About the Design
The image of hands in the site’s header is cropped from a photograph of a student during a class activity. I chose it because it echoes the personal and creative journey of discovery the class represents.
Right up front is the answer to the question the user likely wants answered: What classes can I take and when are they? Naturally, as the visitor will likely have a busy few months ahead of her, the dates are an important detail. I worked to make them noticeable and easily parseable. The big orange buttons take the user to an events details page and scrolling down shows a list of classroom locations, links to directions.
COURSE DETAILS PAGE
The course details page provides an overview of the course content and a gallery of students taking the class. There is a neat summary of the meeting times and location, then a few testimonials to provide that boost of assurance before you reach the sales form.
PROFESSIONAL PROFILE PAGE
The badges on the list of credentials are vector so they will look great on Hi DPI (retina) displays. I used Fontastic to generate a custom icon font, including a custom SVG file that is used for the interstitial badge with flowing hands.
LOGO
One of the central elements of these classes is a labyrinth used as a metaphor for the birth process. The mark, that is, symbol part of the logo, combines elements of the birth labyrinth and Portland’s iconic bridges and maybe evokes the concentric wrapping of the culturally pervasive image of the babe wrapped in mother’s arms.
The typeface is sturdy ol’ Crete Round, which has great legibility even at small sizes and is available via Google Fonts. That makes it easy and dependable to use on websites and simplifies creation of all sorts of collateral material for branding consistency.
Development and Implementation
The site runs WordPress, so my client can mange the content herself. Events and booking functionality are handled by WP Event Organizer, but the templates were written by me. I wrote WordPress plugins to create the necessary post types and admin UI, and employed the excellent Posts 2 Posts plugin to create relationships between Courses and Events.