Overview

Travel to Iceland was supposed to be a website that would help promote tourism in Iceland. The goal was to make an easy to use, well-structured website that highlights the most important destinations and points of interest, that informs potential tourists and helps them plan their trip. The site would also have a list of all the hotels, b&b's, camping sites, etc. with contact information but that would be a secondary feature.

My contribution

I was in charge of creating the overall visual style of the website (typography, colors palette, iconography, etc.) as well as creating the home page itself.

The work

Since the home page was the starting point of the user's exploration I wanted to break the page down into 3 major sections: must-see places/attractions, important points of interest and recommendations from locals.

The must-see attractions were very important so they needed a lot of space and had to be placed at the top the page. I wanted their presentation to include a large image of the attraction or something iconic from that region, a short introduction and a call-to-action button that would link to a separate page.

To fit all the content in the header I decided to use a basic carousel. Cookies would keep track of which regions the user had seen and we would rearrange them so that the first region they see is always new -- to the point where they see all of them.

Because this section can only hold a few items, I needed to build a flexible, visually attractive list for the other important attractions. Each list item would have a photo, a short description and a series of icons that would indicate which type of activities were possible in that area. Every attraction or region in this section (and the previous one) would have their own page with an in-depth presentation.

I also wanted to show their location on a map. My initial thought was to use a custom made Google map but I wanted something that would blend into the design, less busy and with fewer distractions. So I decided to use a rough map contour with clickable locations.

The "Recommendations from the locals" had to be a dynamic section that loads content from a larger list of events, restaurants, villages, viewpoints etc. all suggested by locals. Not as important as the ones in the previous two sections but definitely worth exploring or looking into.

The footer would hold a list of important links to various sections of the site and a banner that would promote the booking section of the site. Even though no actual booking would take place on the site itself, a list of all the hotels, b&b's, camping sites etc. was provided along with information and links that would greatly facilitate the booking process.