Drawing Change is a graphic facilitation agency working with non-profits and social justice organizations world-wide. When my friend Sam started it, it was a solo venture and I built him a portfolio website using Make, a drag and drop theme editor. As the years passed, the agency outgrew the site I built and needed a custom developed site especially crafted for their needs.
Custom developed WordPress theme
While the Make site looked good on the front end, the process for uploading new content was getting too labour-intensive on the back end. I built a custom theme for Sam that had custom post types that automatically pulled into designated landing pages. Now the site is more streamlined and much easier to update. I built the designs into the structure of the site so when staff enter new content everything is uniform: the images are all the correct size, the content is displayed on the correct landing page, and featured content is pulled into the homepage.
Content strategy focuses on key user needs
Drawing Change has created a lot of useful content over the years that needed organizing. We worked with a content strategist who organized all the content into key areas. I then built the landing pages based on the content strategy and we kept the user flow as simple as possible. The deeper you go into the website the more content is available, but you can also navigate through and get highlights of the key areas. The homepage showcases highlights of each landing page. The landing pages open up to all the content of each section. Each section then opens up to show all the content available. This way the user isn’t overwhelmed, but Sam can still upload a lot of content and show years of his work.
Search Engine Optimization
We mapped all the page addresses and linked them to the new site URLs so that Drawing Change’s excellent Google ranking wouldn’t take a hit with the redesign.
Site grows with agency
I love supporting people and projects as they grow and it was so fun to work on a project I helped build five years ago. The old site had a lot going for it, and we kept a lot of the initial design elements while updating the structure and the internal development. The site is now next level, just as the agency is.
Old site recognized by theme-maker as best of class
The old Make-based site was featured on the theme-maker’s showcase, landing in the first place of examples of sites you can build using their base theme. It held the first place for four years running, in fact, I believe it’s still up there now. I should tell them about the update 🙂
