The Outpost.

The Outpost is a Dutch visual-effects (VFX) and animation studio. They work with some of the biggest brands in the world, helping the likes of Heineken, Sennheiser, and ProRail, to unite the endless potential of creativity, with the infinite possibilities of visual technologies.

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The owners of The Outpost have been good friends of us for a long time, and at Naam, we even share an office with them. As a result, it was a no-brainer for them to reach out to us when they needed a new marketing website.

Together we designed, prototyped, and explored many different opportunities. Eventually, we settled on building an immersive and informative website where (moving) images would be at the heart of every page.

Services
UX/UI Design
Prototyping
Creative Direction
A tablet on a grey background displaying The Outpost website homepage
The Homepage.
Full-page screenshot of the Outpost's website homepage minus the hero section
Full-page screenshot of the Homepage minus the Hero section.
Four phones on a grey background displaying the Outpost website's responsive design
Responsive design.

Emotion In-Motion

The website revolves around the concept of emotion in motion. The beautiful material created by the Outpost means to impress, create wonder, move the viewer, and trigger an emotion.

To reach the target audience of advertising agencies and, more importantly, advertising directors, we needed the website to be scannable, digestible, and leave an impact—a visual impact that would convince the audience of the Outpost's qualities.

Additionally, we wanted to show the Outpost's process, which is thorough and exceptional. On every project detail page, the Outpost has multiple tools to help present this, from before and after sliders to video embeds. This way, the audience gets to know the Outpost a little better, ensuring that they know they are the right fit for each other before getting in touch.

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Homepage Scroll Through.

A Touchy Subject

However, it isn't all about looks. The Outpost commissioned the website to help them gain new clients. To ensure the website has the desired effect, we integrated strategic call-to-actions and personal touches to reduce the barrier of getting in touch, making it more personal.

Additionally, at the bottom of every page, visitors will find a prominent call-to-action with Rick's (one of the Outpost's owners) face and a personal message to get in touch.

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A composition of the Outpost website's Project Detail and Project Overview pages
Project Overview and Project Detail page.

Styleguide

The style guide ensures that later additions and new pages follow the project's design parameters. We designed all elements according to the Atomic Design System, which makes creating new components and pages consistent, easy, and fast.

Below you will find a few examples of 'molecules'. In Atomic Design, a molecule is an element with two or more atoms—such as images, icons, or text, resulting in cards, thumbnails, and much more.

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Colors of the Outpost website
Colors.
Typography used in the Outpost website
Typography.
Various components for the Outpost website
Various components.

About Time

We have placed strategic personal components throughout the website where the viewer gets to know the team behind the Outpost. This personal touch makes users' initial decision to get in touch easier.

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A tablet on a grey background displaying The Outpost website about us page
About Us page.
Full page screenshot of the Outpost's About us page
Full page screenshot of the About page.

A Little Something Something

We were very excited to hear that the website for the Outpost was awarded Site of the Day and Developer of the Day by Awwwards.

One factor that helped win the awards was the attention to detail across the site, such as the preloader, where the logo appears in different ways, or the background blurs that smoothly layer upon the videos.

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A tablet on a grey background displaying The Outpost website Contact page
Contact page.
A tablet on a grey background displaying The Outpost website preloader
Preloader.
A tablet on a grey background displaying The Outpost website preloader
Preloader.
The Menu.

Prototype

The animations and micro-interaction made the design particularly challenging for our development team. To get the most important ones right, I helped our development team by creating a prototype for the homepage hero and the preloader. I built this prototype in Webflow and then shared the files and interaction data with our development team.

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Homepage Load Animation Hero Scroll Through.
Webflow prototype hero interaction.

Summary

I had a fantastic time helping to host the workshops, design the first wireframes, refine the first design sketches, and develop the interactions in a Webflow prototype. It's always fun working on a project with content like this, but winning a few awards makes it even better.

But for us, the best result was seeing the Outpost grow, get new leads on projects, and hire new people with their exciting new website.

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Overview of multiple tablets on grey background showing various pages of the Outpost website design
Overview of various pages.
Client
The Outpost
Services
UX/UI Design
Prototyping
Creative Direction
Sector
Industrial
Year
2020
Details
Design
Timothy Maurer
Joris Spiertz
Ellie MacLeod
Development
Lieneke Koenen
Strategy
Timothy Maurer
Joris Spiertz
Creative Direction
Timothy Maurer
Joris Spiertz
Team
Agency
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