Phosys web design

Phosys web design

Featured Website: Turfpix

A brand new website for horse racing photography website TurfPix, run by Tracy Roberts. You can see the website here: http://www.turfpix.com

The Brief

Tracy needed a fresh new website to display her portfolio and offer clients a proofing area containing dozens of galleries covering racing events across the UK. The website would be first and foremost simple and easy to navigate, with a special emphasis on the client galleries – these would use a ‘sub album’ system whereby galleries are nested one within another. The purpose of the sub galleries is to make the browsing experience quick and easy for the visitor.

turfpix_layout_4a

The Design

The website is designed to match with TurfPix’s current red and black branding – but we introduced a number of elements to soften the overall look and feel. Strong red and black are intense colours and use is best kept to a minimum to prevent the feel of the site from dominating the pictures. In the same vein using full black on a pure white background also comes across as stark (after all, it’s the colour combination with the most contrast). This can often be used to great effect – some of the best websites we’ve produced have used this theme – but in the case of Turfpix we felt that a more softened approach would work better.

We therefore broadened the palette to include a range of greys – very light, medium and dark. We also developed a complimentary series of subtle textures to add to the coloured backgrounds. Textures are a great way of breaking up solid colour – it makes things a bit less bland and flat.

When you have a strong red like the one in the TurfPix logo it’s a great excuse to use as a highlight colour – one that’s used to draw attention to elements on the page. The most obvious use of a highlight colour is to indicate ‘clickable’ things – links, buttons, etc. Because strong red contrasts so well with whites greys and blacks it does a great job of drawing the eye and leading the visitor to important headings and parts of the site especially deserving of attention.

Features

TurfPix utilises a ‘full width’ slideshow on a number of pages – the main purpose of which is to broaden the site and keep the visitor entertained. For the most part the rest of the content is fitted into a neat traditional column which allows us to precisely line up the content and keep things neat.

A key feature of the site is the Galleries section – a drop-down menu and a series of sub-galleries provide a way for Tracy to clearly divide up her events. This obviously makes life easier for those riders who are keen to find their photos – the larger events are subdivided into alphabetical galleries where riders can search for their surname.

turfpix_layout_4b

We implemented a search indexing system for TurfPix – images within the galleries are tagged with extra data containing useful information (such as the name of the horse, jockey or trainer). Visitors can then search for their photographs using a search box at the top of the page.

Clicking a photo provides an enlarged (and watermarked) version of the image and also a menu for customers to buy prints and other photographic products.

 

Comments are closed.