[ny] designlab: web design

client: Fergus Bordewich

[designer’s comment] This original website design for author and distinguished American historian Fergus Bordewich was launched to promote his book “Bound for Canaan,” then was expanded to include his previous books and a blog, and then later updated again to promote his latest book “Washington.” NY Designlab started by working with Bordewich on a structure for the site (information architecture) and then sorted through the many documents and images to develop the right look and feel. The website design has now worked for over five years and is flexible enough to allow continual updating with new books, a growing library of articles he has written, and updates about appearances and other news. The web design was intentionally tied together with the book cover design to begin to develop a branded look for Bordewich. Typography: Like many NY Designlab projects, the site features strong web typography with details such as appropriate use of drop caps, small caps, and paragraph indentations—all of which make the content more readable and add a level of quality not generally found on the web. A simple logo mark for the author was developed as a accent and a visual anchor, and the old font Rosewood Standard Fill works well to give an elegant yet historical feeling. Georgia is the text font. Tech note: In addition to site design and coding, NYDL advised on URL naming, managed domain registration and hosting, and then managed updates and blog. Blog software in this case is Movable Type, which unlike some blog software allows an easy adaptation to an existing design. The blog functionality was eventually turned off—like many blogs, it generated more spam than useful comments; in this case there is still a basic sense of dialog even though the blog does not generate SEO-beneficial new site traffic. However the extensive specialized content along with SEO-optimized code has kept the site at or near the top of search results for preferred terms. Templates were a hybrid of CSS and HTML/SHTML; common elements were inserted as “includes.”

[visit live site]    Fergus Bordewich website