When I joined oceanseventy as a web designer at the beginning of 2008 they were sporting a rather naff “web2.0-style” web site. The overall informattion architecture was solid but the visual was frighteningly derivative and overwhelmed the examples of the work oceanseventy displayed on the site.

I twitched away for the next few months, bravely holding back the vomit every time I saw the site. Then finally, sometime around April 2008, it was decided that oceanseventy needed to get back to basics with a site that would put portfolio work higher up the visual hierarchy than the sites own design.

I called it project Codename Orangina. I can’t remember why, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

oceanseventy redesigned

The redesign was four column, with headers set in Stemple Garamond and body in Helvetica Neue. The concept was ‘Keep It Simple Stupid!’.

Homepage

Nothing but a brief description of who oceanseventy is and what they do.

Portfolio detail

The whole portfolio section was given a black background. It was my opinion that portfolio items would pop more if placed on a dark background.

oceanseventy blog

It’s a blog!

So what?

For real. But due to a number of unfortunate circumstances (a comment from a rather dim client, the sites awful copy, etc.) the design never really got it’s chance to shine. Rather than extending Orangina, ongoing effort went into a whole new site which wasn’t fully launched when I left the company last month.

Today all that remains of the design for oceanseventy are a few screenshots. So here they lay as a record of project Codename Orangina.