Studio concept, 2026, Art direction
Slack Water
Electric workboats, sold on quiet: every page has a tide, and the type sinks below it.
The concept, live
Fig. 01
The page itself, not a picture of it. Use it here, then scroll inside the frame.
The one idea
A boatyard selling electric workboats has to sell quiet, and a screen has no sound. So the site borrows the water instead: a tide line runs across every section, the type sinks below it and comes up again, and the four numbers a harbor master asks for are set as large as the headline.
The budget we’d hold it to
- Load on a mid-range phone
- under 2.5 s
- Home page, mobile transfer
- under 1.2 MB
- Brief to launch
- 6–8 weeks
The budget it was designed to. A study has no traffic of its own, so these are targets; this site’s own numbers are measured on every build.
How it was decided
01
Selling quiet
Considered
A video of the boat underway, with the sound on.
Kept
No video at all. A screen cannot play silence, so the page shows water instead: a tide line that everything else sits in.
02
The numbers
Considered
A specifications table at the foot of the page, as a PDF.
Kept
The four figures a harbor master asks for, set at the size of the headline, with one in the signal orange of a running light.
03
The palette
Considered
White and a sea blue, like every marine brand.
Kept
Night navy, teal below the tide and one orange point: the colors of a harbor after dark, when these boats still run.
Fig. 02
The specification is the hero of its section. One orange figure, the one a buyer asks for first; the rest in the ink.
The range, as an image. The tide cuts the figure where the caption begins, so the eye reads the number and then the words.