Website refresh: RMG Ltd

We had designed a website and a new identity for them some years earlier, and while they felt it was time to change, they still loved the design. Our brief was to create something different – but keep it the same!

Deciding when to present your customers with a new look, and when to show them continuity is a problem we often help customer’s face. A new design and a fresh approach can show people you are dynamic and constantly improving – but often people have great affection for their old website or logo – and don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

We always try to give clients the best of both worlds. A fresh new look doesn’t have to leave behind everything that was good about the original, and with a bit of creativity and hard work it is possible to build the strengths of the old look into the new.

For RMG our new solution takes the style of the old site and expands it to take advantage of the improvements in technology since the first site was created. It uses bigger images and bands of colour to create a fuller browser experience, and bands of colour and images to help break the content up into sections that are easier to read and navigate.

An important change was also to make the site responsive – so it changes shape to fit different sizes of screen – giving the same great experience for users on mobile devices. To achieve this, not only do the image and text sizes change with the screen, but also the navigation and content flexes to suit different sizes and types of screen as well.

On a smart phone, some of the imagery and content are removed to keep the content focused, and the navigation goes from being constantly on display for larger screens to being neatly tucked away – although still available at the touch of a button.

But all that is built on the style of their original site, and creates a new look that is recognisably connected – building on the strengths of the previous site rather than starting again.

It also makes the most of all the hard work that went into creating content for their old site – making the whole process of preparing the new site as simple, quick and cost-effective as possible.  Of course the content was refreshed and checked at every stage, but only the parts that needed changing. Everything else was simply transferred across – enabling us to help them improve their content with the minimum of effort.

Take a look at the new site and compare it with the old site – or read more about how we did it.