A place of welcome

The Social Studio is a grassroots, not-for-profit social enterprise, dedicated to creating long-term and rewarding pathways into fashion education and employment for young people from a refugee or new migrant background.

Their ethical and sustainable business model includes a fashion school, fashion label, ethical clothing manufacturing business, retail store and community space. Not only have they supported over 780 people to access training and work programs in the last decade, but they've become a fundamental part of inner Melbourne's diverse cultural and fashion landscape.

In 2021, The Social Studio engaged Liquorice to design and build a new website to showcase their new brand and improve usability, and Liquorice was delighted!

A fresh digital face

We don't often have the opportunity to do pro-bono work, so we jumped at the chance to help an organisation that creates such meaningful social change by welcoming and empowering marginalised communities.

It was an easy job in many ways. We had a great new brand to work with (designed by Ash Goodall), a copy deck ready to go, and an online store already operational. The missing piece was the website itself. Clunky, outdated and unfit for purpose, it was in desperate need of an update.

The challenge was to showcase their youthful, vibrant brand personality, while also creating space for the work of their incredible local makers and designers to shine. By using large imagery and clear typographic hierarchy, keeping plenty of white space, and strategically applying bright pops of colour, we were able to let the designs speak for themselves and lead users to relevant calls-to-action.

Flexible, friendly, functional

When it came time to turn the beautiful designs into a fully-fledged, functioning website, we took a lean approach. We knew that The Social Studio would be managing the site themselves, so building it in such a way that updating and adding content was a simple and streamlined process was very important. We were able to achieve this by adopting a modular approach to each page, keeping it flexible but restrained.

We were also mindful that a diverse range of users would be engaging with the site, so accessibility was at the forefront of our minds. The result is a site that is simple, flexible and delightfully user friendly. We helped the team at The Social Studio to build the site out with content and then, in late June, we launched!

Visit thesocialstudio.org and see their brilliant work on show.