New Year, New Website

For the past 975 days our website looked the same. 

Some of the content changed. Some of the graphics changed. But basically the design template that launched in May, 2007 was still employed in December, 2009.

That design held up well for two and half years. However, since we're a web design company, we should eventually redesign our own website, right?

Not really. A full-blown, big-splash redesign is rarely the ideal solution. Instead of a big redesign, we should have continually realigned. But over those previous 975 days, client work got in the way of small improvements and tinkering on our own site. So we opted for a full-blown redesign.

That's what you're looking at now. For reference, the previous version of our website is here

This recent design process was similar to past redesigns.

1. Plan and talk about what we want to accomplish
2. Create mockups and design comps
3. Build out pages
4. Add database-driven tools and programming
5. Test, QC, Improve. This phase, where we sculpt the site with incremental improvements is my favorite part. We remove features, edit text, add other features, and keep tweaking the site until most people are happy with it.
6. Launch

During the planning phase, one of the key objectives was to focus the homepage more on iMarc as a holistic unit.

By contrast, the 2005 version of our site highlighted a single portfolio piece with hardly any of our own branding. The 2007 homepage featured the blog prominently.

With this version, our homepage shows off the company as a whole. We highlight a couple portfolio pieces. We summarize who we are and what services we offer. We highlight our culture with the blog, Flickr gallery, a random profile of a team member.

My personal hope is that this is the last full-blown redesign. Going forward we'll realign with small, incremental, and continual improvements.