The Odd Hat Creative

Developed while at Total eBiz Solutions.

This project explored several visual directions for an internal National Heritage Board portal. The design problem was fairly ordinary in the best sense: staff needed announcements, events, directories and shared resources to be easier to find, but the portal still had to feel connected to the organisation rather than like a generic corporate dashboard.

The brief

I developed multiple interface proposals for stakeholder review, focusing on information hierarchy, modular navigation and a visual language that could carry NHB’s cultural remit without overwhelming everyday internal tasks.

My role

• visual and interface concept development
• layout and navigation structure
• colour, typography and icon direction
• page mock-ups for stakeholder comparison

Theme 1 — Modular dashboard

The first direction uses clear content modules and colour separation to make common internal functions easier to scan.

Theme 2 — Stronger visual navigation

The second direction pushes the navigation blocks harder, using larger visual areas and a more obvious separation between content types.

Theme 3 — Wider editorial treatment

The third direction opens the layout horizontally and gives imagery and feature content more room, while retaining clearly separated utility areas.

Theme 4 — Heritage-led framing

The fourth proposal gives the heritage context a more visible role, using imagery and framing devices without sacrificing the practical portal structure underneath.

What the exercise demonstrated

These were proposals rather than a claim that every screen shown became the final deployed intranet. The value of the exercise was in giving stakeholders materially different options to compare: how much visual character the portal should carry, how modular the navigation should feel, and where organisational identity should sit in relation to everyday usability.