Goal

Rise and Shine – Cinema is a film distribution-company specializing in high-quality documentaries, releasing an average of four films per year into cinemas since 2015. The upcoming release, MY NEW OLD SELF – a documentary by Louise Unmack Kjeldsen, required a clear and functional website. The platform was intended to serve as an accessible, bilingual hub for ongoing communication, press information, and engagement with the project

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The client developed a small concept to serve as backlog:

What is the primary purpose of the site at this stage?
-> Business card / Credibility / Information for the press / Cooperation partners

What content is absolutely necessary right now?
-> Synopsis, vision & mission, team, teaser images, protagonists,contact information

What content will be added later?
-> Trailer, festival information, screening kit download, press review, social feed integration

Should the site be bilingual?
-> If so: German/English from the start? Or English as standard, with German and Danish as options?

From this, I derived following user requirements for this website:

quickly accessible information
simple overview of the functions
invitation to take a look behind the scenes.

Challenges

conceptual: keeping an informative website interesting while dealing with a touchy subject

aesthetically: Narrating the story behind the film with emotional impact while avoiding clicheés and spoilers

technical: finding the most efficient way to have a language switcher in the UI

Solution

functional concept:

minimal UI with consistent layout for easy access

inviting to dive „behind the scenes“

prominent and autonym language switcher in the GUI

Reflection

Unfortunately, I couldn’t convince the company of clearer UX writing and a professional maintenance of the design system after handover.
Nevertheless, it was a fun experience to compose a website within 10 days from a small concept and a few elements, which mainly consisted of unpublished footage.