Zurich design agency gives itself new top-modern web presence
In the seven years of its existence, the January design studio has developed from a classic graphics studio into a digital branding agency. The demands on its own appearance have risen accordingly. The new website www.januar.ch impresses with visual and technological sophistication and does not need to shy away from comparison with international digital design benchmarks.
The two Zurich designers Fredy Espejo and Emanuel Gürth have set their design agency on a digital course from the very beginning by covering the technological implementation expertise for digital brand presences in-house. This marks a difference from traditional CI agencies, the majority of which have outsourced this area, if at all. In the course of a gentle rebranding, the two partners were also concerned with bringing the agency's digital self-image more sharply to the outside world and providing the "proof of concept" with their own web presence. "Brand work today is primarily digital," says Emanuel Gürth. It is about understanding the representation of the company in the digital space as the most important business driver. Pretty design alone has not been enough for a long time, Gürth continues.
Designers and developers at one table
The new site of the Zurich design agency, which counts renowned SMEs such as Pilatus or Bexio as well as large companies such as Migros, SRF or Tamedia among its clients, focuses on the user experience. With the help of XHR requests (also known as AJAX), the visitor experiences extraordinary page transitions in the elaborately produced portfolio area. Discreet micro-interactions, sophisticated animations and large-scale videos lend liveliness and character to the reduced design concept. Nevertheless, it is the clearly structured reduction to the essentials and not formal showmanship that characterizes the appearance. Web solutions of this complexity only emerge in a close exchange between designer and developer already in the conception phase, says Fredy Espejo. "Our developer Vince Hehlen has done a great job here. He managed to make all our ideas run across the screen as easily and fluidly as if it were the most normal thing in the world."
Code in a lot of handwork
Technically, it is a single page web application powered by WordPress. The entire HTML render engine is implemented in the frontend using JavaScript. All templates are in-memory and are rendered on demand in the web browser at lightning speed and without additional requests. The dedicated high-performance server only delivers the data in the form of minimally kept transfer objects in JSON format. A REST interface serves as the interface. The backend uses the full support of the performance-optimized PHP version 7.4. The potential of the WordPress Advanced Custom Fields (AFC) was also maximized. 3rd party code and the use of libraries were largely avoided, everything is hand-coded.
In-house development in data compression
Particular importance is attached to the low-loss compression of heavy video files. Here, an FFMPEG library with a sophisticated, specially developed parameter set is used, which delivers moving images in the smallest data volumes in the highest possible, artifact-suppressing quality. For the screencasts, a frame rate of 60 FPS ensures a smooth presentation. To compress the images, Vince Hehlen even wrote a macOS program in SWIFT that uses optimized versions of the mozJPEG and webP compressors.
Click here for the new website: www.januar.ch
