Responses by Keigo Anan, art director/designer, Logram

Background: Since I was creating the portfolio site for our Tokyo, Japan–based digital and brand design agency Logram, I didn’t want to create an ordinary white-based website, but rather an experimental one. While the target audience is obviously designers, I aimed to create a beautiful site for users of all nationalities, ages and genders.

Highlights: The site has constructed complex layer structures, such as color plane composition, gradient and simulated transparency layers, with HTML and CSS. It has a color palette, which varies along with each piece of work shown. Also, the whole website is managed by Wordpress.

Challenges: The layer structure of the website was quite complicated! It challenges layer structures and user interface to the limits. We also attempted various trial and errors to find the ideal solution for the site.

Favorite details: The “behind the scenes” of the visual work. WordPress manages the colors for all layers. If you change the color, then you can see a preview of your changes instantly, which makes it very easy to update. WordPress also manages information on the work and the company. If users look closely, they’ll find even the color of the favicon can be changed!

Navigational structure: I didn’t want to navigate the website via buttons like the “Hamburger Button.” Instead, I looked at the screen like it was a piece of paper, and made the structure of the next page visible by creating a user interface where both the design and the navigation are united. Smartphones these days can detect the angle of the device and the navigation appears accordingly.

Anything new: Ultimately, several users have mentioned that the site was difficult to use because of the aforementioned user interface experiments. I consider it an obvious reaction—but it was a good opportunity for me to rethink the user interface.