A visual refresh for Denmark’s only folk high school that offers students education in cultural understanding with four months abroad.
Zanzibar Højskolen
Visual Design, 2018
Role
Lead designer
Year
2018
Skills
- Branding
- Visual Identity
- Responsive Design
About
Zanzibar Højskolen is a small business doing big things. The concept of a traditional Danish folk high school is where students around the age of 19-25 spend 4-6 months taking classes, living together, and fostering a community. Zanzibar Højskolen combines this with a trip abroad to Zanzibar where the students learn subjects in anthropology and cultural understanding combined with a backpack experience. They had a website that showcased their beautiful photography, but.. it was getting old, wasn’t mobile friendly, and needed a refresh. There was a vast amount of information on the site that needed to be organized, crosslinked, and brought back full circle to the ideology of the school. In interviews we found that the site was revisited by students repeatedly even after signing up to educate themselves on their upcoming travel. We found this critical as most students were traveling alone for the first time. Information to them equaled security. We needed a solution that informed the prospective student of the immense amount of information on the site as well as leaving room to showcase the visuals.
Branding
Visual Identity
Taking inspiration from East African textiles, a visual motif was developed to give the pages a bit more personality and travel feel. These motifs were also used as visual aids to direct the eye down the page and to highlight certain content. To further the travel motif, stamp illustrations were created to give the viewer a rugged and backpacker feel to the site. We’re not looking for something super sleek, but something colorful, with personality, yet structured around a grid so the content speaks clearly. Playfair Display and Montserrat were chosen for their bold display and rounded playful characters. The color palette was chosen from a sample of photographs of Zanzibar. Secondary colors were lower chroma versions of the main colors.
Playfair Display
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Montserrat
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
#72B0A2
#95C69B
#E3A2A1
#E7AD86
#DCF2EE
#CFEED3
#F5EEEB
#FEF4E4
Site map
Templates
We did an entire inventory of the site and found over 50 pages of content. We narrowed down the main pages to approximately 5. The main home page, the course page, a landing page for the companies tours and destinations, a page highlighting the activities that you’ll take part in during your stay, and a destination page; showcasing the different countries you can embark on during your two week free travel. These templates are strong suggestions. We didn’t want to force content where there wasn’t any, so sections and components could be easily added or removed.
Design patterns
Components
To account for the vast variety of pages, several components were developed so each page could be slightly customized for its content’s needs. All components had to be responsive, and included a slideshow, tabbed content, testimonials, checklist styles, external page links, just to name a few. A full design pattern library was also developed, complete with typography, button styles, and colors.
01
Home page
We met up with the most recent group and enlisted them in a simple card sorting exercise. We chose about 10 topics around the company’s mission statement we asked them to sort them by their importance. We asked them which topics were most important when deciding on a højskolen. The courses came in first. All the students mentioned that they wanted to know the program at the school and what each course had to offer. The second priority was a tie, with half the students mentioning volunteer projects and the other mentioning some form of travel. We made a decision to push the adventure section as it is one of the founding principles of the school. Volunteer projects, a virtual tour of the school, and diving certifications follow.
02
Course page
As the most viewed pages on the site we decided to break up this site into important information that is anchored in a secondary menu. Key departures and costs are provided in a locked sidebar, as well as other widgets such as early bird prices, win a trip competitions, and other marketing call to actions. The pages include a video intro, a description of what you learn, a general itinerary by month, and a break down of the costs to emphasize the organization’s principles in transparency and trust.
03
Category page
Slightly different than the main home page, there are a handful of parent pages that link to more detailed content. Again we start with a video intro, and break down content by categories. Some are simply accompanied by photos and others have smaller sub pages, such as Backpack Africa, which also uses the category template to break down travel destinations by category.
04
Featured activity
One of the main selling points of Zanzibar is the vast number of activities. Many of these activities are part of the course programs, particularly diving, which takes a good two weeks out of the course itinerary. These templates are also used for the kitesurfing, surfing, and safari. They are further linked to destination pages in order to give some practical application to your new skills.
05
Featured destination
Combining travel with a traditional folk high school is one of the main differentiators of the company. All students receive a ten day travel week to backpack around the continent. The most popular destinations are showcased, some as tours you can purchase through partners and others are simply informative. The longer featured tours use the itinerary, slideshows, and checklist components. While smaller pages use tabbed content to swipe between popular sights and quick facts.
The experience
Working with Zanzibar Hojskolen was a designer’s dream. Rarely do you get a project that’s this much fun and with such beautiful content. This was I worked closely with a WordPress developer to customize and create components to a pre existing theme, as well as a SEO specialist to create content and images that will help the site climb to the top of people’s search results. The first version is currently being finalized and upon launch will also be fitted with tracking in order to validate our research and further finesse the journey from first page view to sign up.
- Visual branding
- Design pattern library