What Creative Design Agency

Leeds Building Society is the 5th largest building society in the UK, and as part of introducing a new visual identity and brand proposition, the need for a new-look website was realised.

We partnered with Thompson Brand Partners — the agency responsible for the new identity — to work in collaboration on the project. Combining their knowledge of the brand, design and content skills, with our knowledge of UX and technical implementation, we were able to re-design the website to be fully responsive and offer the customers of Leeds Building Society an online experience unlike any other.

The core brand proposition is focussed on ‘helping you get on with life’. With that in mind, we worked with Thompson to create the most user-friendly website possible. We centred our attention on dissecting complicated information into manageable chunks and creating a refined reading experience throughout. After all, finding the perfect mortgage or choosing a savings account can be a complicated experience.

This is a huge step forward for the Society […]. The Thompson/What Creative team has led us expertly through the complex process of looking at ourselves, re-articulating what our brand stands for and bringing that to life in a modern and effective way… — Nikki Marsh, Head of Marketing and E-Commerce

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On the Edge (OTE) Sports is a start-up company specialising in sports nutrition products. They commissioned us to develop their online presence, including the design and development of an ecommerce store.

Elmwood — the agency responsible for the development of the OTE brand — approached us to help launch OTE Sports online. After meeting with the client we knew that they were stepping into a very competitive sector, but one in which the power of online wasn’t being exploited. Through the research that we carried out, we realised that visual flare, clear messaging and a succinct brand experience would be key in positioning them against the competition.

The website is designed to inspire, excite and educate both the hobbyist and professional market by focussing on striking high-resolution graphics. The responsive templates adapt to mobile phones and desktop computers of any size and resolution, ensuring that the information is always shown in the most suitable format. Read about the process here.

What Creative succeeded in creating a website that we’re truly proud of. It’s extremely effective and we love the unique online experience that they’ve developed for OTE customers. They were very adaptable and overcame many challenges throughout the project whilst still maintaining focus and sticking to tight deadlines. — Matt Harrison, Director

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Thomas Radford are a recruitment company specialising in placing the world’s leading engineering professionals. They approached us to redesign and develop their marketing website with a clear vision to inspire.

The brief was to create a bold website of exceptional quality in order to communicate their approach to recruitment. We began by holding detailed discussions with the client about their internal aims and external user needs and it soon became evident that there was a requirement to target two very different customer types — both clients and candidates — meaning information architecture and clear content hierarchy would be key.

After developing a site map and re-structuring the content, the next step was to generate responsive wireframes. These helped illustrate how the site would adapt to different devices, and what content would be in focus at various resolutions. This proved extremely valuable and we were able to swiftly move on to both applying the visual design and building the content-managed templates.

Using their strong offline branding as a guide we developed a powerful online look-and-feel which communicated the identity of Thomas Radford perfectly, and is without question one of the most striking websites in the recruitment sector.

The What Creative team were very attentive and the finished product exceeds what we were hoping. Since the site went live in the Autumn, we have been complimented by several members of our client network about its design, efficiency and aesthetic. — Zaf Hussain, Director

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Mind the Gap is England’s largest learning disability theatre company. They create work for both UK and international audiences and are an all-round fantastic charity, so when they reached out and asked us to work on their new website we naturally jumped at the opportunity.

Following some initial research and investigation, it became clear that we faced several challenges relating to business objectives and site structure. Mind the Gap offer such a diverse range of services — each one no less integral to the business as the others — that communicating the correct messages to a mixture of user groups had been an on-going problem that we had to tackle head-on.

We ran a content workshop with core staff members with the aim of solidifying the importance and role of each area of the business, the site map, and section headings. This proved extremely successful and we left with a clear strategy for developing the site.

Accessibility is an important part of any web project and something that we take very seriously. As such, the templates were built with accessibility at the forefront of our minds and is clearly reflected in the clean layout and high-contrast design approach.

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