The WFRC was founded in 2008 as one of the University of Southampton’s Strategic Research Groups. It provides a dynamic interdisciplinary hub for a wide range of work-related research.

The centre tackles some of the most pressing challenges facing the world of work. With the advent of lockdown in March 2020, it was more important than ever to bring its network of researchers together. What was needed was a platform for digital events, discussion and dissemination. It was decided that the centre would re-launch in May with a brand new logo and website, both of which I was approached to deliver.

The challenges for me were to design and develop the site within a very restricted budget, but also a very restricted timeframe – it was important to launch while a large part of the work force was still adjusting to the new demands of lockdown. Luckily, I worked with a very efficient team, so this was possible!

Another challenge was to package the whole site so it could be installed on the University’s multisite installation of WordPress. This meant I had to develop the site in a slightly different way when creating my custom theme – which I created from scratch to match my designs. The same was true for all my customs field and instructions that made up the bespoke back-end, which meant the client could easily edit content themselves.

We hit the deadline and the research team has been successfully adding lots of content to the website ever since.