The challenge proposed by Terry Fitzgerald was to design and develop a website to not only pay homage to the rich history of the company but also show it’s relevance in today’s surf culture scene. We therefore thought it would only be fitting to paint the picture with a timeless sense of style, an element of surf-grunge and a seamless mix of minimal layouts, utilising empty space to provide content room to breath and in-turn realising impact. Hot Buttered has been operating for over 50 years, navigating through countless twists and turns of the surf industry and the ever-changing trends of surf culture and style. Our goal with this site was to immortalise a brand that has given so much to the industry it helped shape on a global scale and create a platform to build and grow into the future.

Hot Buttered was also a big part of the up and coming bodyboard scene which started to emerge in the 80s and 90s. With numerous patented bodyboard innovations including material constructs, shapes and designs, as well as a list of talented team riders, Hot Buttered played a key role in paving the way for emerging bodyboarders in a virtually undiscovered scene. It was therefore only right that a key section of the homepage was reserved for the prone surfer community.

The typography and type treatments used on the site have taken direct influence from surfboard shapes, lines, graphics and dimension sketches. All good surfboards have a unique tangibility, once you pick one up it’s hard to put it down without feeling all the smooth to sharp curves and edges. The clean lines and curves are easy on the eyes, which is exactly the same vibe we get from our chosen hero typeface, ‘Displace’. Seamless transitions from bold to thin and sharp to smooth fall in line with the descriptions of your favourite board. Adding a hand crafted, human touch to the site, hand-drawn sketched elements were applied to highlight key words or phrases. Like an artist’s signature on a painting, the dimension sketches on the bottom of their boards are a shaper’s personal mark on their work, framed in fibreglass and resin. We aimed to bring through that same artist’s touch with the addition of these sketched elements.