aad is 21: Let’s get Digital

We’ve been taking a look back over all of the web and digital projects produced by aad over the years, and I have the privilege of showing you 5 of my favourites!

It’s interesting going back through these web projects as digital design is an ever-growing and changing medium. Over the past 21 years digital interactions have slowly started permeating our day to day, and we are continually becoming more digitally literate. That being said, the principles of design stay the same — good design seemingly transcends the rapid evolution of technology, which hopefully is clear from the five delicious projects I’m about to go through!

But first a brief disclaimer; given that internet was invented in 1991 and CSS was invented in 1998, aad only really got into the groove of web design and development well into the 2000s. So many of the websites I’ve selected are from the more recent past. However we do have some brilliant easter eggs from the very early days of aad (back during the transition from Angry).

Here is some of aad’s first digital footprints (circa 2003):

Mark Tuthill (2011)

Starting out in timeline order I’ve chosen the site created for the eponymous copywriter Mark Tuthill in 2012. The site showcases the wide variety of work Mark does, and wow I think it stands the test of time! The site navigation is unconventionally split into four quadrants, which makes the browsing experience feel like you’re discovering the separate sections of the site. ‘Play’ houses my personal favourite section, riddles! The site is live here, for your browsing pleasure

Help my kid learn (2012)

My second selection is a project with a concept I love — an initiative to collate and deliver resources to parents which (as the title of the project suggests) help their kids learn! The goal for the project was to try to create a website which was super clear, playful, engaging and most importantly easy to use. This site is super logical and easy to browse and digest, with activities are split up by age and category. And the poppy colours and quirky characters are the icing on the cake — so damn cute!

Also, peep the older mockups of the website on the older iphone — wow phones are so much bigger and less analogue now…

Bingo Lingo (2015)

I absolutely adore this site. Coming in at ‘cup of tea’ is the Bingo Lingo online clock. As you are most likely aware, each number in a game of Bingo has a nickname. Most of the numbers are made up of rhyming words. This clock uses these calls rather than numbers to create a playful online clock, with each new second is greeted with a playful and irreverent sentence.

Definitely worth a look, you can check it out here!

DCU by Numbers (2017)

The fourth project I’ve chosen was created by aad for DCU to celebrate their achievements that year. The site was a single page scroll, which used bright colours, animated illustrations and large type to help create a storyfull scroll — a bit of scrolly-telling if you will. The site was impactful and happy, it was one of the first projects I came across by aad (on the 100 archive), which is why I’ve selected it for this super-exclusive list.

As the page is no longer live, you’ll have to take our word for it, this webpage was deadly!

Cardinal Capital (2022)

Finally, a more recent project to add to the list — Cardinal Capital. I actually worked on this one myself, alongside Cat, Kevin, Brian, Scott and Jack. Not to toot our own horn, but I love this site! With sustainability in mind we used imagery with a light touch, so the design it relies on strong typography and neat, confident components to create a (hopefully) seamless and enjoyable browsing experience.

Our aim was to create a visually engaging, slick website which focussed in on Cardinal’s impact through impressive figures and case studies.

In more recent years (2020 to be exact) we’ve become acutely aware of the impact of the digital world on the planet, so more and more of our projects nowadays have more of a focus on digital sustainability and carbon impact — Cardinal included. So we ensured the site was super lightweight in terms of carbon usage, without compromising the quality

So there you have it, lots of digital eye-candy produced by aad over the past couple of decades. What did you think, any of your favs that I missed?