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Public Information SystemChenequa
Village Homepage in a Desktop Browser
Police Homepage in a Desktop Browser
Currently Featured Project is in Process
More Photos Coming Soon Below in placeholders
From start to finish, I pitched, planned, led and launched a complementary set of websites for a local village and police department. The redesigned public information system included 77+ webpages and 350 municipal documents. I structured the content, navigation and visual systems to improve accessibility, usability and developed a long-term cascading style sheet and SEO best practices.
Project Management:
Senior Graphic Designer & Creative Consultant
The Situation
The village needed a proper website to organize the municipal information. From basic queries and forms to ordinances and meeting agendas and minutes, information was frustrating to find. The site was visually and informationally disorganized and chaotic. There was one main long scrolling menu anchoring the site as well as a spreadsheet type frame holding the village seal, name and address and village hall photo. The police department was especially challenging to navigate as it lived within the village structure instead of beside it. Overall, it was an explosion of information and colors. 💫
Branding at the municipal level was new. I reviewed other municipalities and other organizations websites for aesthetics, functionality, features, and content. Few municipalities, especially smaller ones, were doing it as well as commercial entities were. Some places simply had logos and not much more. Harshly gridded and visually garish chaos was the look of the time. The goal was to make it a better product from every angle. Pixel polishing at its finest. 👀
Research Direction
Design & Rationale
Google analytics was installed on the back end and optimized to capture data. As for the community they were not very interested at the time. They were very outdoors focused and lived in the village to get away from the grind of a city and technology. The land and lakes were a respite. Migrating to a useable and beautiful website would take time and staff direction or enthusiasm of early adopters. As the community adopted the site, it fielded more inquiries and reduced the need for personal visits to village hall or police department. 📊
Results
❋ Photos & WebcamA wonderful local photographer and resident provided beautiful nature shots to feature on the website. I vibrantly retouched and optimized the photos for use in a seasonal slideshow to be swapped each quarter: Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter.
The Earthy Green and Warm Neutral Gray colors were selected for their natural aesthetic. Green was mainly used for the village representing the land and nature. A corresponding Earthy Blue was chosen to represent the police department and the water orientation of the community. It was designated a “Tree City” and during the redesign also became known as a “Bird City.” The village was naturally proud of the designations and wanted to highlight them on the website.
❋ AestheticTraditional, not stuffy, and information-rich. 👩🏻💻
❋ ColorsBonus
The main font is a traditional serif font with little extra flairs particularly to the Q which is highlighted in the village name. This font was also used for the Main Headers anywhere where small amounts of graphical type could safely be used to be visually pleasing and still technically useful. The body font is a sans serif traditionally paired font that would work well visually and on the back end in the days of few font choices. A solid choice all around especially for the web.
The researched and gathered content became so useful that department fielded outside calls from the public looking for more information. It was reaching people well beyond the community as a source of public information. ????Ideally, clients would provide new content to be included. Often the designer also ends up gathering the content as well. 🎯
❋ Fonts