Allen O'Leary

A London based web designer, information architect and strategist
specialising in public sector and charity web projects

Arts Inform

An arts in education charity updates their ten year old website.

The project

Arts Inform is a high-achieving smaller charity that has been active in arts in education programmes for many years working with such partners as the English National Opera and Royal Institute of British Architects to deliver great education programmes into schools.

Their website hadn't had a redesign for about ten years and so was showing it's age both in terms of design and functionality. They selected me from an open tendering process to both redesign the site and provide a CMS and training. I worked with Rachael Castell, a new media consultant with extensive experience at the ENO, to organise and delivery the site

Phase 2: Design with Character

Arts Inform works alongside Nationally recognised brands like the Arts Council of England, so the easy choice would have been to design a site that was in a similar visual range, a kind of look that I would call 'corporate but with quirky edges'. Arts Inform wanted to push well beyond this and create a unique visual identity that was vivid and highly identifiable.

After establishing a bright palette I made a series of high-impact images and incorporated them into a 'frieze' element that remains consistent across the site. As well as this we decided that imagery of students engaged in the work would be appropriate.

3. Information Design

A large back-catalogue of project information and useful resources meant that I could design an information schema that has strong cross linking, pointing out to the user the way that Arts Inform's work generates not only short-term engagement for students but long=term benefit to teachers across the country.

Using Drupal I was able to create page templates that adapt and 'auto-file' when new information is added to the site.

4. Ease of maintainence

Using Drupal's excellent taxonomony features I was able to create a site where most of the work is done in the background. The person entering content has only one page to fill out at any time - each content type has it's own metadata fields ready to go. From there Drupal 'automagically' formats the page and puts it in the right place on the site.

Additionally I provided training in using the system and continue to help Arts Inform keep it fresh and relevant.

Project responsibilites

I provided advice on the overall information scheme, designed the look and feel, coded the pages and used Drupal to build and deliver the site.

Gallery

These are screen shots of the live site - but please go and take a look...