Responses by Stas Antipov and Pavel Frolov, head of development, White Russian

Background: Contrast Foundry is a design team based in Moscow, who develops bespoke individual fonts, logos and licensed solutions. Contrast Foundry had asked us to revamp its current website, as it had become outdated in today’s creative climate. The main objectives for the new site were to expand its functionality and add convenient representations of all of the fonts, giving users the opportunity of testing them out. The guys at Contrast Foundry also produce their own content, so it was important to incorporate content feed within their site, enabling them to add their own new content and case studies.

Highlights: All the information is easily accessible while browsing. We even increased the focus by adding a persistent blur effect that can change and move with a mouse click depending on the movement of the mouse—thus helping to keep eyes focused on important information, avoiding distractions. We like to think of it as a visual metaphor.

Challenges: Integrating the software’s architecture within the purchases page. Since the product is not a font itself, but a license containing a package of individual styles or entire font families, the payment and receiving process proved to be a little tricky. During this process, we gained a lot of insight into legal subtleties. For designers, choosing and buying is quite a common process, but rarely do we think about the flip side.

Favorite details: The detailed fonts page. It provides users with a convenient platform that encourages them to literally test all Contrast Foundry fonts. We even gave users the ability to type their own text to see how the font works for their specific needs. This feature allows you to conduct comprehensive type testing, compare fonts and, at the same time, have users to do it smoothly and easily in real time. Users can navigate through live animated zones and get detailed information about the selected font type, weights in which they are available and even information about the font sources.

Technical features: We worked with JS ES6 Await/Async functions for smoothing all animation elements across the website.