We were delighted to reveal our new look website earlier this month. Vitamin Cornwall won the tender to overhaul our existing site and take it in a completely new direction. We are thrilled with the results as it encapsulates our project to a tee. It really was a case of two organisations aligning.
The aim of the project was to create a slick and professional website that communicated to the Cornish business community the unique offering of ATI2. As a project building an innovation community through support, conferences and the Cornwall Innovation Club, the website needed to reflect each aspect. As an innovation project, we cover many areas of support and with no business being the same, the website needed to be responsive and cater for multiple demographics and platforms.
Here’s what Vitamin had to say about their involvement with the project:
“At Vitamin, we’re constantly trying to innovate, so we felt that it was a natural partnership to work with ATI on creating their new website and Innovation Studio. We’ve worked with businesses who have benefitted from the expertise and support of ATI and seen how they’ve flourished, so we were excited to be able to help more people find new ways of elevating their offering through ATI’s dedicated mentoring and innovation funding.
From the outset we wanted to create a really engaging platform. We wanted the user to feel like they were entering an innovation journey, a path that could turn their idea into a viable business. It was important to keep location at the heart of the design by bringing in strong and iconic images of Cornwall as part of the design concept, overlaying it with a modern look to reflect the cutting edge industries and businesses that are located here. More practically, the ATI team needed a place to easily share their expertise and knowledge, building a bespoke website on WordPress to allow them to keep their content fresh and relevant in these fast changing times.
The unique strategy that underpins all our creative work is always centred around our clients, their ambition and our mission to Push the Possible, squeezing as much creativity, tech or innovation as we can from every budget. We can create complex digital platforms, but we’re not just developers. Our creatives work closely with our techies challenging each other to design and build products that are dynamic and award winning. We believe this full service approach makes us one of the leading digital agencies in Cornwall.”
When asked what are the most important parts of the process when creating a new website design like this? Vitamin responded by saying, “We start with the user – it’s important to understand their needs and then aim to inform and engage them to achieve their goal. ATI has a strong proposition and we needed to match their aspirations with the user experience as well. Once we’d established the user journey we started to build a clearer picture of the structure of the website and its content.
With this in place we can jump into the design concepts, in this case it was all about the innovation journey and bringing that to life by guiding users through the process.
The solution had to feel slick and intentional, and we achieved this by creating a scroll-jacked interface that keeps focus on each key area of the innovation journey, whilst funnelling visitors towards the application process. Collaborating with the ATI team, it was apparent that Cornwall as a location was an integral part of the project. Our concept incorporated the arrival of innovation in iconic Cornish locations and this inspired us to create a dramatic backdrop for the website.
The brief was to create a leading digital innovation platform. We feel we have taken it further by crafting that platform into a journey. It feels more personal and puts the user at the centre of the experience. The funding process is a journey, and by visualising this in an innovative way, we’ve created a platform that sets itself apart from a simple input interface, to something that aims to capture the imagination of innovators, while highlighting Cornwall and ATI as leading providers of business innovation and support.”
Throughout the website build, the process of capturing content, shaping it and designing it for the clients, Vitamin kept us updated throughout and shared each step of the build constantly. This allowed us to be in control of the project and manage the expectations from our end.
Working with Vitamin to shape the user experience and overall concept was a hugely valuable experience that has successfully paid off for ATI2. The team at Vitamin supported ATI2 by delivering a refreshed innovative design concept that captured Cornwall’s innovation heritage whilst providing an insight to the future.
Creating a digital platform for the future
The work has not finished for Vitamin as they continue to build on our evolving Innovation Studio. The Innovation Studio is being designed to enable businesses across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly to access a range of different pathways to support them in building innovation into their organisation. It is a massive undertaking and one that Vitamin have dived straight into with enthusiasm. The studio will be the first of its kind and will allow businesses to work through multiple pathways dependent on their innovation journey. By using cutting-edge technology, businesses will be able to work through accredited tools and tasks from the comfort of their home office or working environment. The aim of the studio is to instil knowledge from national and global leaders and inspire businesses to begin their innovation journey.
We will be inviting businesses to test and trial the studio before Christmas, so watch this space.