Dakar Challenge is all about the spirit of adventure and the opportunity to do something truly different for a few weeks of your life, and the website Optix has designed for the challenge organisers is all about reflecting that.

Organiser and self-styled ‘Crap Car Svengali’ Julian Nowill first got together a group of 55 ‘bangers’ in various states of disrepair, their drivers and passengers to share the experience of driving from Plymouth to Dakar in Senegal in 2003. The publicity this generated not only attracted 88 cars the following year, but also spawned a variety of copycat expeditions of varying repute.

Despite its success, Julian has always been determined to stick to the original ethos of the Challenge. It remains a part-time hobby run by himself and his wife Annette, simply offering people the chance to do something completely different and eye-opening, hopefully with a lot of laughs and a few tests of character along the way.

Participants are welcome to make charity drops on the journey, or auction their vehicles for local good causes once they reach their destinations, but the Challenge is not a charity event in itself.

Optix has designed a site that reflects the essence of what the Challenge is all about.

You will find stacks of information on the various challenges on offer this year and next – including off-roading in Morocco, and destinations such as Banjul (Gambia), Timbuktu (actually Bamako in Mali, but it sounds better!), The Silk Road and Murmansk in Northern Russia on pages that look like old parchment maps.

The comprehensive booking form features a question and answer section, ensuring entrants are left in no doubt as to what it is they are committing themselves to.

Nothing better illustrates the experience and the camaraderie of taking part in the challenges than the photographs and videos taken by participants over the years. Optix have not only built in a slide-show facility for still photographic memories, we also embedded YouTube on the site to show inspiring videos of previous trips.

At Optix Solutions we understand how important it is that a website is not only great to look at and simple to use, but that it consistently reflects the unique identity of the business or organisation.

With the constant flow of new technical and design innovations available to website designers, it is all too easy to get bogged down in the minutiae and lose sight of what it is your trying to convey.