Foss Academic

Overview

Robert W. Gehl, the Ontario Research Chair of Digital Governance for Social Justice at York University, was looking to freshen up his personal blog. He already had a custom framework that was being used to manage data, so he reached out to me to help him design and develop templates that he could use to plug in and overhaul the look of his site.

Process

The project began with a conversation, so I could get a feel for what he wanted. After the initial discussion, I tasked him with giving me some examples of sites that he liked and to tell me why he liked them.

Once I had better sense of how he wanted his personal style represented, I updated the logo and the color palette that aligned with the particulars shared. I then introduced a new type treatment that fit the new style that made reading his long form content easy and the eyes. A style guide was then created to document all colors, logo variations and type formatting used to bring the site to life.

The last part was building out the templates that would be used as the UI for the site.

Once they were completed, all assets were then turned over.

Tools

Templates were made using heavily commented HTML to guide implementation, with all additional JavaScript and CSS to make it all plug and play. The style guide was provided as a PDF so it could be stored digitally or printed out.

Screens