The New Split Website

The new Split website was launched last week and is now online at split.co.uk so I thought I'd put up a short post about the site and its development. The design work and concept was created by Split before our friends and regular collaborators at Hydrant provided the web development and coding.

The idea behind the site was for it to have high impact but at the same time be a blank canvas to feature out work. As we don't work in any one style, visually we wanted the site to be about the design work in the portfolio and the shop, not the site itself, whist at the same time trying to create a unique and effective site to communicate what we're all about.

We also wanted to explore the possibilities of an online portfolio site – with such a high level of skill and knowledge within the Hydrant team, the possibilities of what could be done was pretty exciting and we siezed the opportunity to experiment and push the boat out a bit.

Unlike designing for a static piece of print, the web provides unique challenges visually in that no two screen sizes are the same. As such, we designed the site so that no matter what the screen size the site is proportioned and balanced. The menu, illustrations and layouts are responsive to the size of the screen, while the really clever bit comes in Hydrant's coding for the the portfolio with 3 different sizes set so that the portfolio fits to your screen, whatever size it is.

The home page illustration and animation can be very easily changed to feature different crack illustrations and with different animation below, whilst the portfolio has intelligent image transitions between the images that slide backwards and forwards depending on which way the user navigates. Again the clever bit comes with the development because all this is done without using Flash which is becoming increasingly outdated. Flash is unavailable to some users so has accessibility issues, but it also involves higher loading time and problems with search engine optimisation and content management. Hydrant have developed the site purely in HTML, CSS and Java Script meaning the site's subtle animation works in all browsers and even for Iphone and Ipad users.

Finally the site also features the new Split Shop integrated into the site and provides an outlet some of our self-initiated work including Tshirt prints, posters and other design products. Visit www.split.co.uk/shop to have a browse and perhaps even sort out that last minute christmas pressie!

We hope you like the site and if you have any feedback we'd love to hear it. You can email us on: info@split.co.uk.