Project Overview
Translating a brand drenched by history and legend is hard to do! It has to be innovative with a splash of old-world charm. Lalla Rookh Bar & Eating House is a new dining establishment open in the heart of Perth’s CBD – this time last year, it was website-less.
Back in the day, (think 1901) Lalla Rookh was a gold mine, with few prospects and little gold.
“The mine site was perched on the side of a banded ironstone hill with plenty of spinifex and resident death adders. The staff and labourers were a motley crew of ex-jailbirds, remittance men, alcoholics and no-hopers numbering about 50 in all. Its only redeeming feature was the mess, made of corrugated iron and lacking flywire. The staff reckoned they would go to Marble Bar for a cool change. The mine took its name from a popular Kalgoorlie 'showgirl'. If anyone knew 'Miss Rookh' we would love to know - (discretion assured).
Lalla Rookh Bar & Eating House is a local venue, offering respite for the residents and workers of Perth city. Ex-jailbirds, remittance men and no-hopers are still welcome”.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Project Manager - Brad Masters
Design - Sophie Gulbenkian
Development - Xiaotian Tan
Project Brief
Our client was open to our suggestions, and with a limited amount of content, we had significantly more options in terms of interactivity. The key to this project was a focus on usability while blending the old with the new. The website had to be as modern and hip as the eatery itself, with a subtle nod to a name that is steeped in history. Menu display and a separate microsite to showcase the wine store were integral parts of the site.
Highlighting the beautiful selection of wine and food and housing this content in an interesting way was pivotal to the project.
There had to be some parts of the site that were fully editable, and you will see that the wine store component has a white background to allow editing within a back-end interface.
Project Need
Originally, Lalla Rookh was an old gold mining town in Perth. To capture the history of the town in an online environment, we created the concept of having all the pages laid out on a map (effectively, the site was one very large map). Upon selection of different menu items, the user is sent in different directions to emulate the experience of exploring. Once the selected page has loaded, it has a glow around it, as if you were viewing it under a miner’s headlamp.
In terms of navigation, this concept breaks the mould a bit. It is not often that a site has multi-directional navigation determined by selection. It is a good example of how a brand that has been around long before the Internet, can still be adapted to work in an online environment.
Design Challenge
Because of the complex nature of the functionality, load times needed to be considered. We had to try and reduce these as much as possible. This was done by limiting functionality where we could without compromising the concept. We developed a mobile version of the site where the complex map navigation was removed to reduce load times where WiFi was not available.
Different resolutions were another tricky part of the project. We had to design and develop for various screen resolutions, so that the map feature itself was not compromised, this involved looking at a range of major screen sizes and how the map would look and work at these various breakpoints.
Sustainability
One of the best things you can do for sustainability is to support an Australian workforce. Butterfly does not outsource any of its work offshore, and all work is completed right here in Melbourne.
Digital Experience - Website
This award celebrates innovation and creativity in design of a unique user experience in the combination of text, audio, still images, animation, video, and interactivity content for websites. Consideration given to clarity of communication and the matching information style to audience.
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