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Responses by Art Hardie, associate creative director; Chris Stephens, chief creative officer; and Lee Waters, senior designer, Maven Creative.

Background: The creative intent behind the new website is to elevate the brand into the luxury spirits market and is primarily aimed at early-adopter males, ages 28–45, who place a high value on leisure time. The site amplifies the “time well spent” brand position for Mount Gay Rum but was also designed to have a life beyond that statement. In a way, Mount Gay Rum’s brand position dials back into the core of who it really is as a company—anchored in Bajan roots, simple in ingredients and its manufacturing, and deep in flavor and history.

Core features: There are two key details we’re most proud of—the experiential horizontal timeline intro and the Rum Studies. The client had requested a timeline of Mount Gay, but instead, we pitched a “timeline” that goes through the stages of making rum and the end result: drinking it with friends. As you scroll down, the intro actually slides horizontally to the right.

Also, we’ve presented the products on the site in a unique way, calling them “Rum Studies.” Each of the premiere rums had a photoshoot, so we took those lifestyle shots and created a long-scroll “Rum Study” that gives each rum a distinctive look and feel, its own case study, and sets the pages apart from the standard informational layout.

Finally, photography played a big part in the new look. The move from the outdated, illustration-based design to an elevated lifestyle approach using photography of people using the product.

Process: The most challenging part of making this site was working out the functionality of the side-scrolling narrative that leads into the site. As you scroll down, the story unfolds from left to right, pictures slide in and layer over each other and the copy centers itself on the screen. As far as doing anything different, we probably should’ve stayed in Barbados for an extra week!

Navigation design: It’s simple and relatively straightforward except for the “Rum Making” page, which has an interesting image split at the top of the page leading to two different paths, Ingredients and Stages. The content below changes depending on which one you hover over.

Technology: The site was developed using the WordPress CMS, Javascript ES6 and PHP 7.2.

mountgayrum.com

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