Article
The Coding of Looking Sideways
ECN (Energy research Centre of the Netherlands) creates and researches technology for clients around the world. In fact, 60% of this planet’s solar technology has connections with ECN. With a new strategy plan focused on innovation, towards the end of 2011 Edenspiekermann began a gradual rebrand. A component of this was their 2011 Annual Report, a project that ended up exploring the limitations of the web in portraying an identity.
For their annual report, the concept was to feature 7 highlights of ECN in the past year through client stories. A key element of ECN’s brand is 25°. This is an angle derived from the logo which we carried across their print materials and logically (and enthusiastically) we would continue online.
To fully represent ECN's innovation, we decided to use their 25° in the navigation. Not a big deal, right? Well, turning things at an angle online isn't as simple as it sounds. Enter Joris Hilckmann (aka Webmann), the developer who worked his magic.
The biggest obstacle for turning things sideways was Internet Explorer: a web font on a slanted baseline is problematic. With the highlight menu sliding down on an angle, we were happy to represent ECN's brand online in their annual report. Despite it may look like we took the Flash route, it turned out to be possible in CSS.
