Sapphire

Visit: sih.org

Sapphire Independent Housing is a long-established charity helping vulnerable people find a home in North London.

The charity’s website had become dated and needed a refresh. Its legacy code was becoming harder to maintain, and over time the content and page structure had become messy and incoherent.

Branding still met their needs, so the logo and colour palette would remain. However, the typography needed improvement for legibility and style.

Key areas

In addition to the primary menu items, the charity also wanted to signpost three key areas: paying rent, reporting repairs and vacancies. These important areas needed to be prominently positioned on the homepage.

The solution was to create a tabbed menu signposting these key areas. To ensure visibility, it's placed above the masthead image slider. Each tab links to a page detailing the service. To reinforce this, a small utility menu is also available at the top of each page.

The Design

SIH had a small collection of in-house photographs, and we used a few in the masthead image slider. To reinforce branding, a transparent, coloured gradient sits above each image. To enhance the effect, the transparency transitions from pink to blue.

To add visual impact, extra-large, single-word overlay typography is overlaid on each slide.

The website has an uncluttered, minimalist design and features a range of content patterns that editors can deploy via the CMS. The SIH logo and the accessible drop-down menu are centrally aligned in the masthead.

The site includes details about paying rent, repair services, recruitment opportunities and tenant support. The website is mobile-friendly and easy to use on any device.

Features: Bespoke Design, Responsive, Interactive Timeline, Web Forms, Video Media, SEO, CMS, Housing Charity.