Novomi Vax

Overview

Novomi Vax is developing a vaccination-like platform to reprogram ‘cold’ tumours — those that evade the immune system — into ‘hot’ ones that the body can fight. As their first external web partner, Jonathon Simpson & Co. was engaged to design and build a credibility-first fundraising website targeting investors, pharma BD partners, and clinical collaborators.

The Brief

The client needed a site that felt institutional — closer to a mature biotech like Hongene than a startup landing page — while still telling an early-stage fundraising story with scientific authority and design clarity. The primary goal: instil trust and prompt investor contact.

Design Direction

The design is built around the Novomi Vax brand colour (#317FB3) with a clean, high-contrast medical aesthetic. Key decisions:

• Full-bleed Pexels video hero with a static overlay headline for immediate impact
• Scroll-triggered text animations that activate on first scroll — subtle enough not to slow readability, deliberate enough to signal quality
• Institutional typographic hierarchy with generous whitespace, mirroring the clinical confidence of leading biotech sites
• Section structure ordered for a fundraising narrative: problem → science → team → pipeline → contact

Technical Build

• Astro (static-first, content collections ready for future news/publications layer)
• Tailwind CSS for rapid, design-token-driven styling
• Cloudflare Pages for zero-cost global CDN delivery — critical for a credibility site with international investor audiences
• Architecture reused and simplified from the JS&C agency site codebase — typed config, scoped components, no unnecessary JavaScript

Role

Full design and development — visual direction, Astro build, animation system, copy structure, and deployment.

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Outcome: Designed and built a credibility-first investor platform that presents complex oncology science with institutional clarity, positioning an early-stage biotech for fundraising and partnership conversations.