Project overview

a fish in sea were approached by the business founders to help with their upcoming website project. They required help with brand positioning, logo design and branded assets, alongside the build of a technical website.

Inspired by book clubs, the site is intended as new media alternative, where topics of quality curated content are available in a curated form – a Podfolio). These form topics for interested site visitors and signed up members to discover the ‘best there is’ on specific topics in the wider internet sphere.

These are intended as topics of offline discussion, so a varied and inspirational range of topics will be formed as the site evolves. The site content will not live behind a paywall, and is free and accessible to an online visitor.

The challenge

To design a memorable logo, and develop supporting social media assets, that enhance engagement of the website, specifically catering for an audience of avid Podcast listeners. As the curated content that the website showcases will cater to a wide range of curated topics, the branding had to be consistent, with minimal intervention in the topics themselves, whilst being enduring and flexible.

Client Requirements

A flexible, immediately recognisable brand, and supporting website that allows for consistent communications. The website was to be fully editable by the Podfolio team, without external support, as such they must be able to create specific pages, content and articles, as well as aggregate content in a logical and consistent manner, so that the house style is adhered to.

Technical features included branded email communications that are sent from the website itself, a dead link checker, to highlight to the editors that a specific content link that had subsequently been removed. A members area where future topics can be consider for addition as a pod, voting on topics by members. The website back-end also allows for the inclusion of advertising content, with homepage take-overs, as well as relevant in-line adverts between the content.

The website itself had to be responsive, and work particularly well as a mobile viewport, as the majority of the audience will browse and listen to the Podfolio content ‘on the go’.

Following initial meetings, we created initial logo and branding concepts, that were evolved in conjunction with the business founders. When these were close to complete, we developed frameworks for the website key pages, methods on displaying collated Podfolio content, as well as the in-depth content pages. These were refined as fully fledged designs for approval. Thereafter the design was brought to life via web development. An extensive period of testing took place after a soft launch, so that the visitor experience was fluid, whether looking for a specific topic or becoming a Podfolio member.  Careful attention was paid to the structure and organisation of podcast content itself and how the visitor will interact with that content. Each needs an introduction, summary and the ability to link out and play the audio itself.

The Execution

The website and it’s branding can be found here: www.podfolio.co.uk

It is free to join and the curators have some superb pods up now that the site has evolved. Signing up is recommended!

The Deliverables

Logo design. Brand Identity. Icon designs. Social Media templates.

Website project consultation. Website Design. UX refinement. Website development and on-going support, Website hosting.

Challenges Overcome

Collating a variety of mixed media within an aggregated page, presents unique challenges – unlike a page of video, or page of podcasts – A Podfolio may comprise of content collated from a variety of sources to form a curated page. These Podcasts, short videos, written articles and links to external web pages form part of the collection.