A while back our agency was selected as the Agency of Record for Lowell, Massachusetts. After a long exploratory process and rebranding, it came to me to redesign the website that would be used for the City’s marketing initiatives.

After the new logo and colors were chosen, I set about designing a site that would appeal to the target market and represent the City’s ideals. The background is a brick color, but not the loud, blue-based brick that they had used in the past. This brick was a warmer, more inviting yellow-based color. We didn’t want to use too much of this color because people don’t have to travel very far in Lowell if they want to see bricks. To balance this color I chose an yellowish, off-white background. We wanted to use a serif font, not only to reflect the logo, but to present the upscale nature of the City.

The Flash animation was based on a previously developed animation.  But this was manipulated beyond recognition of the original to what you see today.

The four main navigation buttons are large and keep the viewer focused on the four main areas that help to promote Lowell. These four areas have expanded out into other promotions and media.

The green bar that runs along the top is an element that will eventually find its way on to all of the websites that the city runs. We also added an area where businesses can advertise. It’s a great way to get the community involved, as well as help the City take in some additional revenue.

So far in this post I have spent a lot of time on the layout of the site. This was the first time that I had designed a website that I didn’t end up building.  The guys in the IT department for the City did the actual labor. They built the site using Microsoft Sharepoint. I never would have guessed how smooth and easy it would be to work with outside developers.