Dragonfly launched a new website in September, which incorporates its updated brand Dragonfly Data Science.
“Although we’ve been using the brand on our printed reports for a while already, this is the first time its been used on our website. We chose ‘data science’ because it’s a broad term that captures the whole range of what we do,” says Finlay.
The coloured background design references the Voronoi tessellation patterns found on a dragonfly wing. The patterns can be described and created by a mathematical formula and have been applied in a wide range of fields including astrophysics, epidemiology and aviation.
Finlay says although the new website looks quite straightforward to a user, it has quite a lot of technology in the back end.
“It’s a static website that’s built using Hakyll (a Haskell library). The source files are stored in GitHub and the built HTML is put on the web server from there, so there’s no content management system, no database and no dynamic elements. All interactivity is done on the user’s device, client side.”
“The advantage for us it that it’s all in the git code, so it always works and it deals with all the changes. Nothing is ever lost – as time goes by, you create a git log of the old versions, so you can always go back to exactly how your site was.”
The website has new case studies highlighting the range of Dragonfly’s work and updated news and staff profiles. Publications are available for download from the site, and are now searchable.
“We’re involved in a much wider range of work now than was reflected by the old site. Our website is a place to showcase recent projects, but we’d also love people to come by and have a chat about how we could maybe help them with a data problem.”