I was tasked with updating the UI and UX for several sub-brands of Reed, an international business support agency.
UX
UI
branding
Reed required a freshen up several of their sub-brands websites and to evolve their look and feel but ensuring that they appear part of one cohesive Reed brand. Furthermore, I reviewed each site’s information architecture and UX and made improvements. I used components that had used for the main reed.com site but also introduced new ones where necessary, taking into account a limited development resource.
Reed Wellbeing stakeholders said that they had multiple audiences and needed to communicate different messages to them. I created dedicated pages on the site for commissioners, who run community wellbeing projects, and for employers who offer wellbeing benefits to their employees. Both audiences were directed along their respective pathways from the homepage hero. Again, based on insights from the Wellbeing team, I prioritised links to case study content ('Our Impact') on the commissioner page and links to what services Reed Wellbeing offer ('Our Expertise') on the Employers page. The content on their site fit neatly into three categories. These were ‘Our Expertise’, ‘Our Approach’ and ‘Our Impact’. This helped provide more structure to the site.
The three circles is an important part of the Reed brand. For Reed Wellbeing I refined their 'bubble group’ brand asset and used this and their brand colours to distinguish this sub-brand. I made the bubble group asset a prominent feature in the heroes of the three key pages of the site.
The main challenge with the Reed Learning sub-brand was that their audience was very evenly split between individual learners looking for professional qualifications and employers wanting to offer qualifications to their employees. They therefore need to talk to two different audiences on their site and prioritise different content.
I argued the case to split the site into two areas for employers and learners. Each area was visually distinguished from the other but users could move between them if they were in the wrong place.
I developed the Reed Learning sub brand by establishing the colour palette based on secondary colours from the Reed group brand ensuring that this colour palette was unique to Reed Learning. A dotted circle was established as the main brand asset for this sub-brand helping to distinguish it from the other Reed brands.
A key challenge with Reed Talent Solutions was that they had a lot of content on their site that seemed to be repetitive to the user but was subtly different. They wanted to maintain the content for SEO purposes but ultimately they had two ways of directing users to make an enquiry. We decided to group these into ‘Our Services’ and ‘Your Challenges’. Depending on how the user is thinking about their business goals they can be directed down the appropriate path.
Reed Talent Solutions also wanted to distinguish themselves from the other sub-brands seeing themselves as outside of the Reed core offering. We explored a new direction for the sub-brand that made use of the circular features of the Reed brand but gave it a unique look that reflected their use of advanced technology in recruitment.
