Responses by Andrew Sloan, creative director and founder, Cosma Schema.

Background: ABL Space Systems and Cosma Schema collaborated to design a new site that better represented the booming company ABL had become. The goal was to communicate to small satellite manufacturers, investors and the broader space community the advanced status of the company’s technology and how their ethos of radical simplicity was improving orbital launch.

Design core: The subtle use of horizontal scroll on desktop really helps break up the flow of what would otherwise be pretty long pages. It helps the viewer stay engaged and pick up on key messaging instead of just quickly scrolling past all the content, possibly missing critical information.

Time constraints: Site production got severely disrupted by COVID-19. Our international team was affected in different ways at different times, and the client got completely derailed for a number of months too. It was difficult to stay the course with such a tumultuous timeline, but we ultimately pulled through.

Navigation structure: We always try to bring a unique twist to navigation so long as it improves UX. This time, the top-level nav—and therefore the whole site structure—doubles as Rocket Launch Company, a company descriptor that we feel is clever and very effective.

New skills: The use of WebGL was new for us. We wanted the products to feel real but weren’t able to use photography and didn’t want to rely on photorealistic renderings—as many competitors do. The results are gorgeous, lightweight wireframes that also nod to the company’s engineer founders.