New Orleans Gets a Face Lift
Every once in a while in the course of designing websites - a designer will have altruistic motives, defined vision, and a great direction when he or she conceptualizes a website that is yet to be developed.
These moments of clarity are when designing actually becomes not a a job, but a cause. This is when work gets to be fun.
The hardest moments are when these website designs start so well, and end so… well… bad.
Last year when designing Revive-NewOrleans.org our team started out with some fantastic ideas. Working on a project that we all felt would be “more meaningful than the average project” it is easy to get inspired. Our client is actually doing stunning work in the area and changing peoples lives. We as artists like the idea of contributing to this with design and development work.
The project started well, in fact the printed materials and advertising we worked on for the project was literally tear jerking. The website also started with a rush of inspiration. As time wore on… and as the days passed while the project came closer to completion something strange happened.
Even though every piece of the project seemed right, every design concept seemed brilliant, the finished project was just not as moving as I had hoped.
Don’t get me wrong - the finished product was an attractive website. But there is a difference between an attractive website and something that says “YES YES THAT WAS WHAT I WANTED TO EXPRESS!!!”
I came to the realization that I was not satisfied with the finished product. In fact, because it did not meet my expectations I began to like it less and less, until I didn’t even like the website at all.
This often happens to designers and developers. The more you look at a design, or an image the less you are going to like it. In fact in design school they teach you to go with your first impressions and let it go after that. Like any art, too much examination will lead an artist to hate their own work.
This was not the case with this project. I did like the design when it launched, it was a nice looking website.
The problem is my expectations were: “this has to be the best design I create for the entire year” and it just didn’t happen.
So this is a great time in design (occasionally time permitting) to re-design or re-engineer the project. It was time to make some alterations, and some content changes, and so in my free-time I decided to bring the project back on track.
I began with some simple ideas, some advise from the organizations director, and now roughly 10 hours later… I have something that I believe says, “Yes, I am an important organization doing important work in a devastated part of the world, but there is hope!”
So today in the spirit of the beginning of the year I introduce a new face to an existing project:
