is more eye-catching and because the user doesn't expect it, we can present the content in a more focused way.
We pushed the boundaries when designing the website. We designed a visual look that could be startling at times, and we hid a number of small hints/nodes throughout the website. When we started designing at that time it was becoming easier to handle web animations in json format. This way, developers get the animated material as finished code, so they have much less to do with it than usual, and the speed of the page is not affected if it is properly compressed. However, these lottie animations cannot save After Effects effects. This technical obstacle was overcome by an ancient method, for example for ghost graphics: we made a png sequence of the animation, burned the effects into it, compressed it as much as possible and saved it as json. On top of all that, of course, we designed a lot of custom stuff for the site.
In the end, the launch of the new brand achieved its goal and proved to be the right sales tool for the client. It allowed us to separate the small-scale projects from the parent company, which gave much more freedom to both the client and the team.
Over the years, the Pantheon has become a gathering place for vintage car enthusiasts from Basel and the surrounding area. The impressive building houses a wonderful exhibition, and we have created a website that brings a piece of the past into the future.
Pantheon Basel
2021