Victoria & Albert Museum launches its new and vibrant online presence this week with design provided by Tape London. With its roots in Scandinavian design, Tape developed templates to cover all aspects of the content on the site. The launch further positions Tape London as a leading provider of interactive services to the UK heritage sector.

 

As a former "European Museum of the Year" contenter, V&A has stringent requirements for its web site. The new design is tailored to the overall V&A brand and focuses on clarity through the use of intense colours and images. In close collaboration with V&A, Tape developed templates where the choice of colours on a given page reflects those of the image on the same page, by contrast or spot-colour.

 

"We aim to be the number one museum website for design and the decorative arts.  A vast quantity of images - 25,000 images of the collections alone - and information is available online. Tape has helped us to organise the site so that what you need can be found quickly - often through visual cues. We love the design. Its lively character stimulates interest and the palette of colours and appearances reflect the diversity of the museum's collections and audiences," - Gail Durbin, Head of V&A Online.

 

The new design for www.vam.ac.uk provides faster and more transparent routes to the wealth of content that can be found on the site. It aims to appeal to a wide range of the Museums audiences - including schools, students, creative industry professionals, families and adults. Thus, it caters for the diversity of their interests and use of the website, from study and research to simple fun and enjoyment.

 

"To achieve this level of transparency and usability, colour plays a key role. Each page is inspired by the colours from the image, which sets the tone for the colour of the standard elements in the site. The navigation menu uses a "colour-wash"-concept where the selected colour goes lighter the deeper one gets into the material," -Ronny Ellefsen, Tape London's Director & Creative Consultant.

 

The templates are designed to make the process of updating existing content via Percussion's enterprise content management system, Rhythmyx, and creating new pages in the site as efficient as possible for V&A staff. This is a critical aspect for a big museum with a large number of ongoing activities. To ensure streamlined user interaction, Tape arranged on-site user-testing and training for key members of the V&A staff. This provided staff with a fundamental understanding of the complexity of the design and the skills to test and fine-tune future elements to the site.

 

 

Tape has also produced several other individual parts of the Museum website; FuturePlan, FridayLate, several blogs and the Viral Marketing campaign to promote the release of the site. More projects are in progress.

 

www.vam.ac.uk

 

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