A Taste Of What The Midwest Is Cooking Up
Lauren International RWD Website
Lauren International is the parent company of eight (and counting) companies that all specialize in their respective specific fields. The company is forward thinking by Ohio standards, and is run by a serial–entrepreneur.
I was ecstatic when a client finally came forward and said “We want your best, and we trust your opinions.” So I rolled with it and designed one of my favorite pieces to date. The site is full of tiny detail oriented interactions, which are my favorite type. It has been one of my favorite projects not only to design, but help develop as well. This project allowed me to not only learn Drupal, but LESS as well (I’m still a sass man though).
In addition to designing this site, I am also the architect behind all of the HTML and CSS. The site is completely responsive, full–screen and having the amount of control I’ve had on this type of project is fantastic.
Multi–Layered Drawer Navigation
FULL SCREEN YAY!!!
One of my favorite trends that is going on in the web right now is making use of the entire screen. I mean, with responsive websites, how could you not. The key is to balance out your content with imagery and blank or dividing space. The next several images show how I designed these templates to do so.
Get To Work
I was very clear to the developers I was working with that this section needed to feel more like an app than a webpage. By that I mean not hard refreshes and the ability to go back and review the previous pages in the user flow. This is especially important when looking at descriptions for jobs and applying for them. These pages animate in left to right, always with the ability to go back up a level if you need to.
Blog Design
The blog multi–post view is one of my favorite pages of the site. It’s got big imagery, big icons, and the coolest dropdown to ever exist (see next section).
Don’t Drop The Ball
Or drop it like it’s hot. This dropdown menu doesn’t have an ordinary dropdown arrow that rotates to indicate what filter field is open, the balls actually drop. I felt this tiny, almost unnoticeable detail just felt right, and really blew my mind when I saw it live for the first time.
Multi Step Mobile Navigation
Accordion or even multi dropdown navigation systems are a breeze on medium to large screens, but when it comes to a small, fit in your pocket kind of deal, the challenge to maintain the same aesthetic as its larger counterparts can be tricky. I came up with a solution that is more iOS app like in nature than your traditional mobile navigation.
Instead of relying on users to hover to open up the next step, the mobile navigation is click based, and always gives you the opportunity to go back a step or close out of the navigation altogether.
*It seems that since my departure from Recess Creative, the Lauren International website has been redesigned. The above images no longer reflect the working, developed site I departed my old co-workers with.
I’d still recommend checking them out by clicking the link at the bottom of the page; they are making some very innovative products.