Over de Vloed: A Festival Website with a Maritime Twist

Scrolling along 90 kilometers of UNESCO World Heritage Wadden Sea coastline

The festival takes place on and directly behind the seawall, which inspired the maritime design of the website. The color palette was derived from the Groningen province flag, reflecting regional pride and supraregional allure. The website scrolls along the 90 kilometers of UNESCO World Heritage Wadden Sea coastline, highlighting festival participants and events alike.

The website was realized using Wordpress, HTML5, CSS, and Javascript. The design team, consisting of Erik Dob and Bart Bleeker, ensured that the website was accessible across various devices, with specifications for desktop, iPad, and mobile viewports. The website's unique properties lie in its user interaction. Participants and events are plotted in a panoramic photograph of the festival area, allowing end-users to interact with the website program by clicking the highlighted events. Users can add events to a personal timetable, which can be altered, saved, and shared at any time.

The project started in February 2016 and ended at the festival's completion in June 2016. The first step was a collective brainstorm which delivered a program, profiles of both participants and visitors, and input for the identity and designs. Next, empirical research showed festival visitors' propensity for an online interactive program. This led to the challenge of fitting the festival's extensive program in a wide-spread area into a website, which was achieved by creating a vertical scroll along 90 kilometers of coastline.

The final challenge was to photograph the area. The team chose to segment the coastline and use drone photography to make the wide-angle pan shots, which were stitched together to create the single vertical scroll. The CMS was designed to cross-reference dates, time, and location so that end-users were able to personalize their festival program, making it the go-to website before and during the festival.

The design was awarded Golden in A' Website and Web Design Awards in 2017, a testament to the team's prodigy and wisdom. The design is a venerated product and bright idea that advances art, science, design, and technology, embodying extraordinary excellence and significantly impacting the world with its desirable characteristics.