The Story Of Ignition Arts
Based in London and surrounding areas, Ignition Arts offers drama workshops, creative consultation, mentoring, coaching, and training to children of all ages. We worked with founder Darren to help revamp their outdated website by implementing a consistent and friendly design. Details about all of Ignition Arts’ programs and workshops are now easily accessible, and teachers’ testimonials are spread effectively across the site.
The brainchild of Darren Carr and Harriet Smith, Ignition Arts began in 2020 with the aim of educating and inspiring young people in the local community. Since starting, the pair have expanded their services into the surrounding areas and evolved their services to cater to multiple age groups.
Before contacting LoudLocal, Darren began building a website for Ignition Arts, but felt he didn’t have the time or resources to realise his vision. Whilst he had made a fair start using the Wix Editor, there was no coherent design or colour scheme, so he began looking for help to rectify this.
Why Ignition Arts Chose Us
Darren came to us through the Wix Marketplace, and after initial messages he gave our commercial director Priya a call. This was one of the main reasons he chose LoudLocal, as he mentioned later on that:
'I knew I was on to a winner when Priya answered the phone late one evening while food shopping to help with some of my questions, I could tell she had her hands full at the time but she still made time for me.'
In our next meeting, we were able to identify which parts of the existing site needed some work and established objectives for the redesign. This gave Darren the peace of mind that all aspects of his site would be covered.
The Process
The first aspect of Darren's website that we tackled was the structure. Prior to working with us, it wasn't clear what the different services/classes on offer were. By splitting up the homepage and sectioning programs into their own pages, it became less cluttered and much easier for users to navigate. In terms of the overall design, we opted for a very bright and youthful colour scheme. To further aid usability, we also used the main red and yellow from the logo to represent Key Stage 1/2 & Key Stage 3 respectively. Along with many photos of Ignition Arts in action, adding a 'Meet The Team' section really introduced a human aspect to the site and helped build trust with users. One of the biggest changes we made to the website was switching the background from black to white. Beforehand, a lot of the text was hard to read or sometimes illegible, so we thought it would benefit from a clean, fresh look.
The Recite Me toolbar ensures all users can access the information they need.
The Impact
The result of our changes is a much more clear, coherent and colourful website. Darren was incredibly impressed with the improved layout and said it's much easier to navigate than the previous design.
Before:
By introducing global fonts and colours we ensured that each page follows the brand guidelines, whilst still being visually exciting and fresh.