Trades Academy website launched

Top of the South Trades Academy is a practical and hands-on programme for secondary school students which introduces them to trades while they are still at school. Students can learn anything from mechanical engineering and aquaculture, to hairdressing and hospitality. They’ll learn heaps of useful skills to help them to go on to further study or get a job right out of school.
Late in 2015 the Trades academy rebranded their brochure for 2016 and came to us to redesign their website to reflect the new branding, colours and layouts.
Website: tradesacademy.ac.nz
We love getting our teeth into a comprehensive website redesign, it gives an opportunity to really look that the design and structure of the site. From there we can often make some great suggestions to improve the content, streamline the flow for visitors whilst improving the visual design at the same time.
The existing site had plenty of content but it needed significant restructuring to help their website visitors find the information they were looking for. The old website design was also looking a bit dated and need to better match their printed material.
It was a great project to work on, quite challenging as the designs were complex but funky and fresh, aimed squarely at their target market; their students. We had to interpret which pieces of the design translated well onto the web to keep a consistent feel while not making the site to complex to manage. The Trades Academy wanted a simple way for their staff to be able to enter all their courses. It was essential that this course information displays in a consistent manner and can be easily edited each year.
Everyone was really pleased with the outcome. You can see the results for yourself by visiting the new Top of the South Trades Academy website. Our thanks to Shaaron and her team for being excellent and engaged clients to work with.