The Process

Design & Development

The job involves good communication skills and understanding of a client’s needs, and utilizing both Graphic Design and Computer Programming to create a functional experience.

All websites consist of content (text, images, documents …) which needs to be served in an interactive and attractive manner without compromising functionality.

The Brief

Meeting with the client

Every client is a designer, but they don't always have the know how to bring their ideas to life, which is why we need to find out what the client wants. Listen and understand what the client needs.
The client’s idea of a design might not be ideal for the success of the website, hence it is our job to advise and explain which best practice is.

The Research

Be inspired, learn and improve.

Research the client's business, we try our best to try and understand the clients industry and who their target market is.
Assess the users of said target market and design according to their technical know how and needs.
Look up websites with similar purpose and observe what the designers did, learn from it, be inspired and improve on it.

The Design

Designing a mockup of the website

We bring our idea to life with tools such as Photoshop.
When doing this we design and place every element with planning.
Designing a website without planning allows time consuming fixes, hacks and patches to occur.
These mockup designs cover the look and feel of the home page (the first impression of visitors) and other pages that require a unique template.
All mockup designs are then saved as JPG pictures to be presented to the client.
If the client is not satisfied or had something else in mind we will need to go back to the drawing board and start over. This may happen a few times before the final result can be achieved but should be avoided with proper briefing and understanding of the needed solution.

The Experience

Coding a functional template from your design

Once the client approves the mockup designs we will make use of the three languages to build the “frontend” of the website.
These languages are commonly known as HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

HTML is responsible for structuring elements of a webpage.
CSS is responsible for the styling of HTML elements
JavaScript allows for the enhanced manipulation of the elements.

Create an interactive experience with visually appealing, yet subtle, effects, transitions and other animations.
Optimizing graphics as well as your coding to ensure a bandwidth friendly website that loads fast enough.
Responsive design allows the website to work on Desktop, Laptop, Tablet and Mobile devices.

The Handover

From templates to a dynamic website

Most website designers work hand in hand with website developers.
These developers specialize in making the final product dynamic - linking your templates to a content management system (CMS) - which allows the client to update the content themselves.

Adding the Content

Adding the supplied content to the website

Once the client provides the final content (text, pictures, documents,… etc.), the developer uses the CMS to add all the content to the relative pages.
This is where the web designer’s decision in font sizes takes control of the uploaded content and styles it accordingly.

Finalization

Final changes and going live

Once all the content of the website is inserted into the CMS, the client will revise the website one last time, submit final changes and additions to the content.

Once all changes have been done, and approved, the website will go live.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization

At the end of each project the designer or the developer submits the site to Google, Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools.
Submitting to Google notifies the algorithm that there is a new website which needs indexing.
Submitting to Google Analytics allows the client to get extremely detailed reports on the visitors that come to the website.
Submitting to Google Webmaster Tools allows you to manage a site in more detail.

Website
Photography

Web is an ever changing industry, which is why your website should be on par with or better than interantional standards to get the best return of investement ot of it.

Show all

Debmarine Namibia v2.0

We're thrilled to unveil our latest triumph: the launch of the bespoke Debmarine Namibia website, crafted with precision and passion by our expert team at Asylum Design and Development!

Embark on a journey of digital excellence as we showcase the seamless synergy between form and function. At Asylum, we've hoisted the sails of creativity and innovation to design a website that not only captivates but also delivers results.

This marks the second time we've been entrusted with the honor of designing and developing the online presence for Debmarine Namibia, a testament to our unwavering commitment to excellence.

With meticulous attention to detail, we've tailored every pixel and perfected every line of code to ensure a user experience that's as smooth as Namibia's coastline. From elegant aesthetics to intuitive navigation, our custom design and development solutions set the course for success.

Join us as we raise the anchor on a new era of online presence for Debmarine Namibia, where professionalism meets unparalleled performance. Let's navigate the vast digital ocean together, charting a course for growth and prosperity.

Welcome aboard the future of web design excellence.

Emcon Consulting Group

Introducing another captivating project that offers enhanced functionality to streamline website navigation for visitors. This project is designed to provide an effortless user experience, ensuring a user-friendly journey. In essence, our custom CMS empowers website owners to create projects and select the specific services offered within each project. This selection enables visitors to navigate directly to the desired service and explore detailed information about it.

Through the implementation of "cross-linking," we have made the website journey significantly easier and more convenient for visitors. For instance, when a visitor explores a particular project, they will find a list of services associated with that project. These services are clickable, allowing the visitor to access additional information about the service itself and discover other projects where the service has been provided.

Ultimately, this guided journey of information ensures a seamless and engaging experience for visitors. Without the incorporation of cross-linking, this journey would be far less convenient and considerably shorter-lived.

Ugab Game Farm and Lodge

In November 2022 Ugab Game Farm and Lodge contracted us to design and develop their website. The lodge was newly established and partially still in construction, thus all we had to work with was a logo, but in the shortest time we planned a trip to the beautiful Damaraland and within a week we shot all the photography, virtual tours, time lapses, drone footage, ... etc. seen on the website. This visit was all we needed to inspire us with the design of the website.

This week was so action packed, filled with game drives early in the morning and late in the afternoon, seeing antelope species I didn't know existed, directing a bunch or tourists who we borrowed from a nearby lodge to model for the photos and drives, making fires and the typical early mornings for the Golden hour photos, also known as the "Money Shots"! :D

That was a busy week and I think it definitely payed off. Again, thank you for a great week and for the opportunity to let us show what Asylum is capable of.

I think we ended up with a stunning product with a ton of variety in media and interactivity.

Collexia Beyond Payments

Collexia is live! What a fun design to work on.

Traditionally websites have a horizontal navigation, but this comes with the drawback of having limited space for the needed navigation. It is the responsibility of the designer to get as much information to get a good feeling of how big the navigation might be, and in this case it was just a little more than usual.

The client handed me a few brochures and a corporate profile, which both had Dunes and the Hexagon shapes in the design. Which is exactly why i used these in the website design:

The hexagon graphics as frames for the people profile pictures, news and info-graphics.
The Dunes with the parallax filling the white space for a seamless full-viewport page design and a sense of depth.

This full-viewport design pushed the content area into a manageable with which makes text much more legible and the 16:9 images scale quite perfectly.

As for the client, well, they were awesome! Friendly and understandable when it came to more information I needed to "fill" the website with ... yes, content. 😃

All in all, I really love how this turned out! I am looking forward to expand the website with upcoming additions!

Lewfin America LLC

Our first website based in America! Lewfin contacted us to create a short term loan / personal loan website for one of their American branches. The website is quite a small one, with only 6 pages, but from a design perspective we did our best to accommodate the available content. At least now Lewfin will have a good starting point and the possibility to expand into many more pages.

Virtual Tours have always been our strong point but lately clients have been enquiring about standard photography and video as well, which is why we expanded into these areas.

Show all

Barkhan Dune Retreat 2023

Up until now, our responsibility at Barkhan Dune Retreat has encompassed capturing all the photography. However, we often felt a vital component was absent from our shots - the presence of people. Consequently, we were graciously invited to Barkhan Dune Retreat not only to photograph the rooms, facilities, and activities, but also to showcase the inclusion of individuals within these captivating frames. Furthermore, our task entailed capturing images of the recently unveiled KuanguKuangu, an opulent self-catering unit majestically perched atop a mountain peak.

Enjoy the photos!

Ugab Game Farm and Lodge

Ugab Game Farm and Lodge is a newly established high end lodge with luxury accommodation in Damaraland. Their top end rooms are equipped with a personal coffee station, a fridge with ice cold water, and a massive outside shower and bathtub. The linen of the king sized double beds are made of Egyptian cotton and the rooms have a magnificent view on to the waterhole where a vast variety of animals roam and feed.

They offer lengthy Nature / Game Drives in the shadows of majestic trees growing in the Ugab river. It is near guaranteed that you will see wild animals in the Ugab river, since they prefer the lower temperatures therein. You will most likely see herds of Eland, Gemsbock and many other species unique to the farm.

Here are some photos we took at Ugab Game Farm and Lodge.

Namibia National Olympic Committee Photography

Namibia National Olympic Committee board members and staff profile photography at the Hilton hotel.

Barkhan Dune Retreat 2022

And another successful visit to Barkhan Dune Retreat. This time we planned a quick sunset photo shoot at the Spreetshoogte pass. The sunset was spectacular with all the little clouds filling the sky and giving the photos an additional flare! After all the good rains this year the grass was standing at hip height and has that classic golden shimmer as the sun sets.

Medical Imaging

Medical Imaging requested us to take photos for every service category on their website. This was a super fun shoot, since the staff at Roman Catholic Hospital and Mediclinic are extremely friendly and photogenic. Lighting and space in the hospital is a real challenge, which is why some of the images look distorted and or the white balance is off.

Taking photos of the MRI machine was a nightmare considering if I get too close it will suck my camera into the magnetic field and damage the multi million dollar machine, or it will simply corrupt all my photos on the SD card. That was quite worrying to say the least.

We are also doing the website which is still in the works, but these photos will replace the stock photography they are currently using on their website.