Above After users read the article, the whale ‘exhales’ several bubbles of air onto the screen; they contain
interesting facts about every species and a call to share this in social mediaAbove On the pages of each whale there is a 3D whale model that swims onto the screen, wallows and tilts
along with the mouse movements which allows you to see them in detailSHOWCASE
How we built
Another technically complex task was
to create 3D whale models. To do this,
the designer studied many pictures and
turned all that knowledge into a detailed
model of every one of the five species
featured and then the developer wrapped
it all into WebGL.Did you have to overcome any
challenges when it came to getting the
site to work well on mobile?
Mobile-first is one of our top priorities
today: people have access to the mobile
internet almost everywhere in the world,
so we aim to give users full-quality UX
on any device. On Save Whales, all the
details were adapted for mobile, above
all the slider and 3D whale models. We
didn’t face any difficulties here: this is
standard procedure for a developer.What was your approach to typography?
One of our first ideas regarding the
design was to highlight the conflict of
natural and artificial in various details
of the site. The designer used cool fonts
that had been reserved for better days:
the strict Archivo and the more ‘natural’
Tenor Sans.Did you learn anything from this
project that you’re likely to use on
future site builds?
The main takeaway that the team
gained from working on this project
is that we are now able, without loss
of quality, to develop a cool and fully
functional website within 14 days.
Yes, when working on a commercial
project, there are extra time-consuming
elements involving co-ordination
with clients, making adjustments and
getting approvals. But, in terms of pure
development time, this was a project
in which we achieved a lot in a short
amount of time.Ultimately, do you believe this
project has had an influence on the
environmental debate?
Any influence it may have had is a hard
thing to track and measure but we’ve
been pleased with the feedback we’ve got
from this site and the discussion it has
generated. The aim of the site was deeperthan just helping whales. The broader
message we wanted to get out was how
our everyday behaviour influences
even such distant creatures as whales.
We’ve spoken out about how plastic gets
to their stomachs and leads to their
starvation and death; how waste kills
other marine creatures and changes the
whale habitat.
Changing our personal habits is a big
part of the solution to this problem and
the site gives specific advice on what
people can do. Our appeal was seen by
tens of thousands of people and helpededucate them about the ecological
situation. Moreover, the website gained
credence among experts in the digital
sphere: it won Site of the Day and Mobile
of the Week by Awwwards and got listed
as an inspirational source – this was one
route to widening its reach.
We hope that those who have visited
this website have taken a moment to
think about the issue and used some of
the advice we’ve given, as well as sharing
it with friends. This is a small step for
each one of us but a huge help to the
planet and the state it is in.