Knightmare.com

In 2009 and 2020, I worked on new official tribute sites for the children’s TV show, Knightmare.

Background

Knightmare was a much-loved fantasy adventure game show broadcast in the UK by Anglia Television between 1987 and 1994. The show used chromakey (blue screen) technology to generate an authentic dungeon environment with different backgrounds and graphics.

The endorsed fan website launched in 1999, hosted on Claranet. In 2009, I joined new webmaster Alan Boyd to consolidate and migrate the website to the Joomla CMS.

Ten years later, we embarked on a more ambitious project to redesign the site on a custom-build proprietary CMS and completely revamp the content for a mobile-first audience.

After 20 years, a lot of the assets – especially media – had become antiquated, so this became an exercise in content strategy and information architecture to showcase something new and different for fans to engage with.

New character pages for the new Knightmare.com (launched 2020)

My involvement

Auditing: I conducted a full audit to consolidate our resilient content into a tighter structure, creating space for new areas.

Strategy: I proposed a navigation based around new engagement points for fans, such as a revamped behind the scenes area. An object-orientated-style approach to content gave rise to new character and dungeon-room areas.

Content design: I wrote a lot of the material for the new site, adopting a mobile-first approach to keep content concise, well-designed, and user-focused.

User-testing: As part of a small team, I was the principal user test for design and CMS functionality, reporting on behaviour and user enhancements.

Migration: Many hours were spent preparing the new material and mapping it out in meticulous detail, often adapting to amended design principles or functionality. It was a labour of love, and nothing but the best would be good enough.