Case Study

EUDCA

Who are they?

The EUDCA represents the interests of European commercial data centre operators, both politically and commercially. The owner of MigSolv data centre, Alex Rabbetts, was on the board at the time and asked The Change Creative to help with updating the image of the organisation.

THE CHALLENGE

In 2014, The Change Creative was asked by the vice president of the EUDCA to work with him to create various design features and to attempt to modernize the look and feel of the brand.  The image of the EUDCA had become quite dated both on and offline and so whilst using their logo as inspiration, developed a new and richer brand image.

THE SOLUTION

To modernise the EUDCA brand it would need to maintain some form of its original identity whilst still improving it.

To do this we suggested and created the following designs: –

  • Design a new medium-sized pop-up exhibition stand for an event due to appear shortly and help shape the new look of the organisation.
  • A website design that was more modern and had more functionality whilst conveying the new modern brand image.
  • Create some website adverts for display on data centre news channels to familiarise data centre users with the brand.

Website Design

The EUDCA website was created by a dutch web design agency in a dutch content management system. The board had decided that they wanted to move away from the CMS and so asked for a WordPress based website design to be created so that it was easy for most of the EUDCA members to use and possibly edit.

Resistance To Change

The data centre industry tends to be a difficult industry to implement new creative ideas, it is very much a data orientated industry rather than a creative one. At first, most of the board didn’t want to redesign the site but eventually, were open to the idea of a new design.

The Design Idea

The design idea can be seen below and uses a 12 column grid system and is intended to communicate the mission of the EUDCA more clearly and share the most relevant information directly on the homepage making it easy to identify specific tasks for visitors. The key elements that the EUDCA wanted were more members signing up to discuss data centre issues and to spread new information and upcoming events.

As a user would land on the homepage they would be greeted with the main feature/news the EUDCA wanted to announce and a simple five-item menu. This would make it clear what the EUDCA wanted a visitor to do.

Clear Goals

As you scroll down the page you can see how to join the EUDCA and meet the current board members. The colour scheme of the website was directly inspired by the exhibition stand we designed for organisation first which can be seen further down the page.

bespoke wordpress website by The Change Creative

Print Design

To help establish a new brand relatively rapidly it would start with a medium-sized popup stand. As can be seen below, the original design was quite light in colour using a baby blue for the ocean, light greens, and greys. It was literal and it felt washed out or cartoon-like, it didn’t say modern forward-thinking organisation.

Looking at the logo for inspiration we took the blue directly from the logo and tweaked it slightly to make the pull up a royal blue and used the circles in the logo as a decoration for the main body of the banner creating a more abstract and decorative look to the design.

Old Stand
Old EUDCA Stand

New Stand

The new stand also made it clear that they wanted new members to join by placing the website address prominently in the centre and down the sides of the stand design. We made use of an optical illusion overhang which can also be seen on the homepage representing a ‘global’ or far-reaching influence, like the surface of the earth.

Exhibition Stand By The Change Creative

Digital Design

After the website and stand had been designed the EUDCA required website banner adverts to raise awareness.  Website banners and skyscrapers that advertised the EUDCA on data centre news websites. The goal of the organization is to try to bring the vast majority of European Data Centre Companies together in order to share news, the latest technology and also act as a foundation for creating rules and regulations moving forward in the industry. Due to this clear main objective to acquire new members the banner state the simple message ‘join the EUDCA today’.

The Change Creative Triangle

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