Task

Kansas City's most highly trafficked news website had gone without a web designer since it's inception. They were in severe need of a facelift to go along with a planned advertising upgrade. Additionally The Star* wanted to bring a higher level of design to special projects and drive more traffic through better promotion and display of their content.

Solution

The redesign was a necessity to allow for new ad sizes but The Star wanted to take the opportunity to change the whole layout. I was able to design a new horizontal menu with multiple layers of javascript functionality to allow easy access to the site's massive amounts of content. I also added some new pieces of functionality to the homepage in the form of a scrolling blog widget and a rotating photo gallery tout.

The photo galleries section is a showcase of usability design and javascript functionality. The improvements to the interface over the old design led to a huge jump in image views and overall traffic. Additionally, I worked with the team of web editors to maximize promotional placements of photo galleries to help drive pageviews.

Over the period of time that I have been employed with The Star I have designed several special sections and features to coincide with sections in the paper. A couple of my favorites to work on were the 2008 election and the inauguration. It was a pleasure to be involved with a news site at such a historic time.

• The KC Star is currently my (Ian) full-time employer.

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