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Home  What We've Done KeweenawNow
KeweenawNow.com: a Soup-to-Nuts Web Site Project
"Everything is perfect. Thanks so much! Buenas noches!"
 This
 Web site publishes news, points
of view, and current happenings for the Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula. We
designed and built it from scratch, as we teamed with the client to
clarify the anticipated content and target audience.
The logo, a windblown pine on the shore of Lake Superior, evokes the
area's beautiful surroundings and suggests an environmental respect that's
critical to this Web site's publisher. The colors used throughout the site echo
the colors of the logo.
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 Community
discussion forums are available thanks to third-party software (ikonboard),
which we integrated into the Web site. We fully customized the forums for
content and to have a consistent look and feel with the rest of the site. We
also serve as moderator for the forums.
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Content-rich Web sites such as KeweenawNow.com will fail unless they offer
clear navigation. We worked closely with the client to analyze the planned
content in order to design an information architecture that would stand the test
of time. The result is an easy-to-navigate site that offers a natural archive
for news articles, viewpoints, and happenings that span multiple years.
The following close-up screenshot shows how a visitor can (1) navigate to other sections of
the site, (2) navigate hierarchically up through the Happenings pages, and (3)
navigate through an archive of Calendar pages.
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Sending Web site visitors off-site through external links can be off-putting.
As shown in the following screenshot, our design lets visitors know that a link will jump to another site by offering
a visible clue—a unique graphic next to the text link. This puts the
visitors in control, making it easy for
them to choose to finish reviewing the Web site before leaving it.
Also notice the large, clear type, which we selected specifically to make the
Web site easy to read for older visitors. (The area served by this site has an older
than average population that is reflected in its visitors.) The site resizes to
fit any computer monitor resolution (known as liquid design)—useful
to vision-impaired visitors who need to magnify the text further.
Home What We've Done KeweenawNow
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