Bren Project Website

I recently undertook a redesign of the Bren website. The original site was created about 18 months ago long before the charity had really got off the ground. At the time my experience of building sites was zero and I had taken the opportunity to essentially teach myself Dreamweaver. My understanding is a little more advanced now and we have just taken the first photographs of the charity's projects in action.

Time was right then to move the charity's web presence on a bit. I'm quite pleased with the result. The new site is clean and positive and reflects the character of the charity more closely. One of the trustees described it as being 'more our own'. I think the handwritten type and personalised images help to create this effect along with the addition of new features such as case studies and opportunities to work with the charity.

Once the new site started to take shape, I found that I was much more capable of planning ahead and organising elements of each page. This makes everything much more time effective. I still don't know enough about the technical side of site building such as HTML and CSS. What I have learnt so far has been by feeling my way but it concerns me that I'm attempting to create things where there are huge gaps in my knowledge.

I also find it quite difficult to visualise designs on paper before building. I sketched out a rough layout in advance but much of the design was realised on the fly as a result of play. Maybe looking at and considering the structure of more websites might help in this respect.