All work
All work
Ministry for the
Environment
A large scale website designed to be the one stop shop for kiwis wanting to be informed about all things environmental in New Zealand.
( AGENCY )
Chrometoaster
( CLIENT )
Ministry for the
Environment
Environment
( Role )
Lead Visual
Designer
Designer
( THE MISSION )
The Ministry for the Environment Manatū Mo Te Taiao, needed a new website to help them achieve their purpose of making New Zealand the most liveable place in the world. Designed with the public at it’s core, the site is jam packed with rich content and useful tools designed to inform, inspire and mobilise the people of NZ while diving into the nitty gritty of the rules and regulations. We also rustled up some epic photography from some of NZ’s most talented to inspire kiwis to create positive change for the environment.
( BRANDING )
A digital refresh.
The Ministry needed a bit of a digital makeover to modernise and diversify their identity without going through a full-blown branding exercise. We focused on rejuvenating and extending their original colour palette to make the interface feel vibrant and fresh, and a new type pairing that is practical across a variety of contexts, while visually reflecting the sites bilingual foundation.
( TAKING ACTION )
Mobilising the public.
A key goal of the Ministry was to engage and mobilise the public, refocusing the site on critical, actionable content. We provided a site structure that champions and prioritises that content, while designing and developing a fully bilingual, interactive tool to help kiwis learn the ways that they can make a difference.
( PUBLICATIONS )
Informing the public.
A primary focus of the Ministry's effort in reporting on the environment are their publications. We gave these a major overhaul—shifting from limited HTML/PDF formats to digital-first with an intuitive navigation design and a range of layout options to ensure that they’re both understandable and visually engaging. Then using powerful taxonomies transformed publications into a key content type, maximising their discoverability and relevance across all areas of the site.
( DATA VISUALISATION )
Bigger Picture Insights.
We designed and developed tools such as the Emissions Tracker and Farming Emissions Calculator to improve the publics overall understanding of emissions by painting a clearer picture of our current situation, and providing insight to a range of potential future scenarios.
( CULTURAL CONTEXT )
Te Ao Māori.
The new website presents the Ministry as Treaty partners, both symbolically and explicitly. Stakeholders expressed a clear desire to see Te Ao Māori, the Māori world view, reflected in the website. The new design includes an entire section dedicated to Te Ao Māori, supports the use of both Te Reo and English for titles and subtitles, and a specific taxonomy for Te Ao Māori content.
( CONTENT STRUCTURE )
Simplicity and clarity
Reducing the complexity of the website from it’s past iteration was crucial for both the end user and the admins. We proposed a new site structure and content structure that focused heavily on plain user-centric language to avoid ambiguity and ensure that both the content and the website as a whole is easy to navigate and understand.
