The Washington Apple Commission is responsible for marketing fresh Washington apples in more than 30 countries around the world, as well as acting as the go-to resource for apple information domestically. We delivered a new, beautifully branded website worthy of our state’s most famous export.

We added eye-catching elements while dialing into a longstanding brand reputation.

WAC has been a core part of the Washington apple community since the 1930s. We didn’t want to ditch the long history of the organization, but absolutely wanted to give them a contemporary digital presence. 

The primary typeface across the site is evocative of WAC’s logo that’s been in play since the 1980s, and the serif font and deep green palette emphasize the homegrown, hand-picked nature of the industry — what’s more down-to-earth than apples? We balanced that heritage vibe with giant, juicy photos of the fruit, plus fresh splashes of color and nifty interactive moments, like quiz cards and a scrolling ticker across the homepage. The curved type paths on a few of our homepage content blocks provided a fun development challenge — since the site is translated from English into a variety of languages, we needed to make sure the design would work with a range of character types, text lengths, and reading from right to left. Pretty fun. 

Combining content created more compelling experiences.

WAC wanted a website that was simple to manage, but also allowed for more functionality than their original WordPress build. We agreed. We craved a more robust on-page experience across each category of WAC’s content, as opposed to what felt like a collection of one-off pages.

We designed and built the database in WordPress so that content was more interconnected and ultimately more engaging for the user. Now folks exploring the types of Washington apples can also see which apples are the sweetest, or the best for pie — and all WAC has to do is check a box for each apple in their WordPress dashboard. Likewise, recipes can be quickly tagged and sorted, and grower stories are based on what apple growing region they live in.