EMI Archive Trust
Music and cultural heritage
Brand, UI, Website build
A responsive refresh for one of the world's most significant music archives
A unique archive, hidden behind a dated interface
The Kelly online database holds details of more than 420,000 recordings made between 1898 and the mid-1950s. Assembled by the late Dr Alan Kelly, it's a genuinely rare resource for researchers and scholars of historical sound recording. The database worked, but the experience didn't match the importance of what sat behind it. The site had never been designed for mobile, the logo had no supporting brand system, and the interface did little to invite the return visits the content deserved.
UX, UI and a brand system to sit alongside the database
We started with mood boards to find a visual direction that felt appropriate to the archive without turning it into a museum piece. Benchmarks were the Design Museum and Tate Modern, rich, immersive, confident. From there we built a full UI system across desktop and mobile covering typography, buttons, form styling, iconography and imagery, then designed the key pages including the all-important search result view. We kept the existing Kelly logo and built a brand style around it, then handed a clean, organised file set to the development team with ongoing support through build.
An archive that finally feels as rich as its contents
The refreshed site gives researchers and scholars an experience that matches the depth of the material. A responsive, visually rich interface that works as well on a phone as it does on a desktop, and a brand system that positions the Kelly database where it belongs, alongside the UK's most serious cultural institutions.
