the problem.

Their brand strategy and platform failed to meet the requirements of a post-pandemic world.

the solution.

Delivering a digital uplift for Melbourne's centre of Books, Writing and Ideas. The Wheeler Centre exists to support writers, readers and thinkers. Through live and digital conversations, debates, readings, performances and discussions, it deepens public engagement with the most pressing topics of the day. It is dedicated to creative collaboration, community engagement, diversity, and innovation.

The centre was established in 2008 when Melbourne was designated a UNESCO City of Literature. Originally named the Centre of Books, Writing and Ideas by the Victorian state government it was renamed later that year to The Wheeler Centre after a substantial donation by the founders of Lonely Planet travel guides, Tony and Maureen Wheeler.

content focused.

The early stages of this project involved extensive research and auditing ran by the strategist and content designers, this would include tree jack testing and IA focused stakeholder workshops. This helped to establish a new direction for the website that would elevate existing and new content and make it easier for users to find content and events that would cater towards their specific interest.

This would lead to the creation of Watch, Listen, Read, a content hub that smartly organised the type of content and allowed for additional filters by way of primary and sub categories.

New pages were created for the specific type of content, and content pages were uplifted to be more appealing then their existing standard WYSIWYG pages.

design direction.

While they weren't looking for a new logo, the wheeler centre was looking for a fresh look for their digital presence, they weren't entirely sure what approach they wanted, they simply provided one comment regarding their old brand 'We hate the teal'.

To narrow the feedback we created a series of style tiles, each with their own visual look and feel, we used these tiles to open a dialogue with the client, as a result they became comfortable and opened up around a desire for a bold, striking, minimalist and modern look.

the highlighter.

At it's heart, the wheeler centre is a celebration of books, writing and ideas, we felt that the new website should be a part of this celebration. It might sound simple, but we went down a path of trying to make the website look like book or piece of writing. We tested concepts such a page with a visible text grid, hand drawn underlines and scribbles as visual flourishes. But in the end we went with the highlight approach, this ticked the boxes for creating a sophisticated look that was bold, striking, minimalist and modern. It also had a strong selling point that it was easy to implement a dynamic CMS, especially for a site that was aiming to pull in a great deal of existing content for an uplift.

reflection.

The new look and feel of the website was deemed a roaring success, however it was a difficult process to get there. New visual identity was flagged as a low importance item and under scoped, this mindset would change as we hit high fidelity designs. The project was had a very tight deadline and each sprint would be a quick turn around. we found that during rounds of feedback for the high fidelity designs, things were slowing down, the client had a lot of indecision on how the website looked. As a result we had to pull the hand break on the project and allocate necessary time with discussions, ideation and the likes to deliver a suitable new look.