Minnesota Center for Book Arts website redesign
*This was a personal project completed for my senior portfolio in 2013
The MCBA is the nation's largest center for book arts. With that kind of a title, there is no wonder why the site has so much information. Going through the pages on the current site can be overwhelming. The problem is not how much content but how it's organized, especially the navigation. I made it my goal to clean up the navigation and make the whole site more transparent to the users- no more hidden sub sub navs.
Screenshots of current website
Current Site Map
Redesigned Site Map
When I was dissecting the current website, I realized they had pages for everything! So unnecessary when they could just group topics on one page. Therefore I got rid of the sub donation/giving pages and broke them into two categories for quick access. Also I made a one page workshop filter feature instead of having all the workshops on separate pages.
The New MCBA
Home
I took inspiration from the very things the MCBA does- letterpressing, screen printing, and paper making. The home page has featured stories and a side feature that highlights the programs there.
Artist Programs
Each artist program has a lot of detail, so this was the one area that I didn't get rid of the sub pages. But in order to make things clearer for user, I put the programs in boxes with short descriptions. This way the user doesn't have to go to each individual page to know what the program is about.
Artist Programs & Studio Rental Details
Here is an example of one of the detail pages for an Artist Program. I sectioned off the information for quick scanning.
Workshops
Each workshop section was separated before on pages with endless scrolling. Now I've condensed the workshops into this filterable list. The classes are displayed by the month and can be filtered by age or the drop down allows for further condensing- i.e. open studio nights.
Expanded Workshop
Clicking on a list item will expand to expose the details of the workshop.
Get Involved
Lastly, I separated Donate and Get involved so people could see the options they had to help out with the MCBA, whether that's donating time or their money.