The Problem

It was late 2018, and AmericanSTEM’s new Board of Managers decided that the brand needs a refresh that matches its vivacious and creative values. Of course, this involves building a new website that, in return, matches the brand, since the website then was out-dated and unexciting at best.

Since we had no members with the practical front-end development know-hows, we could either buy a theme and work on it, or hire a freelance developer. While the former risked having another mediocre website, but was safe, and as we were just recently escaped a financially precarious situation, we couldn’t really afford the latter.

As the newly-promoted Art Director of the brand, I chose neither of the above, and opted for a course of action that would change the interface of the brand – as well as my own career – forever.

The Approach

With the new website’s look-and-feel formed in mind, I got myself dabbling in CodeAcademy, CodePen, StackOverFlow,… for a few initial weeks to acquire for myself a sufficient understanding of HTML, CSS and Javascript. Then the real, exciting work of building a fully-functional, interactive, one-of-a-kind website almost from scratch began. I was almost obsessed with the great potential of what I was doing, and the idea of making my design as interactive as could be.

We aimed to have each page acquiring an individual colours and theme, and yet retaining the holistic look and feel, in the words, the characteristics of the brand.

During the project, and User interface aside, it was always to be kept in mind that its highest objective was to provide an immersive, thorough and fun User experience. Every essential information could be accessed in a couple of clicks. We went through rigorous testing, determining to cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s in the journey of the user.