Macat is an active learning platform that aims to give its customer access to some of the worlds greatest literature and academic texts. Targeted a broad audience from academics and students through to “life long learners”, the Macat proposition promotes critical thinking and reasoning skills by making the core ideas of these texts available to everyone.
As lead designer, I was responsible for the creative vision of the product as well as supporting the day-to-day development of the website. The key challenge was being able to define the creative vehicle that enabled the site to be simple, intuitive and accessible whilst still maintaining academic credibility. Starting with the creative vision and principles, I set out the design assets that enabled us work with the product owner on the customer experience teams as well as providing the developers with the designs and creative assets to take into their sprints. In this role I worked closely with the lead UX to refine the design direction and building the creative assets. I also had a designer working for me to enable us to keep on top of the demand from both the product and marketing teams.
Site updates
Below are a few examples of how the site evolved from the point I joined the project (right), to when I completed the redesign (left).
As part of the transformation, I looked at optimising the fonts, colour palette and using the existing illustrative style in a more homogeneous way. The creative direction and logo were beginning to date and there very limited scope for a complete overhaul. To address this, utilised a single anchor colour to give the site a more contemporary feel.
Style guide
As part of final handover, I was asked to create a style guide for the site.
