Responses by Form.

Background: Where Giants Roam is a creative agency that specializes in crafting unique, impactful brand experiences. From virtual photography and motion to design and live action, the agency seamlessly blends creativity with technology to solve visual challenges in innovative ways that break the mold.

The launch of the new website coincided with the celebration of an exciting 2024, a year that marked significant growth for the agency. This included the appointment of creative director Calum Youngson in Where Giants Roam’s new London office; a series of prestigious award wins; and the securing of new contracts with world-renowned global brands such as Bombardier, Compass Box, Glenfiddich, Hermès, Linn and Ramp.

The purpose of the new site was to showcase the incredible range of projects that Where Giants Roam had been working on. The team felt restricted by their old website, which was built using a website builder platform, and sought a site that better reflected their creativity and attention to detail.

Design core: We worked closely with the team to design a website that blends interactive web elements with high-quality video and full-screen imagery, resulting in a visually striking, immersive experience. Our approach focused on a clean, minimalist design, ensuring the content took center stage without unnecessary distractions. This dynamic combination maximizes impact, offering users an engaging experience that is both visually compelling and easy to navigate.

The seamless integration of interactivity enables visitors to engage more deeply with the content, while the video and imagery enhance storytelling and showcase the team’s high standards of work.

The CMS enables the Where Giants Roam team to curate each case to really showcase their projects at their best. Working with the team, we developed a number of different custom configurations to ensure the site kept that editorial feel on the user side while having a robust, easy-to-navigate CMS for building out each case study. This approach enabled the structure to breakaway from traditional page builders and have a truly unique look and feel.

Favorite details: Some of our favorite features include the interactive elements on the homepage, such as the Play section, where the brand’s logo follows the user’s cursor. Additionally, the adaptive logo type on scroll throughout the site adds a playful touch to the user experience.

Challenges: Given the media-rich nature of the website, load speed was a concern. We implemented best practices to ensure minimal load times without compromising quality. By introducing technologies such as RocketCDN to handle high-quality imagery and video, we significantly improved load times, ensuring a smooth, immersive user experience.

Time constraints: Curating content ahead of time was essential for a site like this. Fortunately, the client fully understood the process and was keen to take the time to carefully select the final case studies to achieve the best possible outcome. This enabled us to refine the development process, ensuring everything ran smoothly while we fine-tuned subtle interactions.

Alternate paths: Looking back, there are always elements we wish we had time or resources to implement. The team has since moved into a new space, and we would have liked to feature more images and videos of the team in their new environment to bring the brand to life.

Another feature we discussed with Where Giants Roam was a scrollable representation of its CGI process, enabling users to navigate from initial wireframe 3-D designs to clay models, early renders and the final product. This would highlight the craft and attention to detail the team invests in every project. It would also help demystify the process, especially for clients who may not realize how much work goes into creating seemingly simple product shots. We hope to revisit this concept in the future.

Navigation structure: We kept the navigation minimal to ensure the imagery or video remained the focal point. We opted for a full-screen menu with an integrated showreel, showcasing the team’s exceptional work no matter which page the user landed on.

We also wanted to add a playful element to the wordmark. Rather than having it sit idle in the top left corner—as is typical on most websites—we made the full Where Giants Roam wordmark appear on load and then reduce to WGR on scroll. This helps free up valuable screen space, ensuring the user’s focus remains on the work.

Technology: For the animations on the front end, we utilized the reliable GSAP framework along with Lenis to create smooth scrolling effects, enhancing the overall experience of scroll-based animations. One particularly exciting feature is the Play section’s call to action, where the arrows follow the user’s cursor. It was particularly challenging to implement, but the final result was well worth the effort. We also used webpack to compile JavaScript and SCSS.

On the back end, the site was built on a custom WordPress framework using Docker, JavaScript, MySQL, Node.js and PHP for local development.