Above A circular carousel is one of the technical and artistic highlights of the siteSHOWCASE
How we built
models – all of which had to work across
multiple devices.There’s some entertaining microcopy
on this site – who came up with that?
CL: The stylistic extremes of the creative
direction permitted a lot of creative
license. And our gorgeous writer, Evan,
is a master of satire in his own creative
practice. While a lot of the parameters
were set by the initial client workshop,
our client loved his sense of humour and
encouraged us to go broad. From there, he
watched CNN for about 15 minutes – and
there the lines were.We love the ‘retro future’ look of the
typography especially. Can you tell us a
little about how that came about?
AR: The typography was also inspired by
the Ozweego silhouette. We translated the
curves and the fluid lines of the shoes to
shapes that could bring a futuristic feeling
to the type.Were there any challenges in getting
the site to work well on mobile? Was
accessibility a concern in general?
DN: The challenges were primarily about
figuring out how to condense such an
immersive experience to a much smaller
viewport, and ensuring it was still
performative. The goal above all else was
creating excitement about Ozweego and
ensuring we were doing the brand justice.
Concessions needed to be made in
terms of audio for mobile because we
couldn’t implement autoplay on all
browsers, but beyond that we were able
to uphold the aesthetic integrity of the
desktop experience.Did you do any testing and if so, how
did you go about it?
DN: We did: our QA team did a great job at
making sure the outcome was the vision
we all had in mind. A lot of our initial
worries were around performance, and
the development and QA teams workedtogether flawlessly to ensure nothing was
a compromise.What did you learn from this project
that you’ll use on future site builds?
CL: Embrace a broad concept. As
terrifyingly open as the concept was, we
were able to all own a piece of it. That
sense of collective authorship really
fuelled us through the timeline.
We learned a lot about how to work
under extremely tight deadlines. At
a certain point, a good portion of the
company were all working on the project.
It was very much an all-hands-on-deck
approach. This required us splitting
into teams to address the requirements
for both the digital experience and the
complementary physical installation we
built in NYC. Ensuring that both facets
were conceptually harmonious required
a lot of communication and trust.
Ultimately, we’re incredibly proud of what
we’ve achieved.