New Life!
The popular North-Eastern ministry group Family Life tapped Squared Eye for design know-how, creative direction, and web consultation in creation of a slick new website and a little brand-lite. What a project!
Family Life engaged Squared Eye to redesign our website from top to bottom, and what we got was deeper and more thoroughly designed than we'd possibly imagined; I even danced when I saw the first design!
John Carter Creative Services Director
Its about Mood Thirty!
Once again the use of mood boards right at the beginning of the project helped us nail down the look and feel of what FAMILY LIfe needed to serve their broad audience.
Texture
Family life is a very hands on organization and so it was important to get that human touch into the site without losing the professional, clean qualities that also needed to be present. Squared Eye used earth and textile textures to draw this out and add a naunced touch.
Photography
It is rare that a designer gets to work with the kinds of outstanding photography that Family Life has in its reportoire, and so it was a real delite to consider the right ways to handle that photography in the site design or as a presence in articles.
Typography
Family Life needed a font that let people know that they were moving forward, but weren’t ashamed of their past. Myriad Pro was the right fit. It’s heavy weights are strong but still energetic. Lucida was then an obvious choice for a great web font fit to the Myriad headings.
Setting the Cornerstone
The Family life homepage had to set the tone for the rest of the site. We crafted a layout that took off the training wheels, unlocking the rigidity of the grid and showcasing the best parts of family life.
Grey Box Wireframes
Concentrating on placement, contrast, and hierarchy, we quickly established the right flow for the homepage with Family Life’s creative team.
Making Changes in the greybox
Adjusting the layout and frame of the site is fluid at this stage of the design. Family LIfe did a great job responding to our ideas and together we landed on a solid layout.
Home Page Version One
The Home Page came together extremely well. Now that we had this in place we could begin detailing the internal parts of the site with confidence.
Going Internal
After we set the cornerstone, the fun of laying out and designing a full set of internal pages took off. Squared EYe provided over eighteen unique designs for family life in the process of our project.
Internal Greybox
As with the home page, we’ve found that starting with a greybox layout helps us stay fluid in a part of the process that requires flexibility.
We Were stoked to nuance the perfect layout for the main section pages right of the bat. Family Life made it clear with audible hooping and hollering that we had nailed this one!
Pulling Out the Details
Details are what we love best. The family life site was a great place for Squared Eye to explore typography, layout, and nuance in a number of crucial areas. We put some whale size love into this site.
Sweat the small stuff, leave nothing behind
Family Life has a huge music ministry and we wanted to make sure this part of the site soared for them, so we let the best content stand out. The album covers for a lot of these bands are outstanding, and so we let that carry the weight of this layout. Getting the Typography to flow smoothly, and letting the iconography really play a helpful role for the music utilities took some careful design, but we put our best ou tthere and we’re really pleased with the results.
Special Consideration
All too often a simple list sidled up next to a blog entry just doesn’t get the attention it deserves. We made sure that each type of content in this area stayed unique and appropriate. This is where many designers fail to consider function as they aspire to make beautiful things. We’re learning that taking the time to consider the purpose of things is equally important as their hotness!
A Unique Event calendar
Events are a very regular part of what Family Life does, and so we devised an event calendar that reduced redundancies and offered pertinent information quickly. We’re pretty proud of this this event calendar, as its a great example of the way we love to solve problems with visual love.
That’s A Wrap
The Family life project gave Squared Eye an opportunity to take on new depths of web and interface design. Thank you family life for a great Experience! Looking forward to working with you again!
Lastly, a great big thanks goes out to Monk Development! What a great team to work with on a huge project. They really know how to keep a project moving in the right direction, and from a designer's point of view, they are one of the few companies that really honor the designer/developer relationship toward the goal of a great product. Can't wait for the next project guys!
