AMAZING EVENT EXPERIENCES, FROM THE TOP END TO THE RED CENTRE. THE NORTHERN TERRITORY MAJOR EVENTS COMPANY IS THE LARGEST EVENTS ORGANISER IN THE NORTHERN TERRITORY, WITH A DIVERSE RANGE OF AWARD-WINNING EVENTS.
With large-scale events such as Darwin Supercars, Parrtjima (one of Australia’s largest Aboriginal artwork installations), Million Dollar Fish and Territory Day, the Northern Territory Major Events Company (NTMEC for short) needed an updated primary corporate-facing online presence that would help to strengthen their online presence outside of events, and to provide a central location for event accreditation, event policy and wider event news for the entire Northern Territory.
In 2020, NTMEC approached Marketforce North (Marktetforce’s Northern Territory office, which in turn fed larger projects to Marketforce) for us to design and build them a new corporate site, which would in turn act as a portfolio of sorts to demonstrate their wide range of award-winning events that occur yearly throughout the NT. My role in this was to lead the design facet of the project from start to finish.
THE APPROACH
NTMEC sits in a tonally interesting position - as they’re an events company, they needed to appear and feel energetic, involved and approachable, yet also needed to feel corporate and responsible enough to feel trusted by event sponsors and funders.
The website needed to reflect this, so we opted to have their primary Ruby brand colour shine through from the get go, yet have it balanced with NTMEC’s cooler mauve background shades and a warm charcoal to keep things professional.
Allowing space for each of NTMEC’s diverse events to stand out was also important. A large portfolio section just below the fold, dedicated to image-led tiles helped to showcase the Company’s wide range of events while also providing a feel for what kind of events they were responsible for managing. These tiles would then link off to any online presence each of the individual events held, allowing users to fully delve into and learn more about each specific event (all the while help provide the client with helpful insights via journey analytics).
While events and event organisation can be incredibly complex, we also felt it was important to have the website feel effortless to navigate through. As such, we opted to an always-present side menu that not only allowed for simpler navigation, but also helped to visually distinguish it from similar organisations - a much appreciated edge in the highly competitive events scene!
THE OUTCOME
The client was ecstatic with the final outcome of the site. Although it didn’t necessarily break any records in regards to their online presence, it served to establish a strong working relationship between NTMEC and Marketforce - which resulted in Marketforce building and designing websites for many of NTMEC’s individual events, including Million Dollar Fish, Darwin Supercars, the Alice Springs Masters Games, Red CentreNATS and more.
It also won an award! It helped Marketforce take home the Macfarlane Prize for Excellence in the 2021 Australian Web Awards (effectively its Best in Show), owing to its superb standard of development and usability metrics.
Take a look at the website here: https://ntmajorevents.com.au/