About the Organization
Animate Materials Workshop (AMW) is a research hub out of Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Their focus is on animation as a method of interdisciplinary material exploration, bringing together the arts and sciences. Their work is dedicated to understanding the transformative impact of materials on scientific and cultural knowledge.
Objectives
- Establish an accessible and easy to use film catalogue experience
- Develop an Events area to drive awareness and attendance for upcoming events
- Develop a material learnings area to support engagement and enable additional catalogue discovery
- Establish SEO foundations to increase search engine traffic and drive future growth
- Implement a fully responsive solution backed by WordPress CMS for easy content management
Prototyping
Animate Materials’s founder approached us about designing a custom website to become the database for their new research workshop. We always enjoy our partnerships with university departments, and this was our first educational project related to art and design.
The website’s needs weren’t yet documented, so our first task was to help their team decide on what kind of content they’d need, and how it should be grouped. From there we created a sitemap, and then got into UX wireframing. Although the site is small, they needed complex filters to empower visitors to search the media catalogue.
Style
Although Animate Materials was in its early stages, they had great brand assets for us to work with. We created background patterns and image masks from their logo, to give texture to the organic green and cream colours. Coupled with the animated logo in the header and subtle scroll animations throughout the pages, the site feels alive.
Bringing it All Together
The all-new Animate Materials website is both visually engaging and highly usable. Navigation is straightforward, and it’s easy for visitors to filter the animated media database by material, media type, or country. The site is built on our low-code platform, Refoundry, so their team can easily add new content, adjust global styles, and update their team members.
Built with Refoundry
Refoundry is a low-code site builder plugin created by Forge and Smith’s owner, Shawn Johnston, and our team of engineers. We’ve been building all of our websites on it since late 2022. It empowers our clients with total creative freedom in WordPress, and the ability to more easily grow and scale their sites.
See the Finished Site
Go explore the full website, then come back to discover more of our work!
