Home and Comforts

Home & Comforts is a magazine produced by insurance validators Independent Inspections, distributed to people who have recently put in an insurance claim on carpets or flooring. As well as a fantastic resource allowing claimants access to extensive directory listings of flooring retailers for supply and repair, it also provides a number of useful and interesting articles pertaining to flooring & interior design and, naturally, a hugely appealing prospect to potential advertisers within the industry.

The extended reach of the online audience makes an online version of the magazine seem like a perfectly natural progression, so Independent Inspections came to us with a view to translating the magazine concept into an online format. The advantages are immediately obvious; more targetted retailer locating (ie. by postcode), rotating advert space (allowing greater capacity for prospective advertisers), online payments system for insurance excess.

Initially, we adapted the existing identity to sit more congruously in a digital format; boosting the vibrancy of the colours for screen-use, selecting clean typography to be applied consistently across all pages, creating a visual style for maximum impact at screen resolution. Then we employed a structured 3-column layout for flexibility between pages, allowing us to easily add and remove standard banner-sized advertisements as required and maintain a consistent visual heirarchy across the whole site. Flash was used for the interactive elements and to add an extra level of joy-of-use functionality.