Welcome to Our Website
By Benjamin Haynes on November 25, 2020> After completely overhauling Directus itself, we thought it only appropriate to do the same for our website. This new site is quite a bit more colorful and friendly — we hope you like it!
There were two important goals we set out to fulfill with this new website. First, we wanted the presentation to feel modern and friendly, without seeming gimmicky or unprofessional. And second, the content needed to properly explain our product's new positioning as an "Open Data Platform".
Aesthetic
Just like the Directus App, the website's components have been created as modular building blocks that can be reused throughout our entire ecosystem. This helps define a cohesive brand across all of our digital properties (website, docs, marketplace, cloud, etc) and provides a design toolkit that allows us to quickly create new experiences in the future.
We adopted a full-spectrum of brand colors to both tie our websites/pages together, as well as help differentiate them. For example, colors stay consistently purple when moving from the On-Demand Cloud page of this website to the Cloud Dashboard itself — but are intentionally randomized in places like the homepage.
In addition to color, the style-guide includes circles/balls to represent various types of "data". You'll see these subdued in the background, surrounding icons, and within our animated illustrations. While it's not uncommon to see circles in design, we're trying to be a bit more intentional in how they are used here.
Content
Pivoting from Headless CMS to Open Data Platform is a challenging move, but one we feel strongly about. Content being a subset of data, our revolutionary data-first approach makes Directus far more flexible and powerful than the evolutionary headless CMS out there.
However we had to be careful when communicating this on the website, as listing too many disparate use-cases runs the risk of appearing to be a jack of all trades, master of none. So we focused copywriting on the idea that Directus is an underlying data engine that is versatile enough to connect any and all your projects.
Looking Ahead
Nothing is ever truly complete, and we see this new website as the first step of our ongoing marketing endeavors. In the meantime, let us know what you think — we love positive feedback and useful criticism!