Who’s Next? zu Fares Well in Design Battle

Rarely do we get the chance to talk or blog about our own website, but we recently stumbled upon a cool website called CommandShift3. It’s basically a Hot or Not for websites. Users are given two screenshots of randomly paired websites and click on the one they think has a better design. Once a decision has been made, you are shown the results of what others have voted on. We were intrigued and decided to submit our site to see what the public thought. Currently out of over 1800 sites (and growing), the zu site has been comfortably in the top 5. Not bad considering the design is over 2 years old.

Interestingly enough, this design wasn’t originally intended as a long-term website. It was based off a print piece we did for an advertising campaign. Our plan was to have this up for only a few months, then go on a longer journey towards a complete redesign. Oh, how things change. Once that version was put up, however, we were getting good reviews and reactions and so have stuck with it. We’ll keep it until we are in our new building and look at fuller branding redesign.

Things I’ve always loved about this site:

Unique layout
Design is often about wanting to be different, but unfortunately that often ends up also meaning confusing or difficult to use. The bottom aligned site and navigation isn’t very common, but is still intuitive, and works well with the amount of content on the site.

Dark colour
In a sea of white, dark sites really stand out, though can be used only sparingly in common practice.

Good Photography
High quality, simple photography is often the difference between a pretty good site and a great site, as far as visual impact and initial impression. Photography that stirs emotions one way or another is often a good tact to create interest.

Clean Layout
With any website, there’s a compromise between keeping the design clean enough that the content shown actually gets some attention, without being so sparse as to communicate nothing. So, visual noise vs. dead air. While zu folks certainly have a lot to say, we’ve resisted the temptation to cram more onto the homepage, (and we’ve certainly had busier version in the past). Setting limits keeps the design clean; what’s there doesn’t have to compete to be seen. It’s somewhat calming to not be over stimulated by information these days.

Good use of Javascript and Flash
It’s common for agencies to want to show off their prowess with a lot of bells and whistles (Leoburnett.com), or take the über-minimalist approach (miltonglaser.com or griplimited.com). The zu site strives for balance, with a clean visual, and animation effects that add usability, rather than impede it for effect. We’ve had some nice comments on how efficiently the site handles a fair bit of information in a slightly off beat, yet easy-to-use, attractive manner.

A friend once commented that our site lacks the “big agency style” that most big agencies have. So I started pointing out the subtleties of the zu site that all work together for a consistent brand: but there’s also truth in what he was saying. Our design is grounded in the philosophy we rely on in designing sites for our clients – it’s clean; it has impact without being aggressively in-your-face; technology aids the user experience rather than being present for its own sake; it has good usability, is cross-browser friendly, screen-reader friendly, iphone/mobile friendly, and search engine friendly. And the recent accolades on CommandShift3 prove that the design still holds up even after more than two years. And I had almost nothing to do with it (good job team!)

January kicks off the planning of the 6th gen zu site, slated for an early summer launch. Keep checking in.