Unilever Archives

Located in Port Sunlight, Liverpool (the historic home of Unilever in the UK), the staff at Unilever Art, Archives and Records Management look after one of the most important collections of business records in the world.

With over 50 world renowned brand histories, the collections contain original documents, printed sources, packaging, images and films, an example being the first advert that was ever aired on television for S. R Gibbs toothpaste. Well-known brands, such as Colman’s, Wall’s, Lipton, Persil, Pears Soap, Vaseline, Dove, Sunsilk, Lux, PG Tips and Marmite, all feature in the collections.

We lead the design of their new digital archive, working with the core team at Unilever to produce architectural structure, wireframe prototypes, workshops and digital art direction in adherence with their globally recognised brand identity.

Functionality included creating hierarchical structures for over 100 separate collections, forms for selecting records to view onsite or request to reproduce commercially and privately, user-accounts to save records and search criteria, and encouraging audiences to contribute through sharing personal memories and images online.

Exploring the archives includes useful filtering and autocomplete search fields for assisting users in finding material. The search template also includes a complete archive hierarchal tree view, organising the entire archive into an expandable view to help audiences in contextualising the level of records and where they live in the entirety of Unilever's record structure.

Ensuring cross-platform accessibility, the website is fully responsive and includes unique behaviour and layouts for hand-held devices to cater to users across the globe. Templates are made compact and filters are collapsed to help audiences focus on the content of the page.

Enabling users to request reproductions, request to view specific record in person on-site, save to their own personal albums, and share on social media. Records also display a hierarchal view to see the nested level of the record in the archive structure, ability to view in a lightbox mode as well as metadata details and relationships to other records.

Providing audiences with information on visiting the physical archive in Port Sunlight, users are presented with guidance on directions, questions for students and academics, donating material to the archives and requesting a visit through an online form.

The online form helped to streamline the archive staffs processes when responding and filing user requests, previously being a pdf format causing unnecessary efforts for both the user and staff. The customisable form allows staff to add and edit fields, and to create multiple forms based on subject, while also allowing the request to be forwarded to the relevant member of staff depending on the subject chosen.

Utilising the colourful palette from the Unilever brand, we ensured a dynamic and variable treatment was employed to promote the identity and avoid a static or repetitive interface.

Visitors to the digital archive have the ability to create their own accounts where they can save searches and records, particularly helping to connect with specialist audiences and researchers who may want to collate materials and organise them for use at a later date.

Users can create albums of records and add titles and descriptions to help organise and file them, with the ability to share them publicly.