Hey everybody. I need some exposure here to hopefully find some help. We're trying to do a redesign of the Hillsborough County Democratic Executive Council's website. I'm doing all the backend work, there's a lot of it. I need someone who's good with color and design. Below is the request for help that I posted on our forum system that we're beta testing.
HCDEC Site Redesign Contest
It's officially a contest!
What do you win?
The eternal thanks of the HCDEC and the pride in helping Turn Florida Blue. Also bragging rights. And a pony.
How do you win?
Just send in a screenshot of what the HCDEC site should look like. We'll need to know specifically what colors were used and where and which fonts were used and where.
How are you going to pick a winner?
The same way Democrats do everything, by Committee. (Thank you folks, I'll be here all week) We'll be getting nods of approval on the finalists that the IT Committee likes best.
So winning is completely arbitrary?
No, we've got some parameters. First of all, we're looking for something that will be inviting and inspires hope. We think the current site is way too dark. Preliminary opinions seem to be towards a cleaner and airy design. Something that also evokes familiar visuals from Hillsborough County are a plus. We'd prefer stuff that's incorporated into the design of the site, but accompanying graphics (must have copyright permissions to use) will be useful. We're going to have to replace the stock photos on our current site.
We are going to be adapting this design to incorporate these forums, an events calendar and blogging through WordPress. Familiarity with these packages customization, or colors and logos that can be easily adapted to them is a plus.
We also need to include accessibility features and internationalization (Spanish etc., translations), so we'd like to use a lot of Cascading Style Sheets in our new site. Keeping this in mind, or even supplying a style sheet is a plus. We are taking all applications that visually represent a useable website, but if you can produce HTML, CSS and images, we'll be really impressed.
How long is the contest?
Till we agree on a new design and start implementing it.
What do you like?
We like some of the stuff at CSS Zen Garden. People have cited the Pasco Democrats site as a good example. They like the clean design.
Can I use Google Web Toolkit or Dreamweaver?
You rub a magnet on a hard drive to produce a screenshot if you want. We don't care, we just want a screenshot of something that we can implement and maintain, and that looks good.
Send screenshots to webmaster at hcdec.org. Post questions here. Don't stop sending ideas until we tell you to. We'll give critiques where we can.
Thanks,
The IT Committee