Responses by Daniel Moore, design/front-end development, Humaan

Background: The Geraldton Fishermen’s Co-Operative is the largest rock lobster exporter in the world, wholly owned by its fishermen and license holders. With its site long out of date, it wanted a new platform to showcase its brand and promote a stronger community culture.

Highlights: The site’s core feature is its expansive members section, which features up-to-date resources and an accurate, detailed snapshot of rock lobster beach prices; Co-Op fishermen and members use this information on a daily basis.

Challenges: Visually achieving the right balance between the Co-Op story, member information and other community and corporate materials—especially on the homepage. Leaning too far in any direction risks degrading engagement by skewing a user’s initial perception of what the site has to offer.

Favorite details: We’re most proud of creating a look and feel that successfully translates the Co-Op’s personality, as well as its aesthetic, to the digital medium. The Co-Op is a well-established, internationally represented body that provided very specific brand guidelines, which only covered its print and merchandising. But, that gave us a solid starting point to help it develop a contemporary web style.

Anything new: This project gave us an appreciation of the Co-Op’s huge industry. The Co-Op is headquartered in Western Australia, just a few hours away from us. Until we worked with its marketing team, we never realized the scale of its business, the depth of its history and its influence on the global market.

Navigational structure: Establishing clear information architecture was vital. The website needed to provide accurate content for the members and fishermen themselves, and provide enough information about the business to corporate partners and consumers. After playing with variations of audience-segmented and product-based configurations, we landed on the hybrid structure users see on the site today.