Author: cmkl

If you’re going to bring the world together to talk about the power of music to heal, bring peace, develop minds and generally solve all the world’s problems, you’re going to need a website.

And if you have a short timeline, you’re going to need it in a hurry. And if you’re still inventing the conference and inviting speakers even as the launch date passes, there’s going to be some improvisation.

I worked with the Glenn Gould Foundation, their designers, their PR consultants, their branding consultants and content creators to get this site together in a hurry.

It’s built around the conference schedule, so a calendar plugin was a pretty important part of the project. But since there’s never been a conference like Promise of Music, there’s no calendar plugin that really fit the bill.

Which meant a lot of custom development to shoehorn the needed functionality into an existing plugin.

An intense effort but a worthy and ultimately satisfactory one.

We don’t have to be afraid of big images any more. There’s all kinds of stuff that can be done to keep your website visually striking while loading quickly.

And while it’s true that heritage planning and digging around in dirt for old things does not generate eye candy like, say a Taylor Swift concert, LHC Heritage does have some pretty compelling visuals.

This website redesign gave them the opportunity make use of them.

The company had a small number of important objectives for their site: generate leads, recruit staff and convey confidence and authority. The redesign accomplishes that but also allows visitors to appreciate and rejoice a bit in built and buried heritage.

Unions — or any other volunteer-driven organization — face an uphill battle for the attention of their membership. This is especially true of those whose structures and methods predate the internet.

The ‘old ways’ might still work, but with each interaction you damage your reputation as your audience — who’ve never known a world without online shopping — get a load of how they’re supposed to interact with you.

OPSEU 479 took major steps to overcome that digital deficit when they launched their website. With one modestly-priced project, they carved out a digital presence for themselves on the internet, gave themselves the ability to reach out to their members, and obsoleted Microsoft Word tables as the canonical source of data about their members.

The site uses a minimal approach, eschewing heroic plans and grand gestures as its leaders realized that their busy lives didn’t afford them the opportunity to become content creators or influencers.

Instead they wanted to hit that sweet spot where the internet actually made their lives easier. And between the CRM, the mailing list and the basic contract, pension and membership info, they’ve done it.