Responses by Thierry Chopain, art director, UX and UI designer; and Jeremy Fagis, developer.

Background: The objective of this site redesign was to make a graphic and ergonomic digital home for Pradel, a law firm that specializes in labor law. It was necessary to highlight the law firm’s services and its recognized know-how while keeping its professionalism and family element to the business at the forefront. Standing out from the competition with a clean, unadorned design was our hobbyhorse.

Design core: The theme of labor law was not easy to tackle. We asked ourselves: How could we illustrate labor law without being negative or alarmist? We wanted to have an interview or report section with real photos and real people. The choice of black and white gives a more earnest feeling to the site. We are very satisfied with the overall rendering and the relationship between typography, composition and photography.

Challenges: Creating a modern site while keeping Pradel’s familial aspect, and ensuring that the site was readable on all devices while keeping relevant access to all its content. To do this, we integrated the type to boost and modernize the imagery and integrated microinteractions to make the user experience more fluid. For mobile and tablet versions, we simplified secondary information and interactions to maximize paths to the main content, therefore optimizing access to information.

Navigation structure: The content and copy are the basis of Pradel’s work. Doing away with navigation to focus on content and services was imperative. The navigation flows naturally between pieces of content—like in a magazine—and remains very intuitive. Images become transparent, which is not only very pleasant but enhances the content with a minimalist aesthetic.

Technology: For the back end, we used the WordPress CMS and created a fully custom theme. For the front side, we used HTML, SCSS and JavaScript. We also used libraries like anime.js for the animations, barba.js for the page transitions, and the Locomotive Scroll for smooth scrolling, sticky and parallax elements.