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Arts League of Lowell

A full rebuild for a nonprofit arts organisation, documented at every step, because the process is the part most people never get shown.

Sitemap through to hand-built launch

The problem

A nonprofit arts organisation whose website did not look like the work it represented.

Limited budget, volunteer maintenance, and a need for something that could be added to later without a designer on call.

Sitemap first: what pages exist, what sits under what, and what got cut.
Low-fidelity wireframes, which are cheap to argue with. That is their whole job.
Two high-fidelity prototypes. Two directions, not eight.
Hand-built in Bootstrap rather than assembled in a page builder, so it stays fast and nobody inherits a mess.
A new logo to replace the one that no longer held up at any size.

Before

After

BEFORE
The site as it stood
Where it started. Everything after this is about the same organisation looking like itself.
01
Sitemap
Before a single pixel. What pages exist, what lives under what, and what quietly got cut.
02
Low-fidelity wireframes
Boxes and labels. Cheap to argue with, which is the entire point of doing them.
03
High-fidelity, option one
Two directions, not eight. Eight is a way of making the client do the deciding.
04
High-fidelity, option two
The second direction, taken just as seriously as the first.
05
Hand-built in Bootstrap
No page builder. Written by hand so it stays fast and nobody inherits a mess.
06
Build in progress
The unglamorous middle, where most of the hours actually go.
07
Templates coming together
Layouts turning into something the organisation can add to later without me.
08
Final touches
Spacing, type, the hundred small corrections nobody notices unless they are missing.
09
Nearly there
Real content in place of placeholder, which is where layouts usually break.
10
Live
The finished build.