Reuters Corporate Identity Website
For this project, I was hired to help the UK and US teams at Reuters revamp their Corporate Identity Website. Their original website consisted of a Flash-based application that had outdated, often conflicting information. Users also found the old site difficult to navigate and impossible to bookmark. The ground-up revision sports a standards-based XHTML and CSS framework that is fast, easy to use, and easy on the eyes.
In order to best meet the needs of the users, I needed to understand why and how people use a corporate identity website. During the discovery process, I interviewed different types of users directly and observed how they worked. From this, I came to a preliminary navigation scheme.
People come to a corporate identity website to understand how to responsibly apply brand content to a product. This implies that every user has an idea of the medium (print, web, video, etc.) and the application (press release, banner ad, etc.) of their product. With this, the Quicklink navigation widget was born. The Quicklink widget allows the user to simply select a medium along with an application, and is then taken to the appropriate page. The rest of the navigation consists of medium-specific content sections and a full-text search. The content sections exist to give an overview of how the Reuters brand is applied across that medium. Users are encouraged to click on the individual application to get specific guidelines. Navigational elements are available in full-view, so users can quickly scan the available links and select the most appropriate.
For creative vendor partners, we included several downloadable assets, such as application-native swatches to make it easy for them to apply brand-correct fonts, imagery, and colour to a project. For our Business users, we made sure to incude many downloadable “plug and play” templates. They can download these pre-styled templates and add their own content, allowing them to concentrate on their message.
The project was a smashing success for both Reuters and Blocklevel. Using a small team and an iterative approach allowed the design process to be completed within a scant few weeks. The result is a new Reuters Corporate Identity Website that is easily updated by the staff, and best serves the needs of its users.
Launch Date
November 2005