Northwoods Heisey Study Club website
Roles: Information architecture, interaction design, user experience design, visual design, art direction, photography, development (HTML/CSS). Tools: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Dreamweaver, Sublime 2, Wix (content management system).
I’m a relative newcomer to the Northwoods Heisey Study Club, which is a non-profit, tax-exempt corporation dedicated to the education, preservation and encouragement of collecting fine handmade glassware produced by A.H. Heisey and Company from 1896 to 1957. Because of my professional design background and experience, I was asked to create a website for the club. Club members had attempted to create a site years ago, but it proved to be beyond their collective skill set.
The goal of this site is to prominently feature photos of Heisey glass and news from the club. In terms of design, I wanted to create something clean-cut that reflected Heisey’s printed materials (like ads or product booklets that came with glass sets) during its heyday (think art nouveau).
Roles: Information architecture, interaction design, user experience design, visual design, art direction, photography, development (HTML/CSS). Tools: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Dreamweaver, Sublime 2, Wix (content management system).
I’m a relative newcomer to the Northwoods Heisey Study Club, which is a non-profit, tax-exempt corporation dedicated to the education, preservation and encouragement of collecting fine handmade glassware produced by A.H. Heisey and Company from 1896 to 1957. Because of my professional design background and experience, I was asked to create a website for the club. Club members had attempted to create a site years ago, but it proved to be beyond their collective skill set.
The goal of this site is to prominently feature photos of Heisey glass and news from the club. In terms of design, I wanted to create something clean-cut that reflected Heisey’s printed materials (like ads or product booklets that came with glass sets) during its heyday (think art nouveau).
Heisey advertising example.
Heisey advertising example.
Club members had already gathered up quite a bit of research by reviewing what other clubs around the country have on their sites and through conducting user surveys. This gave me a good starting point. After some thought, I decided to purchase a fun site extension to help promote the club’s site even more: northwoodsheisey.glass.
Researching what other clubs were doing.
Survey results.
Early on in the process, I sketched out some ideas on paper. The primary focus would be photos of Heisey glass, of course. I decided that I could start taking photos of "show and tell" finds and other items club members had on display in their homes during the course of our quarterly meetings to supplement the website.
Early sketch of the Northwoods site.
Collection of early sketches.
Early sketch of the Northwoods site.
Next, I prepared a static mockup to present at a club meeting to show the direction I was going in. It was well received by club members.
Later on, I tried my hand at making an interactive HTML prototype using a WC3 template (which you can view at: goo.gl/cFq49e. You’ll need to click on the green Run button to view the prototype).
After some discussion with other club members, in the end, I decided to use a content management system to deliver this website. Ideally, other members will be the ones adding updates (specifically the club secretary, who writes our meeting minutes), while I will take care of any photos, maintenance, etc. Ultimately, the final result was a responsive, colorful site that really highlights the glass.
Different shots of the Northwoods Heisey Study Club website.
