Trend Setting Design » Web Design

Greensboro Womans Club Website & Logo

Joseph Cotten — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 15:14:27 +0000

I was asked by the Greensboro Woman’s Club to create a new website design for them. They had an older site that no longer served their needs or their audience and needed a fresh look that would represent their now-younger members. The new site needed to convey the vibrancy and activity of the Club as well as showcase the amazing Weir-Jordan House that the Club owns and meets in. The house is one of the original homes built in Greensboro, and is listed on the National Historic Register. The Woman’s Club takes care of the house and rents it out for weddings, banquets, etc.

The Woman’s Club didn’t really have a definite logo, so I created a customized script logotype for them that they could identify with.

As part of the package, I maintain the site for the Club on an ongoing basis, adding new photos when necessary and update the content on the site.

Website Design: Awaken City Church

Joseph Cotten — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:33:04 +0000

If you haven’t checked out the Identity and Branding Project: Awaken City Church post, you’ll probably want to. The website design is based upon the brand mentioned in that post.

Awaken City Church needed several things: a way to quickly showcase upcoming events and sermon series, play videos, have realtime Twitter updates from various Twitter accounts, post sermons online, blog, display a map, have multiple administrator permission levels and have the usual “About Us” material.

To provide a solution, I used the Joomla content management system with the K2 component for user and article management. This setup allows church volunteers to manage the site without having access to sensitive information on the site. I created custom graphics for the site which go along with the brand’s ideas of graffiti, inner city, underground movement/power to the people, etc.

Below are two more screenshots of the site.

Custom graphics displaying photos of church leadership. Twitter module on right.

Screenshot of Google map integration

This project included several other elements, which each have their own portfolio entries:

Awaken City Church logo and brand design

Pre-launch promotional card design, tee shirt design and exterior signage

Captain’s Coffee Ecommerce Website

Joseph Cotten — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 05:01:21 +0000

This is a website that I created for a small business that sells unroasted (green) coffee beans, home roasters, grinders and brewers. Their target audience is all over the place age-wise, with a slight majority of their customers being over the age of 50. The company is unique in the marketplace, as they have lots of character, absolutely love what they do, and they specifically wanted the site to reflect that sensibility. One of the things they wanted was for the site to look like a slightly disorganized mom & pop store!

The site serves two functions: to provide a store front to sell their products (both food and non-food items), and to give their customers lots of articles to read. At first, I organized the site via two menus: Explore Coffee and Buy Coffee. Since they used my CMS service, they began writing up all the “Explore” articles during development while I set up the store. They ended up not using the simplified two menu system, opting for a less-organized approach. To solve the usability issues of having unclear navigation, I added a section to the top of each page with two custom graphics that link to either the main Explore section, or to the Store Front.

The look of the site is based on the corporate identity that I created for the Captain’s Coffee, including the logo, logotype, color scheme and the overall “feel” of the site.

Because of the CMS service, the business’ employess and owners can change anything on the site that they like. They told me multiple times that they love the way they are able to update the site, including all the store’s products. They had been using an ecommerce solution called MonsterCommerce, provided by Network Solutions. It’s a rather cumbersome process to get anything done on a MonsterCommerce site when compared with the system I give my customers.

So far, the feedback from both my client and their customers has been glowing! Their older customers find the site intuitive and easy to navigate, and their younger customers enjoy the updated look and the security of the integrated credit card payments with SSL encryption.

Have a look and let me know what you think!

The Easter Offering Event Promotion

Joseph Cotten — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:52:36 +0000

A local church is hosting a large, regional creative arts event, and hired me to head up the promotion for the event. I did some printed materials, as you can see above, including a 4×6 postcard design that functions as an invite card, with map and event information, and stands alone as a promotional piece, meaning that it isn’t required for a person to give any additional information to make the card “work”. I also did two poster designs: one for 11×17 output, and another smaller version for 8.5×11 output. These were taken and posted in public advertising locations, such as restaurants, grocery stores, and so forth. I also did an outdoor banner to clarify the event’s location.

I also set up a small blog site to help those involved begin to build some internet buzz around the event and created a Flickr account for pre-production photos. To help the artists and coordinators, I wrote a series of “How To” emails designed to help everyone get past some fears about blogging. It’s interesting to me how many people are hesitant to blog because they feel that their writing won’t be appreciated, so I took some time to help them catch the vision for what a blog can do, and they really are having fun with it! It’s been great to see a group of people step outside of their comfort zones, and flourish because of it.

Awaken Youth Conference Website

Joseph Cotten — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:14:27 +0000

Another marketing component to the Awaken Youth Conference, the website needed to be a simple blog format that would encourage the leaders, speakers and workshop leaders to write articles. The purpose of it is to help the leaders get to know the students before the conference begins, and to let the students start conversations with the leaders, and with each other.

Some special functionality that I built into the site includes a simple registration page that tracks all the registration information, and links to the conference sponsor’s PayPal account. I also set up Twitter integration and did all the copy writing on the site (besides the blog posts). In addition, I took care of registering the domain name, opening up a hosting account, and installing the blogging software.

Redesign vs Realign

Joseph Cotten — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:17:51 +0000

One of the most crucial questions to ask when designing a new corporate identity or any of it’s constituent parts is, “What of the old identity still works? What needs to stay, and what needs to go?” Often, a company already has a strong brand presence or a large customer base, and therefore needs to remain recognizable. Other times, as demonstrated in the article below, a client may have a good web presence, and simply needs to “realign” their site to better meet their customers’ needs. The question at this point becomes one of “Do I redesign their site, or do I realign it?” The difference between those two terms is actually quite large. A redesign could be compared to starting with a clean slate, while a realignment is like taking an outline, and erasing the sub-headings, but keeping the main points unchanged. Many designers automatically jump to a redesign because it puts the designer in complete control, whereas a realignment takes more work and thought to get a company’s identity to morph into a more effective one.

Take, for instance the United Parcel Service (UPS) logo:

UPS Logo - Old and New

The old logo, designed by Paul Rand was actually amazing. It’s actually quite a bit stronger than the new logo, but the change to the new logo was the right move to make. UPS successfully grew it’s “UPS” brand to be a globally recognized force. It’s rare to hear someone call the company “United Parcel Service”; rather, everyone instantly equates “UPS” to package delivery. The old logo was a big part of making that happen, with the symbolism of a package at the top and a shield on the bottom, combining the ideas of parcel, strength and safety. As the company came into the new century, their customer base had grown younger, more modern, and more demanding. In addition, UPS no longer had to “spell out” the parcel nature of the business. Therefore, the shift away from depicting a package, and more toward a modern interpretation of a shield was an excellent choice. The new logo is a perfect example of a design realign – it kept the “soul” of the original identity, but got rid of extraneous elements.

Here’s a link to the article that got me thinking about this:

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/redesignrealign

My one disagreement with the List Apart article is that I think there are more times where a redesign is necessary than Mr. Moll gives credit for. There are internal company issues that can be helped by a redesign. Often a company can become mired in sundry ruts, from the way employees view the company, to the way customer support treats their employess, and often a corporate identity redesign can help everyone in the company to get jolted out of those ruts. Therefore, often times a redesign benefits the company in ways other than attracting new clientele or better serving the current customer base.

However, it remains a good question to ask, and a good reminder to all of us designers – don’t jump the gun to a full redesign! It will require more planning and work, but it could be that a realignment will better serve your clients.

All Quiet on the Blogging Front

Joseph Cotten — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:56:44 +0000

Hey gang,

Sorry about the blogging silence here recently. I’ve been quite busy with some time-critical projects. The good news is that I’ve been busy! The bad news is that I haven’t been able to put as much time into writing new posts. I’ve got some thoughts brewing that should prove helpful to a lot of people, so stay tuned!

Until then, here’s a couple of sneak peaks at soon-to-be-released web projects I’ve been working on:

http://www.theeasteroffering.com/

http://www.awakenyouthconference.com/

Time for a change

Joseph Cotten — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:39:22 +0000

VISIT THE OLD PORTFOLIO
I’m changing things up around here, moving toward a blog format instead of just a portfolio. I’ll still have my work here as a portfolio, but instead of just the images, I’ll be posting articles about the work, diving into my thought processes, and maybe even doing a few tutorials. More after the jump… I’m also going to be blogging about current and future design trends, and giving voice to my opinions on the state of the Design industry.

If you’re just here to see my portfolio, thanks! I’d love to help you set some trends! I don’t put pricing information on the site because each job has to be priced according to the need. As I’m still populating this new site, feel free to browse through my old site to see some of my past work.

Trend Setting Design old portfolio

Join in on the conversations!

New Grace Churches International Website

Joseph Cotten — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:33:27 +0000

This was an interesting and fun project to do. Grace Churches has had two previous websites, and neither one “filled the bill”, so the staff was a little wary to invest more money into a website. Once they realized what we were offering, with an easy to use Content Management System, integrated store functionality, blogging, secured communications, chat forums, photo and video galleries, searchable member church listings, near infinite expandability and more, they got excited about being able to finally have a site that met their needs. The catch: we only had one month to get it done, because it needed to be launched during Grace Churches’ annual community gathering! Talk about pressure! I worked together with my brother Ben over at Cotten:Tech, dividing up the work evenly. I took on all the graphics work, such as creating a customized template for the site, color scheme, and all other graphics. I also did all the copywriting on the site, and other more technical behind-the-scenes work.

We finished in time for the Grace Churches Leadership Team to look over the site, make a few changes to make sure it lined-up with their already-implemented corporate identity, and launch during the conference. The response from everyone at the conference was nothing short of astounding. We had live blogging during each session as well as live video streaming, so not only were the people at the conference able to be a part of live blogging discussions during the meetings, but other people in Grace Churches who weren’t able to attend the conference logged on to watch the live video feed and chat with the conference attendees. It stirred up a lot of excitement, and I’m confident that it will result in a community-wide momentum for everyone in Grace Churches.

Living Way Church

Joseph Cotten — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:22:15 +0000

Living Way Church, in Greensboro, NC is a growing church that’s getting filled up with young couples, but has some pretty deep historical roots dating back to the late 1970′s. The meetings are a mix of contemporary music, conservative teaching and people that love being together in community. I first created a corporate identity for them that would communicate those sensibilities of modern yet historical, conservative but not stodgy, clean cut without being dull. The website also had to reflect those ideas.

They didn’t ask for much, just a photo gallery, a news section that they could easily update, and an audio player for sermons. They didn’t want a blog or any other social networking add-ons, though they could want to implement them in the future.

The solution was to give them a Content Management System that would let them easily add news items and informational articles via a blog interface, without displaying the content in commentable blog format. The CMS will allow them to add social networking features in the future without any hassle.

The color scheme on the site is pulled entirely from color theory rules that were applied to the blue color in their logo. So, the orange buttons, red and tan headers, even the greys on the site are all complimentary to the blue of their logo. I also created custom graphics for the audio player loading animation, and the different website section icons. The rotating image banner is filled with pictures that were supplied to me, which I then retouched in Photoshop and added effects to give them a more organic/grunge feel. The purpose of the photos was to balance the cold/corporate feel of the rest of the site.

The response from everyone at Living Way has been positive, and I continue to do print design work for them regularly. The identity seemed to really resonate with both the church’s leaders and members. I also created business cards, letterhead and outdoor signage using the identity.