Responses by Vito Balen, writer, Holographik; and Ilja van Eck, developer.

Background: The main purpose behind the creation of this new site for creative studio VRTL WRLD was to refresh its brand and provide a single, modern and visually stunning place that would showcase all of its work. The website’s target audience is people who already know about VRTL WRLD and want to see its work, but more importantly, it’s a website that can attract fans of the metaverse, digital fashion or art to come and explore the studio’s creations.

Design core: The primary content of the website is VRTL WRLD’s 3-D creations, so we had to create a system that would use graphic elements to emphasize its models without stealing the limelight away from them. The two main graphic elements that set this project apart are the orange rectangles with cut-off corners and the typographic combination we chose. We used the orange elements to highlight projects and shape the pages, and the orange color generally unifies the entire brand’s visual identity.

The thing we are very fond of is the typographic combination. We used CoType Foundry’s typefaces RM Neue and Gridual, which have a predisposition to fit together from the get go. RM Neue is a clean, modern sans serif capable of carrying a visual identity on its own, but paired with the unique Gridular, the two typefaces create a perfect blend of sophistication and experimentation that is inherently present in the work of VRTL WRLD across the entire website.

Challenges: The most challenging aspect was to create a brand identity that would make VRTL WRLD stand out among the various other 3-D studios, but with our tried and tested process of researching and moodboarding, we came up with a unique, functional solution.

Time constraints were not a large problem in the overall process as we had plenty of experiences with these types of tasks, so from the very conception of the project, we created a comprehensive plan that would let us work without much stress and enable us to deliver a working, visually interesting project.

Navigation structure: We opted for a familiar structure to make it as intuitive as possible. Having the menu button in the middle of the top navigation made it clearly visible and user friendly.

The one thing we would like to point out is the option to view all of VRTL WRLD’s projects in two different ways. The first one is a more typical list that showcases more projects simultaneously, but the second view presents each project individually with a clean graphic representation that’s a part of the larger visual identity.

Technology: The site was built in Webflow. It uses Lenis by Studio Freight to achieve a smooth scrolling experience, and we used GSAP to create most of the animations, including its ScrollTrigger and ScrambleText plugins. Along with that, we used the Swiper and SplitType JavaScript libraries to create some of the eye-catching visuals on the website.