The refresh of the Byrne and Miller website has been completed this week and the site is now live. The concept for the design was provided by Kenny Smith Photography and Ken shot the images for the site, so we had the relatively easy task of implementing his vision.
Byrne and Miller website re-design
There were a few challenges with the implementation of a site featuring large background images and we experimented with a couple different versions of the design including one where the edges faded to white which allowed us to provide the appearance of the background filling the screen (at most common resolutions). In the end the design that won out though was the one that showed the images with the white border that they came with.
Another challenge of the design was providing customised scrollbars for the textboxes and changing the position of the bar from the right hand side to the left (though this doesn’t work in some older versions of IE). The solution we decided to use is a JavaScript based solution (jScrollPane) that is cross browser compatible and degrades well if the user doesn’t have JavaScript enabled. This gave us the ability to not only customise the colour and look/feel of the bar but also to change it’s position (in most modern browsers).
Byrne and Miller Custom scrollbar on left
The other component of the re-design was the revamp of the client’s email newsletter. As is usually the case their email newsletter design was tied in to the look and feel of their website. This ensures that email newsletter branding relates to that used on the site. For this we chose a simple design that featured a header image which displayed a portion of one of the background images from the site along with the company logo. The design allows plenty of space for content and the whole thing is set up as a template that the customer can easily edit, using the email marketing tool that we use.
Email newsletter design