Responses by Søren Bo Bastian; partner, creative director and designer; Stupid Studios.

Background: Climate change and poor air quality affect us all, and tires are a part of the problem. Enso’s durable, sustainable tire designs for electric vehicles tread lightly on our planet by keeping the rubber on the road and out of our air and oceans.

An enso in Zen Buddhism is a hand-drawn circle that symbolizes strength, elegance and the circularity of nature. This has been a guiding principle in designing the Enso experience and website. Working in harmony with nature, Enso holistically creates tires based on a circular business model, bringing together sustainability and uncompromised performance for electric vehicles.

Design core: The site’s core purpose is to engage the user in a conversation about sustainable tires without visually showing tires. We created a simply branded universe based on the feeling of Enso’s zen to communicate through emotions rather than hardcore data. The simple design emphasizes the branded video loops, which help convey the mood of the conversation through imagery and sound.

Challenges: Getting all the video material fitted and working just right. Also on mobile: finding the right balance between performance, aesthetics and communication. The formats vary a lot throughout the site and it took some time to find the feel we were aiming for. But the videos are a crucial part of the site as well as the brand story, so it was important for us to get it just right.

Technology: We mainly used React for developing the website. It enabled us to create a fast, immersive user experience with seamless scrolling and customizable video implementations. The navigation structure is based on a horizontal scroll that gradually presents the user with content, ensuring an interesting layout no matter where the scroll ends.

PostCSS created a breeding ground for modern CSS. Through modern CSS, we were able to create a more modular design structure and use new features while having them be performant across a multitude of browsers. Lottie enabled our design team to create native animations through After Effects and port them directly into JSON data for easy implementation into the code.