RCF is excited to announce the launch of the new cmom.com for the Children’’s Museum of Memphis. The Museum was looking for an improved user experience, a fresh design and a content management system. Some of the improved features are a new internal search, a new calendar and an improved process for making donations and purchasing memberships.

the design process

To kick off the redesign, I started by reviewing the current site along with the client. We defined a few things that they wanted to do better. Our main concerns were based around usability, interaction and color. We also wanted to take advantage of some of the great photography that the museum already had. Our first point to address was to sites usability. We had to make the information easier to find, so before we ever started exploring color schemes or typography styles, we set out to create a clear and easy to understand architecture for the information. The decision was made to use a top navigation and nest subcategories under one of seven navigation titles. Additionally we identified a few areas of the site that we wanted to call out on the homepage and a few areas of the site that would be needed on every page. Once the structure of the navigation, homepage and footer started to take shape, we were ready to start developing the sites look and feel.

After exploring a few different visual directions, I decided to present two designs to the museum’’s staff. The first had an open feel, vibrant colors, geometric shapes and a focus on negative space. The second design had more tightly defined spaces, more dimension, and more texture. After presenting the comps, the staff at the museum all agreed the the first design was a better fit for their brand and their audience, and I agreed 100%.

Next we started to refine the color scheme. After trying a variety of colors pallets, we found a good mixture of colors that complemented the primary colors from the logo, but also gave the site a little more of a sophisticated look and feel.

After a homepage layout and a color pallete was set, the next step was to design a few landing page templates. Studying the information that the museum wanted on these pages, I set out to design a template for pages that would primarily hold information, image heavy pages, and pages that needed to promote a primary action. With all this in hand, It was time to move into building out the HTML and CSS and implement a content management system. In my next post I will write more about why I picked Drupal, and how I am using Google Calendar, Google Maps, Flash and jQuery on the new site.

After some research, I decided that Drupal would be a good fit for the Children’s Museum of Memphis, It seemed to be powerful enough to fit the site’s needs, simply enough to implement and the community of active developers was a plus. Not to mention the cost, it was easy to fit into the budget of this privately owned non-profit.

Another priority for the site was to automate a few items that were being done manually. Some of those things were processing memberships, collecting donations, and booking birthday parties. This is another problem that was easily solved with Drupal. With the plug-ins available for Ubercart, and its easy integration with Paypal, we were able to make these transaction points all available online.

Another great set of free tools I used to mange content came straight from Google. The museum is running a google calendar, and with all of the functionality built into it like detailed event pop-ups, tabs to sort by week, month or agenda, and the ability to subscribe to the museums calendar, it seemed to be a great fit. The site also uses Google maps for directions to the property.

I had a little help on the flash portion and a few questions answered on the front end development, so many thanks to Tony of askthecssguy.com and Luis of torointeractive.net, both lent a hand.

These apps were designed as an inhouse designer for Hilton Worldwide.

Hilton Hotels site for the Japanese source market. The project was done as an inhouse designer for Hilton Worldwide. hilton.co.jp

Hilton Hotels wedding portal for the Japanese source market. The project was done as an inhouse designer for Hilton Worldwide. hilton.co.jp

The Children’s Museum of Memphis launched it new site earlier this year. I have written a few posts detailing the design process and a little bit about the technical end.

You can read those here:
New site for the Childrens Museum of Memphis and
A Quick Look Under the Hood of cmom.com

Power Products Inc wanted to increase their web presence for a particular portion of their business, so we decided to create a micro site for their line of generator connection cabinets. One of their major concerns was to have a site that would score well in search engines for several industry specific key words.

The Sites intent is to drive users (primarily electrical engineers) to download information about one of three products they offer and either user the sites contact form or to call and start a dialog about how Power Products, Inc can help.

The site can be visited at www.generatorconnectioncabinet.com

Share the Word apparel was a company with a local following, looking to expand into an national market, and a new website was one of the tools they needed to get their products in front of a national audience. Working with their sales manager and the designer of this line of t-shirts we came up with a fresh clean design just in time for them to be featured on the Today Show in late 2007.

As they tend to do, this web site has changed significantly since it was first created, you can see the current site at stwapparel.com, The original design can be seen at here

In 2006 Ducks Unlimited launched a new and improved site, They turned to the internal design team to design some base templates that would reflect the organizations brand identity and that would dovetail with the print and environmental media that was already being used.

microsite for Ducks Unlimited’s Hunt & Home Program. The Hunt & Home program was intended to get the spouses and friends of members more involved with DU by giving them an outlet to host social gatherings that centered on sharing the DU conservation message while fund raising with a great line of wild game cooking equipment and seasonings.

Every year Ducks Unlimited produces an Annual Report, It is used as a development tool too recognize sponsors and major donors, it is also used to communicate the conservation goals and accomplishments of the orginazations volunteers and supporters. I designed this report for 2004. 2005 and 2006, but the 06 report was by far my favorite.

The concept we chose was “Road Warriors”. The intent was to show how DU was traveling to all four corners of North America to do the Continents most critical wetlands conservation work.

In 2006 Ducks Unlimited launched it’s Wetlands for Tomorrow Capital Campaign, and the in house team was asked to design the case statement for this campaign with it’s lofty goals of raising 1.7 billion dollars. One of the major communications goals of this piece was to highlight DU’s areas of critical need

For this piece and several others that would accompany this campaign, we went with the concept of “Imagine”, it gave us alot of visuals for some great photography and plenty of talking points.

Crowd Products specializes in licensed products, specifically collegiate and NASCAR products.

The fundraising model behind Ducks Unlimited is its local event system run by volunteers, Every year the Event Merchandise team puts together a product catalog for it local chapters, This catalog was highlighted by a 70th anniversary shotgun with an engraving done by David Mass. We really wanted to reflect the look of this artwork for the catalog, so with a little metallic spot color and a varnish we gave the cover the look we were after.

Part of Ducks Unlimited’s Wetlands for Tomorrow campaign goals were to increase its number of sponsors, One of the ways we tried to get this message out was to create a kit that local committees could use at their events, it consisted of posters, table tents and brochures. They were all based on the campaigns concept of “Imagine”.

Ducks Unlimited the Magazine is a bimonthly publication concentrating on waterfowl hunting and wetlands conservation. This was a 6 page spread that focused on North America’s top waterfowling destinations.

GSC line is an ad specialty company that prints and embroiders gloves, vests and other safety equipment.

The challenge we faced for this set of ads was to show the environment of a Hunt & Home party, and tie that into how it can help to save wildlife habitat. The solution to this was to let the imagery show the social atmosphere and the products, and use the headline to tie in the idea that the party benefits the wild game habitat, we did that using a recipe name in place of a species name.