DVGBC Website Redesign Concepts

Getting involved with the Philadelphia DVGBC network through the Student Design Competition committee and the EGB (Emerging Green Builders), it was only a matter of time until this happened. Being so involved with everything else, I've been trying to avoid it at all costs.

From the onset, I've noticed that the DVGBC website was poorly designed. The branding, color palette and everything has been successfully and professionally established by BarberGale, but the website is a separate beast. Visually it has the branding nailed down, but programmatically, it appears to be an off-the-shelf blogging CMS, and it is now restricting the growth of the site. Recently, the DVGBC has made comments that they are looking to revamp it by putting a team together to address the issues.

The DVGBC Marketing committee has created a Website Redesign sub-committee. Now this is just getting ridiculous, committees within committees, that's like a Turducken! I know, and you know what have I done? Yes - I have gladly stepped up and am now a member of the team, creating mockups for the page layouts and offering technical advice… To tell you the truth I feel this is probably my best fit within the organization because of my background. I'm not quite ready to leave it all behind.

Here is the design I came up with for the Homepage layout after extensive and organized feedback from the rest of the team. It's the first of dozens of pages that need to have their structure addressed, and hopefully this will get us started on the right foot.

Spring Classes Moving Ahead

The spring semester is already 4 weeks in, and I haven't had any free time to explain what they've been about. Both classes started out with the idea of human comfort and what we need to do to create comfortable living spaces while building them as a efficient and sustainable as possible. Thankfully they are now both of my classes are diverging, with the one class being more of a lab/project creation, and the other is more of an engineering/research course.

One thing that's becoming apparent is my lack of specialty within the program. I've thought of myself as a visual designer with a great knowledge practical construction methods. However, I'm discovering that every one of my skills are trumped in one way or another by a number of peers and it's quite discouraging. There are Architects and Interior designers who can imagine a space better than I could, as well as common knowledge as to how things should be designed. Then there are those with construction management and development backgrounds that far exceed the skills I've accumulated. It's a little discouraging, but also it's forcing me to try exceptionally hard to catch up and get a better understanding of the material. Things have already drastically changed within one year, I'm excited to see what can happen in the next.