Royal Horticultural Society : Wild About Gardens website
The Wild About Gardens website is a resource hub for information about garden wildlife and features practical advice and step-by-step gardening projects. This unique online resource is a joint initiative by the Royal Horticultural Society and The Wildlife Trusts and is part of a national movement to encourage wildlife to take up residence in our gardens.
Firstly, ico created a new Wild About Gardens identity in order to build a stronger brand that will help when publicising the website. As the goal of the site is very much about getting people involved with simple garden projects; an informal hand-drawn typographic and illustrative style was chosen to reflect this have-a-go, hands-on spirit.
The illustrations and a nature-inspired colour scheme are used to create a decorative and visually stimulating backdrop for the site; evoking a thriving wildlife garden. In contrast, a clean and organised design for the content areas makes for a simple and useable interface. Large-scale, close-up and full colour photographic wildlife images bring an attractive and intimate dimension to the interface.
The audience for the website is effectively the entire active UK gardening community. To accommodate such a broad range of users the new site is clear, user-friendly and largely made up of HTML content pages that can be easily accessed and updated. A particular challenge was to make this information-heavy site engaging and inspiring to prompt a higher degree of public participation. Engaging modules, featuring colourful images, lead users quickly to the key areas of information and practical ideas.
TAGS: web