UK arts charity The Collections Trust asked us to create a low-carbon website to promote The Museum Data Service, a free service that connects records across all UK museums and makes it easier for researchers to collaborate.
The brief requested the website to be an exemplar of environmentally-responsible and accessible web design. And that’s just what we did!
We are incredibly proud to have worked on this project alongside our trusted graphic design collaborator Pine Design Studio using a beautiful set of brand guidelines created by Pentagram London.
In 2024 we teamed up with Hello Technology to launch phase two of the project, integrating the functional Museum Data Service API, developed by the good folk at Knowledge Integration. The Object Search API allows visitors to search over 6 million object records from museums across the UK.
Read more: Museum Data Service launches with goal to unite 100m museum records
Performance stats
99 Google Pagespeed performance score
100 Google Lighthouse Accessibility score
A+ Rated on the Website Carbon Calculator
website design for sustainability
The Collections Trust wanted an environmentally-friendly website and openly embraced our low-carbon web design techniques throughout the development process.
- The design purposefully uses a system font, Verdana, which does not need to download to the visitors device as it will be already installed.
- A conscious choice was made to develop phase 1 of the website with limited number of images (to reflect that the MDS system was also text based). For the graphics we did use, such as partner logos in the footer, we ensured that any image files are optimised using compressed SVG and WEBP formats and lazy-load in only when the visitors scrolls down to them.
- Quality web hosting also plays an important role on maintaining a fast page load speed and we assisted in setting up the Museum Data Service website on optimised, Green Web Foundation certified WordPress hosting by 34SP.
The result is an ultra efficient website that is rated A+ on the Website Carbon Calculator, scoring in the top 2% of all sites tested as of March 2024.
Accessibility as standard
All Root websites are built to AA WCAG accessibility guidelines, testing using tools such as the WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool and Google Lighthouse.
- The branding features a high contrast colour palette to aid readability.
- Built with structured, semantic markup that can accurately be read by screen readers software.
- The font size can be increased if required without breaking the layout
- We also created a Dark mode stylesheet for people who prefer an inverted colour scheme. This reduces eye strain and also uses less energy than the lighter colour scheme.
- The minimal page weight ensures that the site loads fast, regardless of the visitors connection speed
good web design for great people
FareShare – Where’s the food?
Our low-carbon website for UK food redistribution charity FareShare promotes their important manifesto to reduce food waste and fight hunger.
- 125% Smaller than the average web page
- A Rated on the Website Carbon Calculator
- 94 Google Pagespeed performance score
Furbellow & Co.
Our ecommerce website for the gentlemen’s store and barbershop Furbellow & Co has seen a year on year increase in visitors and sales whilst keeping its impact on the environment low.
- 95 Google Pagespeed performance score
- 100 Google Lighthouse SEO score
- A rated on the Website Carbon Calculator
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