One of our recent projects was redesigning a corporate website for a confectionery company. Projects like this always allow for a great deal of experimentation with visuals and motion effects.

OUR GOALS WERE:

achieve a perfect combination of modern, stylish design and a cozy atmosphere of home;
make the brand and its message shine through a nice, eye-catching wow-effect

BEFORE WE STARTED:

We’ll get to the main features of the website in a minute but before that let’s take a look at how we approached the whole thing. In order to figure out what the new website should look like and what emotions it should evoke in its visitors, we came up with 3 concepts – the so-called “moodboard.”

reserved European-style
hopelessly romantic
solid quality, with bright accents

The client went for the latter so we commenced the project.

Next up was website architecture and navigation design + preliminary usability testing to eliminate any possible usability issues.

Here comes the trick!

Originally, we wanted to create a motion-video that users could interact with rather than just watch. Our goal was to help the site visitors experience the brand in an organic, engaging way.

Here’s what we did:

created 4 characters (dad, mom, and two kids) and hired actors to play them
designed the set – a family dinner table
did the photo shoot, which was one tedious task, to say the least. The actors had to play their roles perfectly since we only could do it in one take (since editing would have ruined the continuity)
Our illustrator used markers to draw a recipe book style history of the company
We put the illustrations, photos, and other graphic elements together
Finally, we brought it all to motion via a custom solution (one scroll of the mouse initiated the change of the frames)

The result was a warm, cozy atmosphere recreated in the form of a web page – a classic family tea party with some croissants, cakes, and pastries provided by “Gurman Family” brand.