Vets to Vets United Website & Branding Redesign

Illustrating the captivating heart-warming mission of Vets to Vets United in the redesign, I connected each element to the promise of "Improving and savings lives, one veteran and one dog at a time."

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Inspiration:

  • Emphasis on the healing power of the animal-human bond
  • Numerous happy pictures of veterans with their pets
    • Showcased how wide and great of an impact this organization has had on the lives of others
  • The usage of blue shades on their current website
    • To redesign the shade of the blue with lots of white space to create a sense of a clean and fresh look
    • Have the current users of the website recall a similar welcoming sense
  • The video shot by Dodo!
    • The Dodo film crew's visit to Cates Farm
    • Provided a great perspective into the caring nature of the organization
    • Served as a unique element that I knew I must highlight on the website
      • Inspired the creation of the home page
  • Target audience: NC Triangle Community
    • From the home page, I wished to introduce to the audience just how much their involvement, donation, and support mean to dozens of veterans a part of this program
    • Focused on what the website is lacking right now in terms of grabbing this audience's attention: aesthetically pleasing visual and digital layout!!
    • Inspired to have each page with a white background to maintain the clean open space while focusing on a single color to serve as one of the primary color guideline selections for the website: light/baby blue.

What it does

  1. Cultivates an enriched welcoming sense to the Vets to Vets United community
  2. Provides a captivating new logo design for the website, which is also applicable to be used on other marketing formats such as merchandise
  3. Highlights real-life examples of members of the Vets to Vets United family, noting the key importance of supporting the connection between a veteran and a dog

How we built it

Using Wix! Starting from the home page and working towards the right elements of the menu bar, I based each page to follow complementary branding guidelines -- paying attention to the font, color choice, page layout, button interaction, and more.

Challenges we ran into

  • The previous website lacked a strong sense of web flow. As a result, I set the goal of finding a solution that allowed a coherent transition between pages while being easily accessible to "learn more," "contact us," and "order a t-shirt."
  • One of the user constraints of their current website was a lack of discoverability. As a user, it was hard for me to follow the information architecture. This was due to overwhelmingly long drop-down menu options and a lot of repetition- especially when the title of the drop-down menu was repeated as one of the options in the list
  • Secondly, the website was lacking inconsistency in color, font choice, and page layout. For example, the buttons for donating, volunteering, and ordering a t-shirt varied in not only color but also style, size, and location! Therefore, I sought to have one uniform shape and type of button style while categorizing the color versions based on the functionality of the button. I maintained a similar all-white style for the three main home page buttons while doing a black hover button for "learn more" options.
  • Thirdly, the website was also lacking its consistency in media screens. When used on a smaller screen like a phone, the quality of the user experience decreased greatly. Therefore, another challenge was to adjust our website flow fitted to a much smaller screen layout.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  1. Being able to time manage and work with a mental checklist successfully, keeping even the small eye-catching design detail imperfections to rectify.
  2. Designing a logo that I'm proud of! Regardless of the time crunch, I am proud that I was able to bring my vision to life
  3. Finding a complementary system of color, layout, and font to shape and bring together the flow and user interaction accessibility of the website

What we learned

  1. I learned how to export a prerecorded video, edit, refine/crop, and include it as an introduction to the home page
  2. How to import my own fonts to Wix
  3. Sometimes less is more! While redesigning, I came to the realization that most of the pages especially under the "Donate and Support" drop-down, could be simplified into a single page. Therefore, to keep a clear and concise voice for the website, I aimed to use shorter versions for titles and buttons and categorized similar content into groups under a more general title of "Get Involved"

What's next for Vets to Vets United Website & Branding Redesign

  • An addition of an icon/"mascot" representative for the brand
    • If I had more time, I would have loved to sketch up an illustration of a cartoon dog/icon to add to the new logo
    • Furthermore, with blue being one of the primarily consistent colors of the website, I would aim to also incorporate it into to logo.
  • More development in upcoming events -- by including a functional calendar
  • Addition of a weekly blog that would host the current "news & announcements," "quarterly newsletters," and "stories of hope" in one united location -- filtered into their own categories

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