Beyond Design Media

When Charles Freeman of God…Uncomplicated approached me to develop a website for his ministry, I had no idea that it would be one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.  God…Uncomplicated is a non-profit organization with a purpose of reaching college students on major university campuses using graphic arts.

Charles showed me some samples of the types of graphic ads that they would place campus newspapers and magazines.  I thought they looked great, but they didn’t really complete the picture. The print ads typically had a thought provoking statement or question on them, but the call to action seemed to be directed to the organization’s website.  Because of that, the website had to become the new focus of the ministry, as it would ultimately have the impact on the student’s lives.

After a couple of meetings we came out with 2 priorities.  Charles’ number one priority: design. The look had to be killer and I knew that I wanted to work with my good friend George Ortiz on the mockups.  After a couple of attempts, George nailed it for Charles and my job really started. My number one priority: the user experience. I wanted the site to adapt to the user based on their information. Charles had already expressed that he wanted to incorporate the specific schools in a cool way. I finally had a breakthrough when I was creating the registration process…What if the site was able to customize it’s graphics on-the-fly based on what school the student was from? It was a simple solution, but it worked beautifully.  You can check out the screenshots below to get a feel for how it works.

The second part of the experience was creating a site that united students from different universities into a Christian community. With online discussions and video testimonies, I am looking forward the day when I can log on and see students from the University of Michigan discussing the environment from a Biblical perspective with students from Oregon State. For now, however, we’re starting small and focusing on the 4 main Utah universities.

See the site live at www.goduncomplicated.net.