NM Site – Week 4 (the realization)

Now to get feedback from the professors and faculty in the new media department – after all this was their site! So I put together a folder on google drive that contained the new site map, a document with the site redesign goals, and final mockups of the website. Then I shared it with everyone, and waited…

The feedback quick and everyone loved it! All systems go!

However, I was still contemplating on how we were going to finish all the work that needed to be done. My goal as a student is the same as a working professional in this industry, and that is to create great work. By ‘great’ I mean great compared to all the other work out there in the world. In this particular case it was to design and implement a highly functional, highly professional website that communicated the aesthetic, brand and personality of the UNC Asheville New Media Department – however in my professional work I specialized in the design part of the project and oversaw the code development using professional developers. So I couldn’t ignore the magnitude of the project and size/abilities of our team. We can hold our own when coding cool/weird interactive websites, but this was a full fledged professional site that was going to live on and be used for years to come.

I feared that not only would we not finish the site in time but it would not be the quality site I require of my professional work. So I continued digging for solutions to the problem. In this process I began to see my part in this project changing. I didn’t see my job as trying to create a site alone from scratch anymore. My sole purpose evolved into being the creative director, the decision maker in the redesign of the NM Department site. My mind began to understand that to succeed we would have to use whatever tools necessary in implementing a strong site that the faculty/students of the department could engage with, update and utilize for years after I leave. Now as creative director of this project my goal is to create a website that becomes the official online presence of UNCA New Media. It cannot look like typical student work where people excused any faults to “oh, it was a student project”. This site was going to be amazing, contemporary, updatable, interactive and informative – and beautiful.

This would be my single greatest project of my college career – it had to be my best.