![postimg](https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/cdn-origin/uploads/virgin/postimg.jpg)
![vt-blog-start](https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/cdn-origin/uploads/virgin/vt-blog-start1.jpg)
The Beginning
In November 2009 vtravelled's editor, Maxine Sheppard, got in touch to ask if I would be available to design and develop a complete blog for the vtravelled website (Virgin's new online travel community and web app). Meetings were arranged and after a week or so I got the green light for the project. I've done some work for big companies before, including Ubisoft, but this was really my first time getting into the corporate culture of the industry. To be totally honest it's really not as scary as people make it out to be, though I can imagine that there is some variation in people's experiences. Virgin Atlantic has managed to put together a truly great team at vtravelled; as a result, not only was the company very easy to work with but it was great fun, too.![The Base Virgin Atlantic HQ](https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/cdn-origin/uploads/virgin/thebase.jpg)
The Brief
![VTravelled Offices VTravelled Offices](https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/cdn-origin/uploads/virgin/vt-office.jpg)
![Moo'd Cards Mood Cards](https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/cdn-origin/uploads/virgin/moodcards.jpg)
The Design Process
The design process when working with a large company is pretty similar to any other: starting with wireframes, then developing mockups. The main difference comes at the feedback stage: two or three people had to review and sign off at each stage, at which point they took much larger issues into consideration. For example, Virgin is particularly sensitive to how its brand is portrayed. Anything the company does has to fit in with its morals, standards and qualities. After establishing the structure of the website, it was time to move on to actually creating the design. This was about a 30-hour process (for the home page) which moved through several interesting phases leading up to the end result. Luckily, in anticipation of writing this post, I recorded a screencast of almost every minute of design time and compressed it into a three-minute video. All in all, the design process took place over about six weeks. This video was created with ScreenFlick ($25) for Mac OS X, recorded at 1 frame per second, and edited in iMovie.The Development Process
Once final-signoff for the design had been achieved, the development process began and lasted approximately another six weeks. Virgin Atlantic uses IE6 in its corporate offices, so this was a big consideration in developing the front end. The website had to degrade gracefully enough to accommodate this browser so that it was at the very least functional. Once again, because of the great team at vtravelled, I was also permitted to use progressive enhancements with CSS3 for newer browsers. Turning the front-end code into a custom WordPress theme was the next step. There were a few special considerations here to make the website as powerful as possible. I started with the WooThemes "WooFramework" to allow a high level of back-end customization but, in the end, it was modified and customized so much that the vtravelled blog pretty much ended up with its own custom system. It was important to take into consideration that a lot of people would be administrating the blog, so it needed to be as flexible as possible in all areas. Finally, the theme needed strong pagination and light-hearted error messages on the 404 and search pages that would reflect the friendly nature of the brand.![vt-blog-mid](https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/cdn-origin/uploads/virgin/vt-blog-mid1.jpg)
A Little Trickle Tweet
![TrickleTweet Sketch TrickleTweet Sketch](https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/cdn-origin/uploads/virgin/tricklesketch.jpg)
![TrickleTweet Final TrickleTweet Final](https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/cdn-origin/uploads/virgin/tricklefinal.jpg)
Launch and Conclusion
Launching a website for a big company is a little different than a normal launch. I had to liase with vtravelled's development company fo proper server settings and to remove password protection to the sub-domain at the right time. I had to liase with the advertising company to ensure that the right ad codes were installed, and I had to go through a mad 24-hour period of beta-testing, bug-fixing and reviewing performance. In the end, we soft-launched the blog at about mid-day on Tuesday and started the announcements and press releases a few hours later. Fingers crossed, nothing has gone wrong so far and the website has gotten a very positive response on Twitter, which was reflected in the blog's day-one traffic levels and some other features around the web. As with any website, there are improvements can be made and features will develop over time, but I'm pretty pleased with how v1.0 of the vtravelled blog has turned out. Working with Virgin Atlantic has been one of the absolute highlights of my career so far, and I'm very pleased to be working with the company again at the moment on a few other pieces of design work. I still suck at estimating time though; we initially thought the whole blog design and build would take four weeks!![vt-blog-final](https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/cdn-origin/uploads/virgin/vt-blog-final1.jpg)
Credits
- Post image by sebas
- Virgin Atlantic HQ photo by MilborneOne
- vtravelled offices photo by Maxine Sheppard
- New York photo courtesy of vtravelled
- All other photos and screenshots by John O'Nolan
WDD Staff
WDD staff are proud to be able to bring you this daily blog about web design and development. If there's something you think we should be talking about let us know @DesignerDepot.
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