Web Site: Center for American Progress

Design Challenge: When I arrived at Center for American Progress (CAP), one of their first big goals was to do a “facelift” on their main organizational website. They had ambitious plans for a comprehensive redesign in 2007, but first, wanted to work within the existing framework of their site to improve the look and layout. Their existing site design was nearly four year old and was a jumble of mis-matching fonts, colors, and promotional graphiics.

Solution: Although they had a rough mockup of some “facelift” concepts when I arrived, a lot of their ideas were undeveloped and rough. I worked with them to establish some better consistency across the site. I established a simplified set of fonts and font sizes. I created a series of consistent, related logotypes to replace the ad hoc collection of graphics they were using to promote special projects. I helped design a new look and feel for top story images, story page layouts, and digest pages. On a technical side, I replaced their antiquated HTML, a nest of tables and inaccessible code, and replaced it with clean, standards-based XHTML.