In the process of writing content for the hairyLemon website you are currently visiting, it occurred to us that it might be interested to actually record something of the process of getting us to the point of publishing the current online incarnation of www.hairylemon.co.nz
Because it hasn’t been easy.
I joined the Lemon team in 2009, after working for the company as their PR consultant for about 12 months. At the beginning of that 12 month period, I was brought in for a meeting about the design of the “new” website.
Yes, the website that you are looking at right now. Except back then, there was a completely different design concept … and of course, before that, the site had several other incarnations.
With the help of the “wayback machine” and our design files, I thought it might be interesting to share a few of them with you …
Back in 2001, the engineering origins and influences of our co-founders was pretty apparent in the design …
And they took the “hairiness” of our lemons pretty seriously too – hence the original splash page with the purple mop top hairy lemon guy, who still holds a special place in Graham and Sue’s hearts:
In 2003, the colour scheme changed to chirpy blue and yellow
… then added a little more ZEST in 2004.
In 2006, the first version of the site that preceded the 2011 re-build was released to the world …
The designers did their bit, but the many other cogs in the machine who needed to put time into the project were unfortunately fully committed creating sites for paying clients.
Finally in 2010, the SEO team was brought into the web development project, and started from scratch once again, creating a full site map, and a detailed brief for the site design. The company then launched an internal website design competition for anyone in the company who wished to participate.
We had some great designs emerge as a result, showing the calibre of our designers, and making the final choice very difficult.
The contenders looked like this …
Then of course, the winning design is the site you are browsing through right now.
It’s always interesting to see what designs emerge, given the same overall brief and site map – but still every designer comes at the project from a different perspective.
The road has been a long one, and of course, is likely to start all over again in a few year’s time, but in the meantime we have a site built in Joomla! which is a far more user friendly and search engine friendly platform, and one that can be easily upgraded by various members of our team.
We’d love to hear your website design stories, and your comments about our designs. For right now, we are all very excited to have our new website up and running!
