Animal Haven is a NY based organization that provides shelter and adoption services for rescued cats and dogs. Jon Stewart recently highlighted their amazing work with a moving feature on The Daily Show.
animalhaven.org
As a key contributor in a small team producing a website redesign, I was responsible for direction as well as visual design. I lead the creation of wireframes and final designs in close collaboration with a creative technologist and copywriter.
The client approached us with a few objectives: effectively touch-up their brand to tell their story, and to create a visually engaging website experience. In this organization it was really important that the site be easily maintainable, both for volunteers getting animals published on the site and for their internal team who produced content. The website required flexibility, since animal profiles had a lot of variables like lack of animal history info.
The biggest challenge of this project was modernizing their brand. The client was open to significant changes, however they had strong opinions about their color palette. Their brand exclusively featured a stark purple and black combination, which you can checkout here. This combination felt out of place for their organization and contributed to an overall dated brand identity. To address this, I developed a new color system that the client approved once they saw how it integrated into the website. The most notable change was the addition of yellow to highlight their most important calls to action: pet adoption and funding their mission.
The logo was another challenge. While we did not end up making any major updates, we were able to improve upon the treatment of it. It originally was laid out awkwardly in an oval shape, but we were able to convince the client to simplify the presentation.
Project research largely consisted of competitor analysis. The team then decided upon a core set of pages to prioritize. I designed wireframes for the main user flow, while working closely with a copywriter to define guardrails for them. Next I built high-fidelity mockups, with a focus on reusable components that would be building blocks for the lower-priority pages. In an effort to promote donation to the organization, I created a donation callout area in the footer that presented donations in an approachable way.
Ultimately, the solution was a website that prioritized putting adoptable pets front and center, making the process of exploring pets online almost as fun as it is in person.
We really couldn’t have asked for more.
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