- Client:
- OptTek Systems, Inc.
- With:
- fisherVISTA
- Date:
- 04.14.2016
- Link:
- opttek.com
OptTek creates simulation optimization software for enterprise and government entities. Each of their software suites are tailored to a specific industry vertical. OptForce, for example, is tailor-made for enterprise HR organizations to optimize and even accurately predict their future staffing needs.
Our partner, fisherVISTA, brought their industry-specific HR expertise while JDM Digital brought our technology and design talents to the initial project, which was building the new OptForce product site.
The result was a microsite, of sorts, built on a responsive, mobile-first framework and powered by WordPress on the backend to empower the OptForce team to bring the new product to market and take full control of how it was positioned moving forward.
When the head honchos at OptTek Corporate saw what we had done for OptForce, they asked us to redesign and re-position the corporate brand as a whole as well as their other software suites.
Inspiration
After several strategy sessions, we took inspiration from how Microsoft markets its diverse application suite: distinct but together, and greater than the sum of their parts. In this way, we could design each product page to be distinct (distinct tone to the content and color pallet) while still wrapping everything in the new global and consistent OptTek Brand (capital “B”).
Application
A lot of designers are tempted to start designing from the home page first and design the very specific child pages last. Resist that temptation. The OptTek site is a good example of how we like to build things “upside down.” That is, we design the most specific page first, and the most general (the home page typically) dead-last.
Bootplate Budget
The budget for all this work was unplanned and so there wasn’t a ton of money to build something super-complex. JDM Digital had already built its own wicked-fast WordPress theme framework built on Bootstrap 4. We call it Bootplate. Anyway, we created a custom child theme using our Bootplate framework for OptTek which helped us arrive at a super-fast, totally custom, mobile-friendly, and customizable WordPress site for OptTek at a fraction of the cost.
Sometimes our Code Projects are put to good use.
Future-Proof Design
Long after the initial re-launch of the site, OptTek again approached JDM Digital about adding a new product to their suite and developing a new “distinct, but together” brand for what came to be called “OptPro.”
Little did OptTek know, the design team had already worked a large suite of secondary colors into the original brand standards we developed in the process of building the original site. We simply referred to that and got to work.
That’s what happens when you love your work. You always go above and beyond the requirements–even if you don’t always make it clear that you just can’t help yourself. It’s just how we roll.