The Folk Education Association of America (FEAA) board got in touch with me for help updating their old website. They hadn’t had time to work on the site in years and were struggling to get it back on track.
In particular, their outdated national database of folk schools was a key resource their network relied on. But the page was out of order; content was missing, mis-aligned, or just difficult to read. We needed to build a new, user-friendly database that would connect our visitors to folk schools near them. At the same time, it was crucial that the FEAA team be able to add new schools to the network quickly and simply, so they didn’t end up with page full of complex code that would take a full-time techie to figure out.
They needed a modern website that would be as easy as possible to keep updated going forward.
The Process
We started by surveying some of the new websites our folk school network members had assembled recently. We used their friendly, photo-centric style to inform our own design going forward.
We had some materials from the FEAA of days past to work with. From the lone paper copy of the FEAA logo we were able to locate, I created a new, vectorized version of the logo that the board can now use on all of their promotional materials.
For the website, I built a custom design on an existing theme framework that placed the folk school network in the forefront with a big banner. I curated photographs from network members to create a slideshow the highlights the ways each school promotes folk learning.
For the Folk School Network page, I built a custom solution where the team could input a school’s information without worrying about formatting or alphabetizing. The page itself automatically formats their information, lists all schools in order, and lets visitors quickly search for schools in their area.
