After taking a break for the past few months from blogging, here is one of my recent works. Back in February, at Brigham Young University, we were discussing some of the ways that we could possibly attract more recruits to BYU, besides winning games, and the idea to put our media guide online was thought of.
Now, this was already not uncommon as many schools, including BYU, had PDF versions out, but we were beginning to see more interactive versions. All of these were being done to the extent that they seemed like an online book involving page turning effects and hyperlinks between the pages. We liked the idea, but still wanted to be different and simple. We noticed that no other school had actually made the guide into a full-functioning website. Not only would this reduce printing costs, but it would also provide an interactive experience for fans and recruite.
With today’s technology boom, and the high school population becoming more involved online with social media such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter, we knew that an online source would be more effective in reaching recruits. With the amount of time that they spend on the Web, we figured they would be more likely to look at a website than just receive a book in the mail and put it in a stack with all of the other media guides they receive. In addition, a website loads quicker and is more user friendly than an online pdf.
So without delay, I will present the 2009 BYU Football Information Guide (Edit: The 2009 guide has since been taken offline, but all of the information can be found at the BYU Cougars website.). This online resource is filled with all of the information that can be found in the printed football guide, but it is free to the public.
I had a fairly large part in the creation of this guide. Although I did not come up with the initial idea, I had a big part in the designing of the guide along with about three others in the office. Then, from those designs, I took the photoshop files and coded every page of the guide into static HTML. Yes, I have since learned that there are much better solutions, but I wasn’t as experienced at the time. I also searched for various javascript functions and implemented them into the guide as well.
Amazingly enough, this was my first large web project I had done since my sad looking Detroit Red Wings fan site hosted on Geocities over a decade ago. I had to relearn HTML and learn CSS, which really only took a couple weeks, but it turned out to be well worth it for me as it gave me the knowledge to give me my current job as a web designer.
