Overview
The Markham Pan Am Centre is a legacy building of the 2016 Toronto Pan Am Games. It provides world-class sporting facilities to a variety of sporting clubs, organizations, and associations that are in search of practice space and event hosting.
Visit WebsiteThe
challenge
At the project’s inception, the only web presence that the venue had was a single, text-heavy page buried deep within the City of Markham website. It was a point of presence, but hardly a “sales tool” for attracting top sporting organizations from around the world.
As such, the Markham Pan Am Centre had no ability to:
- Market the benefits of the facility to sporting organizations
- Grow revenue by increasing their venue bookings
- Educate the community about upcoming sporting events
- Add any new content about the venue
The goal of this project was to provide a complete website solution that would act as a high quality lead generation tool. Highlighting the benefits of this world-class facility would make an attractive proposition for those looking to rent out the venue for sporting events and training sessions.
A fully booked rental schedule would ensure the financial stability of the building, allowing the venue to remain a part of the City of Markham landscape.
The
process
The design process for this project was a little different than with most clients. The main issue was that the Markham Pan Am Centre had no corporate logo or branding guidelines developed when we started the project.
The original thought going into the project was to simply not use a logo at all, and use a blue colour scheme (derived from some existing marketing material).
However, upon visiting the building for a meeting with the client, we found some inspiration in the “fins” that the iconic building was constructed with. This provided us with a colour palette and was the driving force behind the creation of a new logo for the facility.
In fact, the border at the top and bottom of the page designs is an exact match of the top row of fins on the building.
1. Design brief
The initial design brief for this project was developed with a few gaps, as the client's branding was a work in progress.
2. Wireframe
The wireframe was developed to ensure that the key information about the venue was displayed on the home page.
3. Initial concept
While it followed the wireframe we had planned out, to be completely honest, our initial concept was not very inspiring.
4. Final design
Pretty much every element of the design was revisited with a fresh approach to create a concept loved by all stakeholders.
The
solution
The new website for the Markham Pan Am Centre provided the client with a website that not only markets their offerings to sports organizations from around the world, but also speaks directly to the residents of the City of Markham about sports and physical literacy.
Upcoming events schedule
A key component of the website was an event calendar that allowed visitors to quickly see what is going on at the venue in the near future. Rather than using a traditional calendar layout, we designed a chronological month-based list that is easier to read.
The list always begins with the very next event, and automatically hides past events from view. Each entry contains facility and event details, with linked to additional information offsite. This makes management of the content simple and efficient for the marketing team.
