Zumtobel Sustainability Website
Technical consulting, project planning and development of a dedicated sustainability platform for Zumtobel.
The starting point
Zumtobel develops lighting solutions for architecture and buildings, with sustainability playing an increasingly important role across its products, services and overall strategy.
The idea was to create a dedicated digital platform where these topics could come together and be explored beyond the limitations of the existing corporate website.
I joined the project as a consultant, working closely with Zumtobel, designer Sebastian Gratzer from ESGE and my team at PAKD.
We started with a Project Canvas workshop to get everyone around the same table and define what we were actually building. Together we worked through the objectives, audiences, content, functionality, responsibilities and technical requirements before moving into design and development.
Finding the right technical setup
One of my main responsibilities was defining the technical approach for the project.
The website needed to give the editorial team plenty of freedom to create visually rich content while keeping the frontend flexible enough for the custom design and interactions we wanted to build.
We chose Storyblok as a headless CMS and Nuxt for the frontend.
The separation between content and presentation gave Sebastian room to develop a distinctive visual language without forcing the design into a traditional CMS structure. At the same time, the Zumtobel team received an editorial system that made it possible to manage and expand the content independently.
Design by ESGE, development by PAKD
Sebastian Gratzer from ESGE was responsible for the design of the platform, while the development was handled by my team at PAKD.
My role sat between the different parts of the project. I consulted on the technical implementation, helped translate the design into a workable technical concept and worked closely with the development team as the platform took shape.
I enjoy this position in a project because design and technology inevitably influence each other. An interaction that looks simple in a design can have significant technical implications, while a technical possibility can sometimes open up an idea that was not considered initially.
Working closely together meant we could have those conversations as they came up instead of discovering the consequences much later.
Connecting it to the existing ecosystem
The platform also needed to connect with Zumtobel's existing marketing systems.
We integrated forms and related functionality with Salesforce Pardot, allowing leads and enquiries generated through the sustainability website to flow into the systems already used by the company.
This was an important part of the technical concept. A new website should fit into the existing digital landscape rather than become another isolated system that needs to be managed separately.
From workshop to handover
The project ran from 2022 until 2023, when the completed platform was handed over to Zumtobel.
For me, it is a good example of how I like to approach digital projects: start by getting a clear understanding of what needs to be built, make the important technical decisions early, and stay close enough to design and development to solve questions when they actually arise.
It also shows how well a relatively small group of specialists can work together. Zumtobel brought the subject matter and internal knowledge, Sebastian shaped the visual experience, PAKD built the platform, and I helped connect the different parts from the first workshop through to the final handover.