Paone Creative is a small agile studio with big project experience. We have been building award winning brands and websites, since 2010, with a high success rate of delivering projects on-time and on or under budget.

The Brief

NVCAC is an organization that consists of a volunteer Board of Directors, an Executive Director and support staff, and over 100 dedicated volunteers. Their membership is over 500 strong and includes individuals, students, seniors, families, cultural groups and businesses.

Their website was outdated and their mobile users were dropping fast. They needed to better showcase the extensive depth of programming and resources offered - all on a mobile friendly platform.

Services

Information Architecture
UX & Prototyping
Content Strategy
Website Design
WordPress
E-Commerce / Membership
Responsive Mobile Accessibility
Tutorials & Training

The Solution

After series of prototypes (UX design) and complete interface design NVCAC made the leap to move from Drupal to WordPress. We were there to support them and implemented a strategic planning series to make the transition possible. We also wanted NVCAC to take advantage of the many tools/connections WordPress has to offer. The result was a custom built WordPress theme that includes e-commerce, art rental catalogue, membership area, and multiple custom post types to keep the backend organized.

The design is focused on bringing the NVCAC brand to life. We used the rich colours from their logo to classify different areas of the website. Every template design, focused on use of imagery from their database and this brought a new level of interaction and emotion to the online experience that was missing on the old website.

Memberships

The public can purchase NVCAC memberships online and gain access to member only pages (area), online profile submission and automated discounts.

E-Commerce

A full scale e-commerce solution that connects to their current POS. WooCommerce + Moneris is used to sell event tickets, course registration, products, memberships, donations and more.

Digital Art Rental Catalogue

A custom template that showcases (without selling) individual art rental items. Users can also create their own wishlist and save it to their account for future reference.

Backend CMS Management

A series of custom fields were built in the backend to make publishing content easier on the NVCAC staff. This helps to keep their look consistent yet easy to manage.

Phase 1
From Drupal to WordPress – Strategy & Prototypes

Before we get to the pretty stuff we always focus on wireframes or interactive prototypes. It is important to set a soid project foundation. This allows us to test a website's flow, with our clients, to ensure all the bases are covered before investing in design and development hours. This site was also huge! We were up for the challenge. Detailed strategic planning was required to consider:

• NVCAC user goals and our goals for them.
• Content flow, including sitemap & user navigation.
• Migration of content.
• Development options and existing tools to reduce budget.

Phase 2
Designing for a Creative Community

Our goal was to help boost NVCAC brand awareness but also let the community culture and creative artwork shine! Collectively we choose to pull colours from the NVCAC logo, to help identify key areas of the website. We pulled inspiration from the famous artist Mondrian, to apply colour within a grid system. It was also important to build a design system that could be easily applied to a large volume of pages on this site and external design materials. Our goal was to establish a new design pattern that could be kept uniform and void of clutter. This design style also allows the images from the arts community to be the center of attention.

Phase 3
Custom Post Types, E-Commerce, Catalogue & Memberships

This custom built WordPress theme has it all. Our favourite section is the art rental area. The North Vancouver Community Arts Council manages an extensive art rental collection. Homeowners, businesses and the TV/file industry are invited to rent and 'try out' artwork in their space with the option to eventually buy or trade-in for new works. We tool the benefits of WooCommerce, an e-commerce platform, and built a custom template to showcase each item. It replaces the ability to purchase with an invitation to contact NVCAC directly. We also added a wishlist functionality for those customers that place large orders or rent often.