Making something attractive out of something functional.

The problem

My client came to me with a multitude of problems: he wanted a logo, a brandbook and an engaging website and he had none of those things. But out of all, the most challenging was the website. The challenge was that generally, people look up a dentistry website when they have a problem already and they want to solve it. There is minimal exploration of the website and generally this is the reason why medical-related websites are made using a minimal, functional-oriented design. Not this time. My client wanted something “worth exploring” as he himself mentioned, but while keeping the minimalist touch. So I got to work.

Research

As I expected, dentistry websites in the field presented a more functional approach, more oriented towards getting the users to reach what they need faster, rather than tailor an experience within the website. Rarely I found some websites that presented a little more focus on design itself rather than functionality.

Ideation

First I started to work on the brand. As always, I try to understand the brand best, because the brand governs what happens within the website itself.

The logo presented a second challenge because my client wanted the logo to have nothing to do with the dentistry field. He wanted to use the two “D-s” in the name Dental District to make the logo, and he wanted to portray the idea of district, of city centre, as the clinic is situated in Bucharest’s central district. After a few sketches, I managed to come up with this design and my client loved it.
Next came typography and the color palette.

Finishing all these I got started on the website. I have some of the initial sketches. My client thought the website was too dull, he wanted a gimmick, something we can play with. I also researched deeper and found another dentistry brand that had the same graphical element, I had to turn things around.

Final prototype

My second sketch was what the client wanted, I used the mouth mould object as a central graphical piece, wrapping the whole website around that object, giving it something unique, while also making it graphically appealing and giving it a diagram credibility.