Responses by Cristina Douglas, senior producer, Canvas Group
Background: One of Australia’s largest independent online men’s lifestyle publications, Man of Many is a vibrant lifestyle portal dedicated to uncovering the latest products, culture and styles. Its target audience comprises of men of taste, catering to a range of interests, from tech to fashion to the great outdoors.
Highlights: The site was designed to be clean, clear, elegant and bold. Using a monochrome palette, the Man of Many branding remains foremost, while allowing its exceptional content to shine. Page hierarchy delineates sections on the site, displaying the wealth of content available. A flexible grid keeps the site fresh and engaging yet consistent enough to maintain a great user experience.
Favorite details: Despite the scale of this site, we love the integration of the monogram into the sticky navigation, the use of subtle animations, the commenting feature that expands to preserve space and the clean typography.
Navigational structure: The navigational structure was treated as both a design and UX feature, with imagery providing a snapshot into the content on rollover on desktop, and elegant animation effects on mobile. The megamenu on the desktop allows for feature articles to be promoted, providing an opportunity to direct traffic to particular content. Hyperlinks in the introductory paragraphs on category landing pages provide an alternative to sub-navigation, while boosting SEO.
Technical features: HTML5 and CSS3, Javascript libraries, Wordpress CMS with customized templates, MailChimp integration, Google ads, social APIs—Instagram, ShareThis and YouTube—and integration of PubExchange for traffic exchange.
Anything new: We learned the importance of everyone needing to work closely together, asking the right questions and clearly defining functionality to ensure we delivered to the best of our ability within the timeframe.