Fresh From The Field — Beyond Studios Website – By Psychoactive Studios
Fresh from the Field is a weekly article series sharing the fresh and inspiring work of our Aotearoa Design Assembly community.
With the development of bespoke webGl shaders and 3D interactivity, Psychoactive Studios take us behind their website design and development for Beyond Studios.
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The brief
Beyond Studio is a Virtual Worlds Venture Studio, creating immersive experiences across a variety of digital mediums and emerging business models.
Having undergone a recent brand refresh, they approached Psychoactive to create a website that would utilise their new visual identity to showcase their flagship projects, as well as the studios’ talented creative team, their story, values, way of working, and news.
The site had to reflect the studio’s innovative and creative nature, through a highly interactive and visually engaging web experience, while offering an intuitive and user friendly experience.
The “lens” shape from their logo had to feature prominently in the experience, acting as a filter to reveal and morph imagery from the various worlds they create.
The Design Response
The website was built using the Webflow platform, offering a highly intuitive content management system for the Beyond team to edit and manage the various imagery, text, case studies and articles.
Achieving the complex visual effects outlined in the brief required us to push the platform to its limits through the development of bespoke webGl shaders and 3D interactivity. These also posed a unique design challenge as we had to strike the right balance between visual quality, interactivity, optimisation and usability.
The “lens” following the user through the experience is the perfect example of this balancing act, as it had to be both visually impactful while remaining unobtrusive. It acts as a three dimensional prism that reveals and morphs the site’s imagery, and as a portal between the various pages, warping and reacting delightfully in response to user input. The “lens” changes size, shape and colour, flipping, bouncing or floating smoothly depending on what section and what button the user is interacting with.
The vibrant selection of colours in the brand guidelines allowed us to create a unique colour scheme for each subpage, making it intuitive for users to know where they are on the website, and what page they are navigating towards. These colour schemes were brought to life as interactive animated gradients that flow and evolve as the user interacts and scrolls down the pages.
The resulting website is a vibrant and dynamic showcase of Beyond Studio’s innovative and imaginative approach to virtual world building.
The Design Team
Alex Bannswarth – Art Director and Developer
Andrew Hillstead – Strategist
Callum Mudgway – Designer
Kunyang Ji – Developer
Maria Rose – Producer
Website: https://psychoactive.co.nz/
IG – psychoactive.studios
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/psychoactivestudios/
FB – https://www.facebook.com/Psychoactive.Studios.NZ
The Client Team
Beyond is the premier Virtual Worlds Venture Studio, creating experiences and spaces that promote a culture of social connection and belonging. We push the boundaries of art and technology to create immersive and captivating VR, Web3, and mobile experiences.
Proud designers of Flufworld Burrows, creators of the Oddball VR game, and World builders with Chibi Labs.
Client details
https://www.linkedin.com/company/beyondxworlds/
https://beyond.fun/
Collaborators
Amy Minty – Content
Anton Mitchell – Co-CEO
Jessica Manins – Co-CEO
Imery Watson – Creative Director
