In april 2018 the Orchestre de Paris (the french national orchestra) merged with the Philharmonie de Paris, one of the biggest concert Hall in France. For that occasion, the Orchestra came to Stink Studios with a two-sided mission of rebrand and revamp. Quite an exciting job !
We started from the bottom with a very complete study phase, helped by Le Singe, a talented studio of design thinking and UX. For 2 months, we tracked and studied viewers behaviors on the website. We completed this study with an online survey, a focus group and interviews of the managers at L’Orchestre. It gave us pretty clear insights of what should be done.
For the branding we kept strong elements of the previous website such as the blue color, and we mix them with Philharmonie codes like the singular font, or the bird pattern. The study taught us that the site should convey excellence and put musicians first. That’s what did with beautiful photos, elevated use of fonts and blank spaces.
As the database is big and really complex (all the concert from 1967 are indexed) we chose to keep the Symfony back office, and just simplify its usability. The huge challenge we faced was to create a fully administrable website. Our client wanted to be able to create as much content as they want with no restriction. So we figured out a system with 18 units that can be added, deleted or rearranged at leisure. This way, the orchestra is fully autonomous and that’s music to their ears ! :-)