Eleventy in a Box
A premium Eleventy starter kit for designers and developers who want to spend less time setting up the same project structure and more time designing distinctive websites.
How I Helped Verkehrsteiner clearly communicate their transport planning services
How I helped a Swiss transport planning consultancy communicate specialist knowledge more clearly through editorial design, illustration, and thoughtful typography.
Some businesses make physical products, while others sell their experience, judgement, and knowledge. They’re often the hardest businesses to design for because their expertise isn’t something people can see or hold.
Making specialist language accessible
The Bern-based consultancy specialises in transport planning, mobility, and urban infrastructure. Their work influences how people move through towns and cities, yet much of what they do happens long before a road is built or a junction is redesigned. Explaining that value on a website was always going to be the real challenge.
Projects like this always interest me because they’re never really about the industry they’re in. They’re about communication. Specialist businesses develop their own language over time, and one of my jobs is translating that language into something everyone can understand.
Looking beyond transport planning
Before sketching ideas or choosing colours, I spent time understanding how Verkehrsteiner worked. At first glance, transport planning looks like maps, traffic counts, regulations, and technical reports. The more I learned, the more I realised their story was really about movement. Helping cyclists, drivers, and pedestrians move safely around towns and cities.
I focused on showing relationships between people, places, and movement. The website became less about transport planning and more about helping visitors understand why that work matters.
Creating a visual language
Developing the graphic language became one of the most enjoyable parts of the project. Rather than decorating the pages, each illustration introduces a service so that visitors can begin understanding the topic before they start reading. The colour palette remains restrained and supports the content instead of competing with it. Confident typography and generous spacing make technical information feel approachable.
As always, I developed an interactive Eleventy prototype before handing everything over to Verkehrsteiner’s development team.
What I learned
Many specialist businesses become so familiar with their work that they forget other people aren’t. Good design bridges that gap. It helps people understand expertise without reducing its depth, giving them confidence in both the business and the people behind it.
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July 1, 2026 • Andy Clarke • design