The client
Huoneistoketju has grown to be one of the biggest real estate agency chains in Finland during it’s 21-year journey. Today they have 20 offices, all the way from Helsinki to Rovaniemi, the Arctic Circle. In collaboration with Suomen Mediatoimisto.
The objective
Suomen Mediatoimisto approached me in January 2013 with another interesting project in mind. Huoneistoketju’s (meaning something like an Apartment Chain in english) site needed a complete facelift to stand-out from the competitors sites.
The new design had to support their brand, which they’ve been building since 1992. The site’s main targets were to be visually attractive and very easy-to-use because of the large variety of the target group. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words. This is especially true in the real estate business and web design.
The story
The project began with some inherent design limitations in the mark and color palette. The blue had to be highly visible and recognizable. I accomplished this by using a blue in the navigation and footer elements as well as in the primary buttons.
The big background image and combination of white and silver brings great contrast between each section of the site, making it easy to browse. Icons support the design greatly – having the opportunity to show a small mark instead of a long Finnish word, made the user interface sleeker with big real estate images.
Development and the launch of the site happened according to the plan. Today Huoneistoketju’s brand is stronger than ever – and so are the numbers of the new site.
www.huoneistoketju.fi
