Lyle Shane
de Lange
The Pretoria Institute for Architecture (PIA) is a voluntary association and is part of the South African Institute of Architects. The PIA has its origins in the Pretoria architectural society, founded in 1945 and was created to serve the interests of architects in the capital city.
The challenge
My main objective was to visualise a design in a way that looks interesting, engaging and deal with loads of text, pages, membership system functions and make it appear aesthetic and visually appealing.
The solution
Through various iterations, a beautiful design was crafted. I used a 5 column layout approach (influenced by architectural structure) and focused on simple serif typography, subtle combinations of colours and beautiful visuals that guide and navigate users through a modern web layout that is structured, but also quite flexible.
Designed with system
Creating all the elements and assets in advance helped to create a consistent and easily updatable design.
Implanting the DNA
The PIA-DNA consisting of colours, 5 columns, shapes, icons, typography and visuals was implanted into every page to give it that unique touch.
Additional value
We rebranded the entire CI and also arranged a new photoshoot to capture each committee members personality in high contrast black and white photography.
Results and learnings
PIA was very happy with the redesign and according to them, they saw a huge increase in subscriptions after the relaunch.
The project had a few hick-ups along the way with integration issues between custom membership functionality and WordPress, but we made it work. Bottomline – never again will I try and include advanced custom functionality in a WordPress site without a senior development team at my disposal.
Scope of work
Discovery
Workshop
Project Planning
Consulting
Strategy
Information Architecture
Tech Stack Planning
User Experience
Design
Art Direction
Visual Moodboards
UI Design
UX Design
Photoshoot Direction
Development
WordPress Development
Plugin Integrations
Back-end Development
Front-end Development
Quality Assurance
Usability Testing
Performance Testing
Functionality Testing