Youwe is a full service internet agency from Rotterdam, Groningen, Amsterdam, Kiev (Ukraine) and London (UK). They are specialists in the field of Magento e-commerce. They have been able to serve beautiful customers since 2000; Grolsch, Heidelberg, SNS Bank, 24Kitchen, Spinning Records, PPG and Postnl.

Design briefing
Rob Wiek (CEO) approached me with a simple briefing; “Can you redesign a few pages of our corporate website Youwe.nl? And don't worry about the content."

Visual Design
An assignment focused on Visual Design. No user flows, prototypes or user research, but a 'nice picture'. With an underlying need to further develop the corporate identity for the online channel.

Much to gain

Little attention to own house style
Many creative companies, and communication agencies are no exception, pay relatively little attention to their own online communication. When web agency Youwe started, their corporate identity consisted of no more than a few colors and typography. Their brand identity had not yet been recorded in an (online) house style guide. The colors and typography of the logo were incorporated into a website design and that was it.

Two new styles

Creating beautiful work for customers
I get it too. The focus is on creating beautiful work for customers. Not with your own house style. So, based on nothing more than their existing website, I designed two new proposals for their online design at the request of CEO Rob Wiek.

Variation 1 – More Traditional
The first variation was given a more traditional look & feel, but with a lot of white space. And balanced graphics. In order to get a more consistent style in the different communication expressions, I also suggested a change in the typography used.

Variation 2 – Focus on distinctiveness
Variation 2 became slightly less traditional in design and use of color. The distinctive color red was strongly emphasized in these designs. And more freedom has been taken compared to the current Youwe house style. Youwe chose to continue with the more traditional version 1.