Web Development
Quentin Blake
Sir Quentin Blake, renowned English cartoonist and illustrator, is celebrated for his unique style seen in Roald Dahl's books and various public spaces. His official website offers fans an in-depth look at his art and creative process, plus free resources and a shop.
Creative Brief
The Situation
Sir Quentin Blake aimed to enhance his website to boost user engagement, confronting two key challenges. Technically, the site required upgrades in responsiveness, content filtering, and navigation to ensure a smooth user experience. Equally critical was infusing Blake's distinct artistic style throughout the design, creating a vibrant online space that truly reflected his unique aesthetic.
The Solution
To create a visually rich and functional website, we collaborated closely with the client to enhance the user journey, ensuring the site was fully responsive across all devices and featured intuitive navigation that encouraged deeper exploration. Critical visual design elements were a priority. We developed a unique typographic approach using a bespoke Quentin Blake font in key areas, complemented by easily readable, Google web-compatible typography to enhance usability. Additionally, we crafted cohesive color and image strategies and designed page layouts that prominently displayed the artist's work on every page.
The Results
Within the first month of its launch, the new site significantly enhanced user engagement. Key metrics indicated that visitors were spending more time on the site, engaging more deeply, and returning frequently. Specifically, there was a 35% increase in the average visit duration, a 115% rise in pageviews, and a 12% decrease in the bounce rate, which measures the percentage of visitors who leave the site without any interaction.
What We Did
Created bespoke theme sympathetic to Quentin’s Blake style Built site with a fast, mobile-friendly responsive design Added new panoramic studio tour Overhauled timeline section to improve interactivity, allow the use of multimedia and support translations Integrated content with the Filemaker database from Quentin’s office to power multiple areas of the site Expanded e-commerce functionality including Sage Pay and MailChimp integration Integrated social media channels Added intuitive faceted searching powered by Apache Solr and Ajax filters Improved browsing by added quick view popups in the gallery section Revised e-card functionality, making it fast and fun to share a Quentin Blake design
