A loud, illustrated website for a brand studio named after the Freetown poda-poda.
Visit the live siteClientStudio Poda · concept studio
TypeWordPress website · Custom theme + plugin
Built withWordPress · PHP · Vanilla JS
StatusLive
The brief.
Studio Poda is a concept brand and digital studio we created as a portfolio build. It is named after the poda-poda, the loud, hand-painted minibus that carries the whole of Freetown: bright paint, big lettering, room for everybody.
The site had to feel as loud and joyful as the bus, show 24 projects and a full case study, and still be fast on a phone with a nearly empty data bundle. And the whole thing had to be editable in WordPress without a page builder.
What we built.
Panels over a street wallpaperRounded panels sit on a hand-drawn Freetown wallpaper: buses, palms, papayas and greetings in Krio, Yoruba and Twi.
Poda, the mascotA grinning minibus in the hero, and a side-view bus that drives across the page when it scrolls into view.
24-project portfolioEvery project has its own illustration, with discipline filters that work instantly and still work without JavaScript.
Case study templateFacts, results, chapters, a gallery, the brand kit and the crew. Each section hides itself until it is filled in.
Hop in enquiry formSaved in the dashboard and emailed to the team, with spam traps and a rate limit.
One-click setupA custom plugin creates the pages, menus, crew, services, projects and stories in one go.
Decisions that shaped it.
Drawn, not photographed.Five paints, ink outlines and no stock photos. All 40+ illustrations were drawn as code, so they stay sharp and weigh almost nothing.
No page builder.A custom theme and a custom plugin instead of Elementor: lighter pages, fewer plugins to patch, and content editors can change without breaking the layout.
Loud, but kind.Big type and motion, with real focus states, a skip link, a phone menu and animation that stops for anyone who has asked for reduced motion.
9page templates designed and built
24illustrated projects
0page-builder plugins