The Bureau Proberts website was a very interesting project, allowing us to really experiment with WordPress with a view to minimising the content, creating a unique interface and allowing the photography of their architecture to stand front-and-center.
The design approach was inline with the familiar full-screen Flash website aesthetic but uses the WordPress CMS, which allowed viewing on any device and delivered good SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
The Homepage
The approach was to create a homepage which acted as a photo gallery but didn't take forever to load, with a minimal aesthetic.
This threw up some interesting issues, the main being that the menu system required all the images to load before it's interactivity was available. The solution was made with some clever (we think) loading of JQuery libraries, cached images and load ordering. Meaning that the site visitor can see a fullscreen image and use the menu immediately, with the following gallery of images appearing as it loaded.
Sectional-aware Menus
Certain sections of the site required a new menu system, which were viewable as the section was visitied.
Certain sections of the site required a new menu system, which were viewable as the section was visitied.
Thanks to the CMS these menus were all easily updated through both automated solutions and manual over-rides, depending what the client preferred.
Project Folio
Project categories are easily created, edited or removed with the actual projects existing in serveral categories where required. The category 'catalogue' pages (shown above) were generated automatically, simply listing the projects added to the category using a selected image as the thumbnail. As with the entire site the various different sized images required by the site are automatically generated by the WordPress CMS. This of course saves the client any requirements to create imagery to suit the CMS.
Project categories are easily created, edited or removed with the actual projects existing in serveral categories where required. The category 'catalogue' pages (shown above) were generated automatically, simply listing the projects added to the category using a selected image as the thumbnail. As with the entire site the various different sized images required by the site are automatically generated by the WordPress CMS. This of course saves the client any requirements to create imagery to suit the CMS.
Project Pages
Specific project pages let the photography speak loundly and hide the content away unless the site visitor wishes to see it. This is done through the 'More info' button which showed or hid the copy about the project. Apart from offering a clean and minimal design it also offered a good amount of SEO-friendly content.
Specific project pages let the photography speak loundly and hide the content away unless the site visitor wishes to see it. This is done through the 'More info' button which showed or hid the copy about the project. Apart from offering a clean and minimal design it also offered a good amount of SEO-friendly content.
The image gallery automatically fades between images while allowing the user to click arrows or numbers to view other images manually or click the stop-slideshow button to stay on a specific image.
Newsletter and News Blog
The client sends printed newsletters to their client-base. As these are always visually interesting design we created a page to allow the site visitor to download a print-quality PDF, which also used a thumbnail of the newsletter cover for visual interest.
Additionally the site has a news blog to speak to their client-base about new or ongoing projects, awards of just general company information. It doesn't hurt their SEO either.
