Partners: Andrew Kudwa
Background
The West Michigan Graphic Design Archives is a premier collection of West Michigan’s graphic design and printing industry legacy materials. Eventually, the Archives will encompass the full history of graphic design in West Michigan. The home of the Archives is the Zhang Legacy Collections Center at Western Michigan University.
The Archives website is the main way for people to view the projects. Currently, people can search and view any project of the Archives, sorted by designer, category, firm, client, and date. Linda Powell and Barbara Loveland approached DPC looking to add new features: printing style sheets, an updated noteworthy page, designer profiles, submission forms for projects & designer profile information, and favorite capabilities.
The archives website main objective is to showcase the design of Western Michigan and to help junior designers find inspiration. With this in mind, creating a favorites feature would allow viewers to save projects they found to be helpful.
Adding a Favorite
The beginning of this experience starts with a user choosing to save a project. In each corner, a bookmark icon will appear as the user slides over and once a user clicks, it is saved under the favorites tab.
Icon Exploration
As we started to build the experience, we explored many options as to what the icon could be in the header and how someone would add a favorite.
Static
Hover
As a user adds favorites, there will be a count in the header showing how many projects they have collected so far.
Given the educational purpose of this website, having print style sheets is very necessary. To have the best functioning style sheet, we removed any clutter like the header tabs or anything that distracts the user from the main topic.
These pages contain projects by that designer as well as information like education, experience, and etc. Different profiles called for different layouts. Adjustments needed to be made for accommodate each situation.
A Represents pages with out a profile image and with many projects, but little information.
B Represents pages with out a profile image, with very little projects, but with a lot of information.
C Represents pages with a profile image, with many projects, but with very little information.
D Represents pages with a profile image, with many projects, and a lot of information.
A
C
B
D
This is the press release section for the Archives where recognition is given, dates for events are released, and breaking news of West Michigan.
Previous Experience
Previously, there were two phases when accessing the noteworthy. First was view each story title as a project card, then one would view each story individually. We removed this extra step and decided to have each story available to view right on the page.
Before
After
Two forms were asked to be made: project submission form and designer profile information form.
Project Submission
The project form can be submitted by anyone who has created work in West Michigan.
Designer Registration
The designer profile form can only be filled out for designers that have work in the archives.
To add some character, a redesign of the 404 page was created. The two illustrated are none other than Barbara Loveland & Linda Powell; the two that put the archives together.
Check it out! Visit the archives site at graphicdesignarchives.org
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