The Challenge
Create a place for Landis Carey and Sarah Gee to share their extensive interior design and home ownership knowledge while showcasing their beautiful photos in a way that lets their personality take center stage.
The Solution
We knew from the beginning that on Grove’s amazing photography would determine the look and feel of the site and help direct the user experience. This allowed us to use photos not only as full-screen parallax backgrounds, but also as smaller thumbnails to accentuate blog posts.
Because photos are used as large areas of intentional color, the actual palette of the site UI is purposely reserved in comparison. Copy and white space maintain visual balance and provide a sense of rhythm and excitement as you scroll through the site.
We used a sticky header on The Handbook blog to make selecting a category and searching for specific topics easy. Content is also organized by date, and automatically shifts from large featured post areas to smaller secondary and tertiary sections, so you can tell at a glance which post is the newest. It also makes content management a breeze for Landis and Sarah, allowing them to focus on creating fresh posts instead of wrangling code.
When it came to creating an About Us page, we used sliding divs with intuitive navigation to give it a sense of movement and present the content in an interesting way.
We also created a set of custom icons for on Grove to use when they don’t have a specific blog post photo. Icons are category specific and can be used at large and small sizes.
Mobile users are an important on Grove demographic, so the mobile experience presents the desktop information in a way that works well and is formatted to fit smaller screens.
Sticking the nav menu to the bottom of the browser also makes it easy to use the site with one hand, even as newer phone screens get taller and taller – ever try reaching a hamburger menu at the top of a site with your thumb? Frustrating.
This site was another amazing super-style collaboration with my marketing agency cohorts at Stout Heart.
Welcome to the bottom of the page. If you need a new website design, a graphic refresh, or maybe just some suggestions on how to improve the site you have, THE MACHINE can help. Let’s talk.