Shut up. I'm talking.

1st March 2011

Re-designing Motribe

Earlier today the new Motribe site was launched. The design is done by Obox (yours truly) and I could not be happier with the outcome.

It started with a phone call from one of their co-founders, Nic Haralambous. Nic and I have known each other for a while and we both respect each others businesses considerably.

My initial thought when he asked me to redo their site was “WOOHOO!”, however it wasn’t until I sat down to think of what I was going to do did I realise the pressure I had put myself under.

Let me explain why.

Motribe is one of the hottest startups to come out of South Africa. They are approaching 1 million users and only launched this venture in August 2010. It’s exploding in growth and, in my opinion, is by far one of the best SA Start Ups that I have seen. I didn’t want to disappoint and I definitely didn’t want the new design to be the weak link in the chain.

On top of the pressure to deliver ‘the awesome’ was also the timeline. Nic and Vince leave for SXSW tomorrow - I was asked to design the site 5 weeks prior.

For me personally, to come up with something decent I need a long time to think about it. No pen, no paper, just thinking.

Luckily through the whole process the ‘Mobros’ were open to all my suggestions / opinions on where the design should go, what colours to use and even what the copy should say. It was a special experience to have that much freedom with a client project.

At the end of the day the first design iteration got rejected but to be honest I sent it to them way too soon, but did so knowingly to gauge their initial reaction. Once that was out the way some of the pressure resided and I was able to do what I knew best.

The new designs focus was on clear typography, a clean and very professional feel (white space, font sizes) and nothing too playful. So the colours couldn’t be too vibrant and the icons I chose were from the solid vector side of life.

The 960 grid was used with a bit of ‘poetic license’ when aligning the elements. I have learned that some pages require a 16 column whereas others need a 12 column grid - I’m perfectly fine with that as long as it serves its purpose.

Flow and focus points were carefully considered which can be seen on both the home page and sign up page. A lot of questions were asked when it came to the layout of those pages.

My favourite pages:

Features Page

Brands Page

And so, the end result is what you see today. There were minimum tweaks along the way, especially the sub pages - which got approved almost right away. I would say the home page got the most love and attention.

If you have any opinions please @obox me.

I also want to thank my main man Gavin Elliott for some invaluable help along the way. I think everyone needs an Elliott in their Skype contact list.