Responses by Mikael Buch, art director, Adipso.

Background: This project for the Radama Islands Resort in Madagascar began with one main goal: creating an immersive experience around the different adventures that the resort has to offer. The breathtaking landscapes of this ultra-exclusive island and its possibilities had to be reflected online in a unique way.

Initially targeting passionate anglers searching for exotic fishing, the resort recently expanded to provide similar experiences to divers and travelers while still voluntarily restricting its capacity to preserve the island’s authenticity.

Design core: The core design elements revolve around the three different types of content. First, the activities—for example, fishing—where our idea was to dive deep underwater into the dark blue of the ocean. Following the line, visitors discover strips of memories, like time capsules documenting a journey.

Second, we chose to present the resort’s exquisite stays through an interactive timeline, showcasing the different steps that guests will go through. We focused on immersing the user with fullscreen visuals to give the impression that it could soon be them at Radama Islands Resort, getting ready for their next adventure.

Third, we chose to present the destination’s two prominent locations, Manga Be and the Resort, through bird’s-eye-view photography, mapping the points of interest on the remote island geographically. On mobile devices, users can drag or pan to discover different elements, reinforcing a sense of exploration.

For the site’s style, we wanted to highlight the authenticity of the Radama Islands Resort while maintaining a fresh, contemporary look. We used a balance of rough masks and breaking-wave effects combined with more clean, straight elements. Typography-wise, GT Sectra helped set the site’s tone!

Challenges: Most of the visuals were shot by our client, so we tried to give as much information as possible on the art direction and user experience we wanted so the stills would fit our needs. Photo editing was a big part of the project: working on color correction from the client’s raw files (and getting that exact ocean color right!), post-processing and sometimes blending several images together.

Photo search also played a big part as we spied on every photo database possible to find the more than 50 species of fauna displayed on the website, crosschecking scientific databases to ensure that we’d found the right species. Wanting to make the experience as immersive as possible, we also compressed and optimized hundreds of visuals that would play a huge role in the final production.

To be honest, the biggest challenge was working on the project during cold winters, where the only thing you could dream of was warm sunlight!

Navigation structure: As I described previously, the site revolves around three main types of content that each utilizes a different navigation style. To bring cohesion to the whole site, we decided to handle all the detail pages in the same way: as modal elements. This feature also enables a smoother exploration by the user, as you can read some details and quickly come back to the main experience that still works in the background.

Technology: The website uses WordPress as a CMS to ensure that the content is editable. It is built with HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. For the page transitions and modals, we used Highway. To add some sweet animations and effects, we also used GSAP and three.js.