Helping the homeless by pushing pixels
It’s a rare thing to have an opportunity to use my design skills directly for good, so when Metal Toad approached me to help with a pro-bono design for the Rose City Resource I couldn’t say no. The Rose City Resource has existed as a printed resource for Portland Metro-area homeless and impoverished people for several years, but they needed a web-based version to support multiple audiences.
The creative brief was pretty straightforward: a simple, clean, friendly and approachable design that helped people find the information they needed. Knowing that a large portion of the web audience is social workers or homeless browsing from public library terminals, I kept the design flourishes to a minimum and designed for a less savvy internet user. But that doesn’t mean the site can’t have some style! A warm but not folksy color palette, rounded corners, and subtle drop shadow and gradient textures add depth to the design without getting in the way of the resource information. Most importantly, the index of resources is on every page.
The folks at Rose City Resource were great to work with, and it was a real pleasure to help them with a site design and collaborate with Metal Toad to provide a nice site for such a valuable community resource. Thanks for inviting me to pitch in!