Website design
For the website landing page, we wanted to give the feeling of looking into the Swellendam archives, with some of the rich history. We brought in a piece of the old logo with an illustration of the Erica walkeria flower. We layered the imagery using CSS blend modes and a combo class in Webflow, and wrote the trick up in our post on CSS blend modes.
Identity design
About the project
Swellendam is a quiet Western Cape town where the history is in the old buildings and the surrounding trails. The Swellendam Heritage Association (SHA) looks after that history, and we wanted its website to give people a way into the past through a screen. Working with the SHA, we set out to build a place where every section felt like a step back in time.
The Swellendam Heritage Association is not merely an association; it's a group of history enthusiasts who care about the stories of the town. This project was about putting that into a website, somewhere history was told and felt.
What we built
In our 2021 build, we started with the 'About Us' section, which pulled together the ethos and the objectives of the SHA. It also covered the aims, the constitution and the projects the association had taken on, so anyone landing on the site could see what the SHA was about and what it stood for at a glance.
In our 2021 build, the 'Articles' and 'Archives' sections were a digital library of the town's history. They gave curious minds a place to read up on Swellendam, dig into the archives, explore its rich heritage and travel through time from the comfort of their own screens, wherever they happened to be.
The 'Gallery' was a visual trip through time, a digital exhibition of the many sides of Swellendam's heritage. We wanted people to be able to see the history through the images, and not only read about it.
The 'Projects' section showed the work the SHA does to preserve and promote the rich heritage of Swellendam. It put the projects the association had taken on in one place, so visitors could see what the SHA had been busy with.
Built on Webflow
We built the site on Webflow and tailored the user interface to make moving between the various sections easy. The aim was for the history of Swellendam to be accessible to anyone, anywhere, without having to hunt for it. (We've written about how a well-designed website can boost your business if you want the longer version.)
What the collaboration meant
Our collaboration with the Swellendam Heritage Association was about more than web design. It was about building a place online where the history of Swellendam would be celebrated and treated with the respect it deserves, for anyone keen on exploring it. Have a look at more of our work too.
