Responses by Dominic Berzins, digital producer, and Sofia Papadopoulou, digital designer.

Background: “terradactyl is a boutique QA agency focused solely on the creative tech and innovation industries,” explains Dominic Berzins. “Quality assurance is an often misunderstood or underestimated function, so the aim of the site, alongside introducing terradactyl’s services and background, was to educate visitors, hopefully demonstrating the benefits of engaging quality assurance professionals on projects as well as the risks of not doing so.  Our audience is studios, agencies and direct brands—and we have tried to communicate beyond the usual techy audience, speaking to creative directors, art directors and operations staff as well as project managers and developers. Good quality assurance should concern everyone involved in a project as it’s an important part of not only delivering on time but also ensuring the creative vision is realized.”

Design core: “The glass 3-D elements, dreamy gradients and aesthetic typography are for sure some of the site’s core features, along with the slick, sharp motion that brings everything to life,” says Sofia Papadopoulou. “The change from vertical to horizontal scroll and vice versa to facilitate the storytelling and identify sections is another key feature that characterizes the experience.”

Favorite details: “I wouldn’t say that there is a specific element that I’m mostly proud of—it’s about all our brand elements, typography, logo, colors, 3-D assets and the way that they came together to tell the story of terradactyl through UI design, layouts and motion,” Papadopoulou explains. “I could say I’m mostly proud of the visual storytelling of the whole website.”

Challenges: “The most challenging aspect for me, as with every branding project that I take on from scratch, is coming up with the brand concept,” Papadopoulou says. “The visual representation of a tangible element connects with the audience and becomes memorable, which, in this case, was the terradactyl wings and the rest of the glass 3-D objects that followed. Specifically talking about the wings, they are a visual representation of the agency’s brand name aligned with its biggest values: clarity, transparency, professionalism, dependability and attention to detail, along with the ability to ‘fly’ wherever and whenever needed, across different projects, industries and continents.”

Time constraints: “This is a personal project for Dominic and Tom Watson, as terradactyl is their start-up agency, so one of the biggest challenges in passion projects is that there was no deadline!” Papadopoulou says. “That can lead to pushing the launch a bit further, as you always want to make sure that every little detail has been taken care of and you do have the luxury to add to it as you go.”

Navigation structure: “We have a long scroll storytelling homepage that we wanted the user to experience and read through undisturbed and undistracted,” explains Papadopoulou. “So, we chose to go with a hamburger menu that also facilitates a full screen navigation format where we could be more creative and make the best use of our aesthetic typography. Also, the clickable elements’ color palette changes on mouse over, preparing the user for the palette that they will see when they visit their selected section of the website.”

Technology: “Amazon Web Services, Golang, React and Next.js, Storyblok, Storybook, and three.js,” says Berzins.