Tonka Park redesigned

If you are reading this post the entire tonkapark.com domain has undergone a redesign. The site had only been in existence for a short time as we have just started out here at Tonka Park. After browsing 100′s of other sites over the last few months, seeing how other development teams and designers put together a website I knew something needed to change. Additionally, the lack of dynamic method to maintain the portfolio was going to be problematic as we begin to attract more clients.

So I took a few days of identifying the key traits of websites that I liked and just started tinkering with ideas. Let me discuss the individual pages and then the technology involved

The Home Page

The front page is where the greatest difference will be seen by those of you who have previously made a visit. I have moved from a single page for the company minus the blog, to a multi-page format. I still like the idea of a single page format that uses the vertical scrolling and divides content in sections. One current example of this done well is over at the website for the new Shaun Inman project Fever. At this time I chose to go another direction to work on featuring the portfolio work and also the blog posts.

The front index page is fully driven by wordpress using the tips on the wordpress site. This allows me to include my blog posts and portfolio and also use widgets for the additional content if I so choose.

In regards to the actual css and design. I toyed with lots of color, thinking I needed to brighten up the website to maybe capture potential client’s attention. However, after 3 different color pallettes, picked out over at COLOURlovers.com I ended up back with the blacks, greys and the touch of green pulled from the tree in the Tonka Park logo. The bold black bar across the front was the statement that I think needed to be made. It highlights the portfolio selection and the key welcome phrase that I have included.

Overall I think the home page has a better presence than before.

The Portfolio

The previous tonkapark.com only displayed the small block images with the name of the client and then underneath some text and a small link to either jump to the site or to pop a lightbox image link. This new incarnation brings the portfolio to life; Color screenshots, multiple images and individual pages for each project. Right from the front page the portfolio is displaying the most recent 4 projects. This should help grab potential clients attention if they want to view work rather than read text about services.

I am sure to see some more customization on the individual portfolio pages but I am happy with how it works for now.

The Blog

The blog probably saw some of the least amount of redesign. In general the layout is the same. The biggest differences are that the blog index now only shows excerpts of the 10 most recent posts rather than the full posts. This allows new visitors to get a good idea of the content without too much scrolling. An idea supported by popular rails blogger John Nunemaker on his blawgtips site.

The other major change is the sidebar. I simplified it a bit having a single column and loosing the pages and categories links. I think it flows well and brings more clarity to the page.

Within the individual posts I have added a new link for a shorter url hyperlink. I will write about this in a separate post on how I used simple solution to get short urls in wordpress rather than a robust service or plugin. Keep an eye out for that post tomorrow.

The Copywriting

Writing and putting words together is not something I see myself being terribly adept at most days. I went through several revisions, and probably should have gone through several more. But the words can always change as we move forward. Picking out the right words to sell my company on the home page, portfolio and services pages was difficult for me. I am still struggling to define myself and my company.

Normally I would want to leave copywriting to someone more creative with words than myself, but at this point in the lifecycle of creating a new one man company I am not yet able to spend money on a creative talent such as Tiffani Jones over at Second & Park. I came across her new venture with her fiancé Matt Brown. I think I will keep her info though as she might be a valuable resource when it comes time to truly invest into a project that requires great copy. (For the record Matt Brown designs great looking websites.)

The Technology

To the nuts and bolts of the redesign. One of the main goals was to move the company portion of the website over to wordpress to allow for some more robust management of files and content throughout the site. This was fairly simple and nothing ground breaking. WordPress has built in features that handle this rather easily. I will save this for a follow-up post on WordPress setup.

Conclusion

The redesign wasn’t groundbreaking and only took a few days of time. Being as a design/developer is always there own most difficult client I tried to let the small things go so that I could finish the design. I will always be unhappy with certain aspects, that is the perfectionist in me. For instance I think the comments styling needs some work but I will get there when I start receiving comments. Ultimately, I hurried to make sure I get the portfolio out there as I have recently made some contacts that I want to be able to see more details than I previously had available. Also I should be releasing a private application to a small group of users that will ultimately see my website.

I hope you enjoy the new look and that everything works out for you.