PilotFish
“…we need a new web design. Something different, something original, something that makes us stand out from the crowd. We just don’t want to look like every other finance company.”
The web design brief was simple, the solution slightly more challenging. You see, we’ve heard this many times from clients but often when they actually see ‘original’, ‘different’ or ‘stand out’ they feel less comfortable with the idea and end up sticking with something a little more safe. So, as ever, we pitched two options.
After initial research into the company name we discovered that the etymology for Pilot Fish was that seafaring people believed that pilot fish appearing around the bow of their ships when they were close to land, were leading (or piloting) them back to port. This made sense, and reflected the company ethos, so also seemed like a good start for the creative. The first idea web design idea we presented was built around the concept ‘of leading the way in business finance’ using under water video of fish following a pilot fish, all with a nautical feel, albeit represented through a fairly safe layout.
It was safe to say, it clearly wasn’t what the client hand in mind and that maybe on this occasion they really did want something a little bit different. Enter idea number two…
We approached this one differently by applying our experience in creative advertising to a website. We treated it as a series of pages in a magazine because we know that by asking the reader to connect an engaging image, witty headline and supporting copy you can really engage them. For the home page, we developed a concept around using an upside down financial graph, followed by the headline “We’re turning business finance on it’s head”. We then applied the same structure to the key entry pages and developed the ‘financial graph creative’ by using line graphs that when connected, represented the subject matter of that page. This helped develop more a ‘campaign feel’ across the site. PilotFish has a bright and vibrant colour palette which lent itself perfectly to this concept.
They loved it and not only that, once built, continued to receiving praise from customers on what an interesting and creative web design they had.
Over the following months we rolled out the same creative across their marketing materials and company stationery.
| Client | PilotFish |
| Business | Business Finance |
| Location | Lincolnshire |
| Materials | Stationery, brochure design, website design, promotional literature |
| Services | Branding, web design, UX design |
