TORONTO—The website redesign this month for FITC (Future, Innovation, Technology, Creativity) came about because the old version "wasn't up to today's standards," said Sacha Raposo, creative director at Relish Interactive. Relish handled design for both the previous site and its update.

FITC produces design and technology events and, as a result, its website features promotional posters done by different artists. "It's hard to have an established brand with its own name when it's competing with all these individual works of art," Raposo said.


"The old site was a mishmash," said Andrew Fraser, FITC manager of conversation. "The backgrounds were always taking from the posters and artwork of events we did and there wasn't a reoccurring theme."

The new design uses reds, black and white, playing off the FITC logo. "We've got a darker red in the background and it really warms things up a lot," said Steve Palmer, Relish co-creative director and lead on the FITC redesign. "Before it was all black in the background, and while that does lend an inherent slickness and sexiness to a design, we felt that it was probably a bit too unfriendly," he said.

For fonts, the site uses Future and Helvetica, which Palmer said are "clean and modern and won't look dated in a year or two."

Raposo said the redesign wasn't all about aesthetics. "It was a total rebuild from scratch," he said. "If you were to look at the code of the old site, it wouldn't be up to current day best practices." The old version of the site used a proprietary back-end system, whereas the redesign uses Wordpress, Raposo said. Fraser added that the new site is more user-friendly for FITC staff on the back-end, as well as easier to navigate and faster to load for front-end users.

FITC plans to update the site again with responsive design for tablet and mobile browsing in the coming months, Raposo said.