Veerle's blog

As promised this the sequel to our chat about the Net2 project that I finished a while ago. In part 1 I talked about creating the brand/identity for NetSquared so if you didn’t read it, I suggest that you go there first to get a better understanding about the project. This part will be about the creation of the website. Once you have the final logo and colors beaten down you’re all set to start the design phase of the website.

The first building blocks

I don't know if all designers work in a similar fashion but the logo and colors are always my starting points. I know that some don't think about color right away, but I almost always do because color has such a huge impact on the final outcome. Another element that is important to the first building blocks is communication. That's where I always find a great difference between let's say a Belgian or US company. Here they tend to organize a meeting for every little detail and the motto is "the more the merrier ". I mean no disrespect but most of those are a pure waste of time. I understand the necessity to sometimes meet face to face but from my experience many of them could be handled by just supplying me a document with the goals of the project. That is something that a client should know from the start of the project or it will became a problem later on. So far we never had a communication problem with a foreign client thanks to all modern technologies iChat, iChat Video, Skype, etc. The time difference is only a matter of setting out some guidelines that you are not longer available after a certain hour.

The Design

The goals for the website were to give "Share and Build" the most visibility since the project was about helping hundreds of thousands of non-profit organizations (NPOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) successfully utilize the community empowering capabilities of the Internet to increase their impact and achieve social change. The first thing I created was the header. My mind was already sure to use rounded corners because those elements are also found in the Chalet typeface of the logo. To visualize the build and share items I came up with the idea to create icons in a similar look as the icon in the logo. The last element of the page is the navigation at the bottom. My client really loved the way Flickr used their navigation and wanted something similar for Net2. Personally this was not one of my favorites decisions because I thought about the inner-pages and the fact that these could be very long, so the user had to scroll all the way down. Another tough cookie design wise was to make something beautiful of all the items that needed a place in this navigation.

The challenges that we faced

In each project a designer faces there are challenges that one needs to overcome. That was no different in this Net2 project. If you are a passionate designer your work is like a little baby and you want it to treasure it as long as possible. Reality is harsh and that's especially true when the marketing people enter the scene after seeing the design. They like the design so the sales people are not the boogie men but they always need the largest screen estate for sponsoring. In the case of a non-profit this the life line of the project, so it's very important. In my initial design I placed the sponsors under the content in a subtle way. The problem was they were outside the 800x600 area by a fraction and the sales people didn't like that. So I had to rethink my design again. Below you'll find some of the design iterations.

You'll even notice that there is a big difference between what is online now and my final design. The sponsor logos are much bigger. It comes down to the point that you have to let it go at a certain point and hope that the client understands the value of keeping things professionally and pretty design wise. I could waste a lot of time in bringing issues forward to the client each time I see something that is not right but that's the real world for you. I am a perfectionist so that's my problem ;o)

Interesting stuff on the site

It is cool to read how technology can help the non-profits sector. Of interest is also the vlog section, short video interviews with interesting people like Matt Mullenweg, lead developer of the blog software WordPress, Buzz Andersen, developer of Cocoalicious and PodWorks, Craig Newmark of Craig's List and Mena Trott, President and Co-Founder of Six Apart.

The NetSquared Conference

Their conference in San Francisco is coming close now (May 30th) and they have a huge list of interesting speakers like Chris Messina of Flock and BarCamp/WineCamp and Tantek Çelik, Chief Technologist at Technorati and co-founder of the microformats.org, two gentlemen that I had the pleasure of meeting briefly at SXSW in Austin. I hope it will be a huge success and I wish them all the luck. Deadlines where tight sometimes but I really enjoyed working on this project ;)