Practivism is a GDC speaker event discussing design for social and environmental change. In 2012 offered my skills to the volunteer planning committee to design and develop a new website for the sold-out event that would be reused going forward. In 2013 I updated it with a new font and graphics and made minor layout improvements.

Key elements I added to improve upon previous years’ websites included a highly visible “buy” button to facilitate ticket purchase; a clear description of what Practivism is; easily-found location details with map and transit information; social media integration; images of speakers’ work and links to their websites.

To best serve people who now access the web on a greater variety of devices, I built the site with responsive design techniques which allow it to adapt to the user’s browser or screen size. I used media queries to serve different sizes of the background image depending on browser window width, except on tablet and smartphone devices where the background image is removed to reduce the amount of data downloaded and allow content to take priority. Mobile users accounted for nearly 20% of the site’s traffic, and with this percentage set to grow, a robust but flexible site design that will continue to function in the face of changing technology is critical.

Role: web design, development, minor copywriting and working with the print design team on concepts. Wordmark and background images by Stu Ross.