Part of the CALMAST STEM Engagement Centre, the Robert Boyle Festivals offer a place for curious minds to gather for discussion and thought around the place of science in our culture.

Prior to myself joining, Calmast didn’t have a team-member with the knowledge of capabilities to think of website design with a “User First” mentality. 2027 marked an important year for the Robert Boyle Festivals, as Boyle 400, and events and celebrations will take place worldwide.

With the knowledge that the Boyle 400 would drive more traffic to the website, of leading speakers and minds throughout the world, I thought it was very important to present ourselves in the best way possible through the website.

I took it upon myself to create a mockup. In this design, I thought about what the Robert Boyle Festivals are really trying to achieve. It’s a place of sophistication, intrique, curiosity, and also needs to entice people to want to attend the festival.

From this, I created a design that is sleek, sophisticated, and also inviting. Using a color pallette derived from the Robert Boyle logo, I wanted to give the branding a mysterious but also calming effect. The dark theme worked best with my goals on the website, using star accents to give them sense of “philosophy”. 

Part of this process was to also make sure the website was UX/UI friendly. If someone visits the website, they can see at a glance what the festivals are. They can see at a glance what we want them to do – look at the programme. And it’s easy to navigate to the different parts.

The previous website was filled with text, large paragraphs, and clunky designs that feel scrapped together. It didn’t invite you to spend time on the website and look into more information. The archive page on the updated design gives a quick, at a glance look to past programmes without requiring visitors to go to another page with every programme they want to look through.

On the right you can see the before and after of the website design. Overall, I’m very happy with the updated look and feel, and think that it presents the Festivals in the best way.