Awwwards Site of the Day · 11.12.2011
Site of the Day.
Laid on a table.
Restaurant websites usually serve a menu. For La Maddalena in Wrocław we laid the whole table: long, raw wood, loaded with Mediterranean flavours, and you moved along it sideways instead of scrolling down. On 11 December 2011, Awwwards served it as Site of the Day.
From the idea to the last pinned note: concept, design, code and CMS, plus the logo and the printed menu. All from one kitchen.
All from our kitchen.
No agency in between: we worked straight for the restaurant, from the first sketch to the CMS.
A long table of raw wood.
Back then La Maddalena cooked Mediterranean and nothing else, hence the name. Instead of saying so, we put it on the table: raw planks, olive oil, herbs, spices from the south of Europe and plates that are hard to look away from. The information lay on the table too, like notes left by a waiter.
Click, and the table slides.
The menu didn't scroll the page, it moved the table. Click a tab and the view glided along the table, with dishes and notes sliding in, each at its own pace. Try it:
A table, not a page
You don't scroll down. You walk along a table, from the starters to the map.
A menu on notes
Dish of the day, lunch, news: all pinned to the table. We designed the printed menu, too.
Click and glide
A click moves the table, and plates and notes roll in at different speeds. Parallax, vintage 2011.
Southern lettering
Hand-drawn letters and type straight out of an Italian trattoria, with an old map of Sardinia on the table.
Food photography
The dishes were shot by a food photographer. We served them on the table.
The logo
Drawn for us by Anna Nadolska. The restaurant still wears it today.
Włodkowica 9
Where the table stood in 2011, right in the centre of Wrocław. Today La Maddalena cooks by the Odra.
A schematic of the principle, not a rebuild of the 2011 site: the original is in the screenshot above. Tab names as in the original menu.
A logo that stayed.
The logo was drawn for us by Anna Nadolska: graphic designer, sculptor and painter (Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław), who also shaped the graphic design with us. Her line hung above the guests of Mama Manousch too, the same owner's other restaurant (today Bistro Stu Mostów): Ania designed its logo and the artwork on its ceiling. La Maddalena still wears her logo today. Sadly, Ania is no longer with us (R.I.P.). This case is for her too.
Site of the Day, 11 December 2011.
Awwwards, one of the most respected web design showcases, made it its Site of the Day. In 2011, sideways navigation with parallax was still a fresh dish.
“As one of very few Polish websites, we have been recognised by a highly regarded industry portal as the so-called site of the day on the Internet. […] together with INFINI.TO, the site's creator, we keep working to improve it.”- La Maddalena on Facebook (translated from Polish)
Average of 8 Awwwards votes. Overall 7.71, top score 8.75.
Where this comes from.
This case study draws on INFINI.TO's own project archive and on published sources: