Firetrace was first invented by Dave Melton in the mid 1980s when he realised that linear detection tubing offered added reliability, flexibility and simplicity compared to traditional detection methods.
 The Firetrace concept soon spread around the world, and although the company sells its products globally, today their largest market share is mostly in the UK and Ireland.

We were brought in to work on the new Firetrace website by our partners at Virya Group. Firetrace were old clients of theirs: in the last few years Virya Group was responsible for updating, hosting and marketing their website and products.

We approached the design of their new website so as to provide Firetrace with the new and fresh language they wanted in order to communicate with both old and new clients.

After years of wear and tear, the Firetrace site needed to accommodate new sections and the old design wasn’t looking so up to date.
 This is where our work kickstarted things, from the basic communication, all the way to the structure of the website.

Our first step was collecting all the old communication materials that the company uses to promote their fire suppression systems. We wanted to understand the sales language and the approach used by the company. 

Analysing their documents, we noticed that their communication was based on few repeat elements: lots of red combined with black and a disproportionate use of images with fire and flames.

 We recommended a full overhaul, explaining that used colours and images were communicating terror and fear creating an alarming and negative representation of the company’s products. If their motto is “Stop the fires where they start” flames, fires, burning elements linked to red and black colours would not serve them in the best way. 

We proceeded to reviewed the proportion of red and black used on their site and add a few more colours, like a bright yellow as an accent while employing larger amounts of white and grey to balance the use of red and black.


We also replaced their “campaign of terror” (with use of negative images of burning factories, flames, fire and desperate people) with a more positive, life-affirming yet effective images that communicate the real benefits of using Firetrace’s systems in both private and professional spaces. 


Once the visual language was defined we moved on the sections of the website that would have to organised and linked between them. 
Together with Virya Group, we designed the new sitemap, taking into account that new sections needed to be included and all the links needed to be accessible both on desktop and from mobile devices.

 Then it was time to design the website. We created a very dynamic layout to visually represent the flexibility of Firetrace’s systems.

We identified the main areas of application and used icons to intuitively represent them.

To reinforce the value of trust in the company, the section dedicated to success stories was completely redesigned to host more positive testimonials of clients who experienced the effectiveness and reliability of Firetrace’s systems. 

Finally, the news section underwent a complete redesigned to include the many accolades gained and awards won in recent years showing that the company although well-established, is far from complacent.