Having helped BASF design and publish two issues of its new magazine, Creating Chemistry, Addison’s next challenge was to help develop an online version of this thought leadership publication.
Concept
The concept I developed is based on audience research and insights and aims to provide an optimal online reading experience across any device. This engaging content driven site is also fully responsive.
It was highlighted that 4 personas would use the site: the hunter, the browser, the searcher, the reader. We decided to engage all types of user behaviours and designed the site to convert visitors to readers.
Wireframes
Indepth wireframes were made with a lot of precision. That were then developed into designs.
Design
During the design process BASF were beginning a redesign process of their online brand with the goal of bringing their online presence up to date. As this was going to be a legacy project it was seen as an opportunity to test and try out some ideas and push the boundaries of what is possible in a corporate responsive environment and ultimately influence the direction that the online BASF brand would go.
Traditionally BASF had a vertical banderole that would only be occupied with a secondary navigation. As this was an online magazine we proposed making this a horizontal banderole that would house all the navigation and then allow the full width of the browser to display the content in an editorial and flexible manner.
Navigation
We imagined a simple yet useful type of navigation that would enable all types of personas to navigate the site. These types of navigation enables many different types of users to access the content in the way they want to.
Content design
As the original content was coming straight from the existing printed magazines we analysed these for different content types and from that created a master template which in turn was the architecture for a CMS page builder. From these different assigned modules we were able to create any existing article and future one by picking and choosing the order of them.
The legacy
During in the past months BASF have progressed their corporate website guidelines and unfortunately the website has been updated to those and no longer reflects the original design, but the essence of the project still exists.
