Bringing Queensland Ballet’s brand to life online

Queensland Ballet has launched a brand-new look and feel to their website queenslandballet.com.au to bring the brand to life digitally. 

The user centric updates include a new homepage and navigation menu, fresh content, an updated colour palette and new user interaction tools. 

Head of Marketing and Audience Development Lisa Summer-Hayes explains the importance of storytelling to Queensland Ballet and the Company’s brand.  

“Whilst powerful, creative storytelling is the heartbeat of Queensland Ballet – it is important that our website showcases the breadth of our brand and delivers an intuitive user experience for online audiences.  

“The old Queensland Ballet website, whilst visually stunning, grew organically with the Company's ambitious program diversification, resulting in a digital experience that lacked organisation and wasn’t very intuitive for new audiences.”  

In 2021, working with Creative Director Andy Geppert, Queensland Ballet’s marketing team launched a new brand platform ’Every Step a Story’. 

In early 2022, Lisa tasked long-time digital collaborator Bigfish to fully realise the digital identity of their new visual brand and ensure Queensland Ballet’s corporate strategy was reflected in the updated site. 

Alongside the digital branding challenge, the information architecture and user experience also required a refresh.  

Since Li Cunxin’s appointment as Artistic Director a decade ago, the Company has undergone incredible transformation and growth. As the Company and its offerings has grown, so has the information hosted on the existing site, launched in 2019.  

Bigfish first worked with Queensland Ballet on queenslandballet.com.au in 2013, consolidating three existing sites into one seamless experience, earning a Webby Award nomination, and helping drive consecutive sold-out seasons for the company. 

In nine years as a key creative collaborator, Bigfish has created digital experiences, campaigns and content designed to nurture the artform and support the brand’s huge growth.  

Bigfish General Manager Nicole Ferrier said the website navigation needed updating to be more user-friendly and sustainable, ensuring that as the Company continues to grow, the website can accommodate growth. 

“Users can expect to see some substantial changes,” Nicole said.  

“We’ve done a full overhaul of the navigation and the homepage - we’ve brought the brand story to life through tone of voice, content, application of the new refined colour palette and introduction of a consistent interaction language.” 

Bek Possingham, Queensland Ballet’s Performance Marketing Specialist who joined in late 2021, has been instrumental in driving the project and implementing evidence-based design and user-centred design. Coming from a UX background and a passion for creating content for users, one of the first things Bek looked at was a full site audit and how users were navigating the existing site.  

“To understand the user perspective of the existing navigation, we conducted a month of user testing including tree testing, card sorting and heat map evaluations, recruiting a combination of Queensland Ballet subscribers and unknown paid participants,” said Bek. 

It became clear there was user confusion between the professional training offered by Queensland Ballet’s Academy, and dance classes and workshops offered through the Company’s community programs.  

“It was interesting to see where the sticking points of user journeys were and to understand the different touchpoints taken to reach (or not reach) their goals. This then informed the strategy for the revised site navigation and page structure. 

“Queensland Ballet has many diverse audiences, and content needs to be easy to find. We wanted to make the site more user-friendly, more attractive, and accessible to people without a background knowledge of ballet,” explains Bek. 

Bigfish Design Lead Nina Wei comments, “Introducing a mega menu allows the user to see immediately what is available and to jump to deep pages quickly, but also to create more discovery pathways so there’s always something new to explore for the user.” 

Bigfish’s Nicole praises the collaborative nature of the project.  

“Collaboration and partnership with Queensland Ballet has really helped get the strategy and the thinking right. Having such valuable user insights really helped us nail the site map,” comments Nicole. 

“It's been fantastic to work on a website aligned with the brand and corporate vision, and to develop content and a navigation that will support Queensland Ballet’s long-term strategy.” 

In approaching the design of the fresh look and feel, Bigfish's Nina considered brand representation, usability, messaging, and content, and married it all up to create a purposeful visual language.  

“Good interaction language is almost invisible, just like clever design. You almost don’t know it's there because it just works, exactly how you expect it to. But when it is not there, you notice it, like something is missing but you're not sure what.” 

A hugely exciting component of the changes is a new site for Queensland Ballet Academy, which is in development and will be launched in late June. 

As the Academy has grown in prestige and size, its digital requirements have changed, and the new site aims to meet its external and internal needs more effectively.  

Technically, Bigfish’s CMS platform TANK enables the Academy site to be a multi-site, enabling content to be shared across both the Queensland Ballet main site and Academy sub site without duplication.  

Bek explains how important it was to involve the different internal departments in this exciting digital project. 

“I met with each department early on to understand their goals and determine how the website can best support those objectives. 

Bigfish also worked with Queensland Ballet to create a new publishing process, taking a more centralised approach, creating new guideline documents, and updating user roles.  

Bek is excited about the changes and what they mean for external users. 

“I hope people can find what they are looking for and discover new things about Queensland Ballet they did not know before. 

“Internally, I hope the process for updating and maintaining the website becomes more streamlined and everyone feels their needs are being met and their stories are being told.” 

“We have created a more structured approach to pages that are more user centric and simplified, and we refined the typography and interactions. This will make the lives of web admins easier, and they can focus on what matters most – content creation and user engagement,” Nina said. 

 “Users are going to understand the full story of Queensland Ballet - things that were hidden or tucked away have now been brought to the forefront. It is still visually beautiful, but a more confident Queensland Ballet, with a timeless and modern look and feel.”