Jellyfish

Simmons
& Simmons

Law / Nominee

Jellyfish

Law

Nominee

We went through multiple iterations for it, until it felt just right, and it all fell into place. - Jellyfish Team

Q: Can you briefly describe your project and the concept behind it?

A: Simmons & Simmons approached Jellyfish to completely refresh their overall online presence. The biggest challenge of the project was to reshape Simmons & Simmons' web estate, which was split across 4 core websites at the time, each with different purposes. The main site introduced the firm and its expertise.

Q: What web technologies, tools, or resources did you use to develop this?

A: UX: Axure RP, Google (Docs, Slides and Sheets) Development: HTML5, CSS3, Javascript, Vue.js, Task runners using Gulp, Visual Studio Creative: Sketch, Photoshop, Zeplin

Q: What influenced your chosen technical approach, and how did it go beyond past methods?

A: The technical path was chosen for us, as the client has their own backend team working on the CMS side. Jellyfish only needed to provide the markup for the frontend. We talked to the client's technical team, and decided that we didn't want to bloat the code and recommended a lightweight grid system that we felt would work with the amazing concepts we started with.

What breakthrough or “a-ha” moment did you experience when concepting or executing this project?

When working through the information architecture for the new website, we had to figure out how to bring an incredible amount of content into a single section. We had to ensure items were properly tagged and searchable. We went through multiple iterations for it, until it felt just right, and it all fell into place.

Q: How did you balance your creative and technical capabilities with the client’s brand?

A: With this redesign, Simmons & Simmons wanted to embrace a modern, clean, and effective branding. From the start, this was directly aligned with our UX, Visual, and technical approach and there was a lot of collaboration and back-and-forth between teams all the way through.

Q: How did the final product defy your expectations?

A: Our initial assumption was that a lot of the content from Simmons & Simmons’ old websites would be deleted in the transition to the new platform. Early on in the project, it quickly became clear that a lot of this content was still valuable to their customers and partners. Some content was removed or consolidated of course, but the vast majority was reorganized into a revised structure that was still easily navigable. The creative team also did a great job of applying the brand language over the top of the structure.

Q: Why is this an exciting time to create new digital experiences? How does your team fit into this?

A: The present lock-down situation has demonstrated the power of this digital ecosystem we have all been building over the past three decades—an ecosystem that’s allowed us to stay informed, connected and productive. People have adopted digital tools and services that they wouldn’t have considered before and realized that, in many cases, these experiences are as good as their physical equivalents. If not as good, certainly more convenient and something to be used in combination with their physical counterpart once this all blows over. We believe this could open the door to digital experiences that would’ve previously struggled to find a big audience and we’re excited by that possibility.