Walthers.com

the client

William K. Walthers, Inc., is the world's largest distributor of model railroads and supplies in the world. They created an online shopping site with in 1995 but had not given any consideration to usability, design or branding and needed a complete overhaul of their information architecture and site look and feel.

the challenge

Walthers needed a site that that still came across as fun while appealing to their core demographic of 55+ males (often with an engineering background). The site needed to be somewhat accessible given the eyesight issues of older adults, and the navigation and site flow needed to be more intuitive.

the sureblue solution

We called our design concept "nostalgitechnical" -- drawing inspiration from old railway advertising and toy packaging we created an old-fashioned futuristic look and pulled the base palette (blood red, navy and banana creme) from Walthers' very own packaging. The site was designed for maximum legibility (it's attractive even to the colorblind) and the information structure was reworked, making the site easier to use. We worked with their IT department's programmers to mesh our design and HTML with their legacy product database system.