FiveHigh Skatepark Website

I was real happy when Avi told me that we will be building a website for the recently inaugurated indoor skatepark in Sofia.

To clarify my reaction, I have been a rollerblader for the past 11 years and though I faced some injuries and spent time off my blades, the passion for rollerblading kept burning in me.

Coming up with the web design for a physical location such as a skatepark, was an interesting part of the process. Each skatepark has its own feeling, size, objects and so on, thus our goal was clear. Emphasise on the actual park!

A big slider is the very first thing to see, when you land on the Home Page. It features just enough photos (10) to give a clear overview of the venue, without being too heavy to load.

The FiveHigh crew provide skate lessons with a number of teachers, so we featured a Skate School section. I really like this page, because newcomers can apply for lessons, browse through the listed teachers and read about them. We kept in mind this social element and aimed at presenting all information in an uniform way. The website’s main purpose is to attract audience of all ages and backgrounds to the actual physical location, but to also accumulate social presence online, so it is crucial for online visitors to easily understand and navigate through the pages.

Good example of our approach is the navigation menu, which we displayed distinctively with a skate grip tape, taken from an actual photo of a used skate deck.

For Headline of the page, right below the navigation menu, we used images from actual graffiti in the skatepark. These details provide additional real elements in the page, but they also highlight clearly the navigation of the website.

The textual content has general white background, which gives it its own visual mark on the website and is best for online readers, specially on longer news articles.

We featured an Instagram feed on top of the footer, which is a great way to continue the online flow. To pump up the social element, we featured Disqus feed to the news articles.

Last but not least, the FiveHigh crew were always there when feedback was needed and their attitude showed how much they care about the end result. That’s a really important ingredient! Their enthusiasm and the fact that an indoor skatepark in Sofia was such a long awaited event, are our main reasons to support them and create the website pro bono. An indoor skatepark in Sofia is a matter for celebration, the least!

Stay tuned for the future updates at fivehighskatepark.com