About a month ago, I was able to launch a new website for Envision Radio Networks, a company that distributes radio shows and content to stations across the country. Since they are rapidly growing they were looking for a modern look, as well as a site to project the size of their company.

Envision’s previous site was primarily white with splashes of neon green. Since they wanted to retain their existing logo, we needed to find a way to keep the neon green.  We offered them a few different designs and color schemes. The initial inspiration for the colors that we used was the Seattle Seahawks.  I know that they use neon green as an accent color on their uniforms and website. Once I started working with a dark charcoal color, plus a dark/navy blue, the design really started to come together.

Early on, it was determined that we would build the site, and then hand it over to Envision and they would make any future modifications. We opted to build the site knowing that Adobe Contribute would be used for future edits. This created a few complications, but nothing that we couldn’t overcome. Contribute does have some limitations, but eventually we came to the realization that if a client wants a fully functioning web design program that can do everything they want, they would need Dreamweaver.  Contribute is a lot easier to use for the non-web designer, so this remained the best option for this project. 

While we didn’t modify the Envision logo, we at Single Source did come up with a new positioning statement. Original Content On-Air, Online, On-Demand. To help emphasize this, we decided to animate the words.  In order to have this animated, as well as have the buttons work as normal, I split the top navigation so that the top part is Flash, and the rest is normal html. The hardest part of this was the actual logo.  Since it is split between two methods, I had to make sure that it lined up and that the colors were the same between Flash and Photoshop. If I’ve done my job correctly, you never noticed. 

Once the design was finalized, we moved forward with construction of the site.  I built the pages so that each individual show page would follow the overall look of this site, not necessarily the look of their individual websites. Each page has description of the show (written by the account executive for this client), links, sample mp3s (which are actually flash movies) and a RSS feed from the blog of the individual shows. Many of these shows are in the business of promoting themselves, so they keep their listeners/fans up to date with their latest activities. 

The home page also has an RSS feed that draws from the Envision news page.  Envision issues a lot of press releases, so the home page now reflects the most recent.  Since they already had a WordPress blog set up for all of these press releases, it didn’t make sense to rebuild this part. I downloaded the same version of WP that Envision was already using, and I modified the header and a few other files in order to allow the Newsroom section to have the same look and graphics as the rest of the website. 

The last challenge to overcome was animating the “spotlight” box on the home page. While I’ve flirted with it in the past, this was the first time that I’ve really dug down into a XML generated Flash animation. It took a while, but I was able to give the client what they wanted.

The final part of the entire process was handing the website off to Envision.  This was only the second time that I didn’t actually have access to the web host.  I had to build the site on our web host, collect it all and send the files to the client.  We then got on the phone and walked Envision through the uploading process.  For the blog, I only gave them specific files for them to over write on their server. Also during this time, we ran through training for Contribute.  I created a couple of information sheets that would allow them to make any future edits on their own. Luckily the person in charge of this at Envision, Matt, knows about blogs and websites.  This made the process run a lot smoother. 

Overall, this is a site that I am very proud of.  I think it looks good and it works well.  I also learned new skills that I am already incorporating on future projects.

You can see this entire site at www.EnvisionRadio.com