Case Studies

Richard Campos Business Support (RCBS) were looking to refresh their tired website with something that reflected their growth pattern & new corporate identity. RCBS, which assists start-ups & pre-existing companies develop business plans & helps them get funding,

needed to have an attractive website which emphasised planning & the ‘bustle’ of business without hitting the visitor over the head: this reflects their own corporate ethos, which is to guide companies without forcing them along a path.

ardes emphasised planning by the use of appropriate photography: oblique images reflecting business needs & goals, but photos which were missing a figure to give a guiding hand. Ringbinders with pens, a man in a maze, people hurrying along a hallway, a diagram of a “game plan”—all suggest actions, but ones which need missing guidance, which RCBS can provide.

The layout ardes created follows three principles:

For the first goal, ardes used a pinstripe background: a classic telltale symbol of serious business and a method of suggesting the purpose of the site in a subtle way. This is indicative of our approach to design: we use elements to help enhance—often at a sub-conscious level—the goals of the organisation.

The website’s layout is based on a strong grid, repeated throughout the site in order to help the visitor predict the location of the content she’s looking for if she’s in a particular hurry.

In this context this is very important: companies in deep trouble often have their staff working flat-out & if they’re looking for help, you won’t have a second chance to regain their attention: it’s therefore in the client’s best interests to keep to a strict layout. For those who aren’t in such dire predicaments, they can find the layout clear, calm & thoughtful.

Keeping the content easily accessible at all times reinforces the client’s second goal—to make the site intuitively laid-out—but, but this can lead to an extraordinarily busy site with far too much information on it. Accordingly, Argument from >Design created a drop-down menu system, easily legible by search engines (a rarely-achieved goal) & easily read by screen readers for the blind—an important accessibility goal if your clients include government-funded bodies.