Web Design

Web Design Case Study: Swopzees Mobile Recycling

Swopzees Mobile Recycling approached us with a highly creative and specific brief. They
wanted to set themselves apart from other mobile phone recycling websites
by having an original, quirky brand that would stand out from the crowd.

The name 'swopzees' conjures up images of playground games, comic
books, and the 'swopping' of marbles, Pogs, Top Trump cards etc. We
wanted to explore this youthful aspect, whilst also playing on
childhood memories, to try and appeal across the board to all
age ranges. Pressing the environmental benefits of mobile
phone recycling has been overused in the mobile phone
recycling business, and a fresh new approach was needed to
make an impression and set Swopzees apart from other competitors
in this industry. The idea of 'swopping' your unused mobiles for cash
works well and gives the website a friendlier, approachable feel.

For Swopzees branding, the brief was to create a colourful, high impact logo that could appeal to all ages and backgrounds. The logo needed to have ties to the childhood, playground, comic book design style, but with a modern twist. The brief for the colour was to keep it simple, sticking mainly to primary colours to support and enforce the comic book feel within the web design.

First, we laid out the logo in monotone format, as an important part of any logo is its ability to translate across multiple media and to work well in single colour applications. A chunky, sans-serif font was used, with some custom tweaks added, and a drop shadow and curve used to give the logo a more comic book, pop-art style.

Once the client was happy with the shape and style of the logo, we were able to begin working on a colour version for use on their website design. Taking the monotone version as a base, colour was added to the typeface using a halftone fade. Halftones were the standard printing method for early colour comic books, and were made famous by Roy Lichenstein in the early sixties.

The full-colour version of the logo was then used to set the tone for the web design concept; this was based on the same bright, primary colours and used similar halftone printing patterns to tie the logo, branding and web design together.

The client wanted a toy theme for the website design, utilizing the same bright, primary colours as the logo. With 'swopzees' being something said as a child, they wanted to play on this link by having the favourite toys from the user's childhood interacting with the modern 'toys' that they may wish to recycle, hopefully giving the site a fun feel.

We achieved this by having a Lego™ fire engine complete with Lego™ firemen attending a fire on the screen of an iPad. This clever play on modern technology interacting with older toys captures the attention of the user and the simplicity of the image works well with the clean, simple layout of the website design elements.