A Platform for Design in the Irish Built Environment, its Type.
On a mission to share knowledge, increase accessibility, and support a culture of critique in the built environment.
sector
Architecture
services
Brand Identity
Website Design & Build
Content Strategy
UX Copywriting
Project Management
Training
Michael Hayes saw a need for an online collection of writings, academic and otherwise, to be curated, hosted and managed by himself and his team, supported by memberships. Our brief was to create a bold, contemporary identity for the initiative that would focus heavily on visual design, space and our interaction with it, through architecture, as Irish people. The rich visual references and the wealth and depth of the subject matter allowed us to enjoy our research and exploration, informing our experiments with typography, form and brand language.
Looking at the connections between design of the built environment and type design we decided to go with an experimental typeface, obstructing it slightly to create a solid shape, much like the plans in an architectural drawing. From this, we dissected its forms and negative spaces to build minimal but varied brand pattern which we then integrated with iconic imagery of Irish buildings to create a unique aesthetic for TYPE.
Keeping in mind that the brand would be mainly engaged with online, via the website, we wanted to create a strong and dynamic visual suite that would grow as it needed to.
The editorial content along with the purchasable products would form the basis of the new company, so the website we set out to design and build needed to have a clear focus: host the content clearly and succinctly to drive membership sales and one-off purchases.
Although we had designed a bold and bright identity, the website makes use of the minimal and monochrome features of the brand identity in order to really showcase the content.
THE PLATFORM
The need for online access to this type of content was accelerated by the pandemic when physical access was either altogether restricted or significantly diminished. Looking at a subscription or e-commerce model for the website was our starting point for the project.
Our brief was to design and build a customer-facing website that would appeal to quite a specific audience. The UX strategy was devised around promoting once-off purchases of digital products (publications) and the purchase of Memberships. We wanted the website to have an archival feel as well as employ best practices around e-commerce UX design - the promotion of clear, simple and fast sales. The site also needed to showcase articles written by the team and capture a database via newsletter sign-up.
After mapping out the content and website structure, we worked out the information and inventory architecture alongside researching the best systems to use for the build. The client needed to be able to edit the site content, manage inventory, orders and memberships. We needed all of these features to be possible without compromising on our design goals.
In terms of UI, we wanted to keep it minimal and product and text-focused. There are touches of the brand visuals in place, but nothing that distracts from the overall UX goals.
As the site builds traction and grows, we hope to work with TYPE to meet demand, looking at adding features or editing existing features or looking towards a custom backend and more advanced search function in the future.
