Brilliantly Birmingham
Problem
How do you build a beautiful website featuring more than 150 designers and over 30 events with minimum hassle, total visual consistency and up-to-the-minute relevancy?
Brief
Made Media were commissioned to develop the website for Brilliantly Birmingham, the international jewellery festival, for the second year running. The website needed to act as a dynamic event guide, but also profile each designer individually. The website had to promote an image fitting with an international, design-focused festival.
Solution
Having developed the previous year's website, MADE were aware of the amount of work inherent in managing 60 designer profiles, especially keeping the images and copy synchronised between designer-makers, promoters, organisers, and print designers. This year the festival had twice as many designers and events so our first step was to build a centralised online database that could be used by all involved parties to keep track of events, copy, images and profiles. This dramatically cut the amount of work and communication involved in developing the festival programme and marketing material.
Once the information was sorted, we concentrated on designing a beautiful website that would project a stylish design-led image. Jewellery relates to fashion and design, and so visual impact was vital. At the same time, the festival receives public funding, and has a duty to be accessible to all, so it was also important to develop a design that would work for all types of users. For this reason we kept things simple, complied with web standards and worked within accessibility guidelines. The finished website proves that accessible design doesn't have to look dull.
In addition to visual impact the website needed to act as a quick reference point for visitors intending to attend one or more of the events. For this reason the events page was made dynamic. It changes automatically day-by-day to show you current events, events that are coming up shortly and an archive events which have finished. The website is always relevant to the day, and this requires no management on behalf of the client.