Maunga
Web Design
Art Direction: Sean Brodbeck and Scott Laserow
Overview
Based on the prompt “the great outdoors”, Maunga is a travel website for New Zealand. I picked this country specifically to be the subject of this website because it is known for its outdoor excursions as well as beautiful scenery. Maunga is Maouri for mountain and I chose this to be the name of the website because I felt that it was a great way to represent what the website was as well as give homage to those native to New Zealand.
Approach
For this website, I focused on giving the viewer a full view of New Zealand along with the trip aspect. This includes both the about page and the explore feature. On the about page the reader can learn more about New Zealand’s history, culture, and people so that they have a better understanding of what to expect when traveling to the new country.
The trips page allows users to filter between trips on the North and South islands and give a quick overview of the trip through icons and a short description. Trips found on here can be anything from a 10-day bike ride along one of the coasts to hiking through the scenery where The Hobbit was filmed.
Explore Feature
The explore feature uses an interactive map to allow users to learn more about popular locations across New Zealand. By clicking on one of the spots on the map, a viewer is able to read more about the location as well as view some of the most popular experiences found there. This is important to a viewer’s ability to plan their trip due to the two islands of the country – they need to be more strategic with planning where they want to go specifically.
Research and Wireframing
After spending time researching views of New Zealand and the types of experiences one could have there, I developed a mood board that represented how the site would look visually. This lead me to create a possible color palette to work off of and inspired my typography choices. I then sketched wireframes of the website and created a site map to lay out the different aspects of the project and how the different pages would work.
