Responses by Martin Laxenaire, designer/developer
Background: The Analogue Production team needed some rebranding for the spring. They also wanted to increase their online visibility with a fresh new website to showcase their work. Their clients include institutional companies, as well as communication agencies, so we decided to go with something bold and clean at the same time.
Highlights: As for the design, we decided to highlight the videos and images. I played with the meaning of the word Analog by creating different dual elements and animations. Analogue’s work often uses 21:9 aspect ratio, so I used that ratio for many components on the site, such as the menu layout. Last but not least, the site had to feel really interactive and playful.
Challenges: Time wasn’t an issue, and the process was long enough to let us explore different ideas and solutions. The most challenging part was maintaining a good balance between innovative features, like the full-screen WebGL videos, and performance and usability.
Navigational structure: The key feature of the website is its homepage video slider that users can drag to explore the Analogue team’s highlighted projects. While the website is clean and simple, I also wanted to show that the team is young and creative, so I added fun WebGL displacement interactions on the about page’s profile pictures.
Technical features: The site is actually built on Wordpress. This way, it’s easier for the team to update the site, as they were already familiar with this CMS. PJAX navigation is handled by a custom little script of my own. Transitions and animations are mostly done in CSS. All the WebGL parts use curtains.js, an open source library I developed. The main effects include vertex and fragment displacements and chromatic aberration shaders.