Social Charity Site: Redesign of Uncoded Template

We are a web-startup with a unique idea: to raise charity money through having people "challenge" each other to do things. Need two template pages designed: a homepage with general information about the site and a "challenge" page with info about current challenges. We have well-defined guidelines about the layout of each page as well as the color scheme to be used. There are also layout images created by a previous designer from which you can derive inspiration. All HTML/CSS needs to be web-standards compliant and must work on IE6/7, Firefox, Safari, and Opera. The $700 will be paid once we receive the template. Developers will be adding dynamic content to the template so you must be willing to remain in contact for questions or in case additional work needs to be done.

We also have specific requirements for the logo design so please read on if you are interested in this contest.

AMillionSuns.com

Tagline:
Shine together like a million suns

Desired Color Scheme:
Orange/yellow with shades of black for contrast

Desired Style:
Web 2.0

Accepted File Formats:
Standard Web Formats (.jpg, .gif or .png); Vector Formats (.eps, .pdf or .ai); Layered Formats (.psd or .tiff)

Overview of the Organization

We are a company called AMillionSuns. A few months ago, we came up with an innovative idea for charity donations: Rather than simply asking others for money, use the web 2.0 mentality of exhibitionism to elicit donations. We envisioned a website that would act as a hub for various people to post "challenges", events in which they would do something (often unusual or funny) if they could receive a predefined amount of donations for a cause. For example, a typical challenge might be: "Mike would walk the Great Wall of China if he could get $1000 for the American Red Cross". The idea was part social networking, part exhibitionism, and part charity drive.

We already have a fairly well conceived idea of what the site structure would look like. Click here (pdf) for a diagram of the sitemap.

There are also uncoded illustrations done by a previous designer detailing some of the main features of the site. You can find them below:
- homepage_illustration

- subsection illustrationThese illustrations are here for inspiration reasons only; they are not meant to be exactly what we want. As they stand, the preconceived layout is too cluttered and has too much content for beta deployment. Whats more, we no longer go by the name of BeExtraordinary.

 

 

Colors

AMillionSuns.com means exactly what it sounds like. The idea is that each person can be his/her own sun but collectively, we can shine together collectively as a million suns. Thus, we would like to preserve the bright orange-yellow color scheme from the two homepage illustrations above. However, don't take this as a strict requirement. If you can find other ways of representing the concepts of shining or brightness, feel free to include that in the coded template.

 

 

Layout

We already have well defined layouts for the two pages. Both have to satisfy the following requirements:
- Able to be displayed well on a typical 1024x768 monitor
- Layout must be center-aligned
- Web-standards compliant (nested tables discouraged)
- Header needs to contain- The company logo
- A tabbed link navigation system incorporating the 4 mains sections detailed in the site map (challenges, clusters, marketplace, how it works)
- The footer should leave room for general information about contact or RSS feed linksChallenge Page Layout

A drawing of the challenge page layout can be found here.

We would like the challenge page to be the entry point for a logged in user. It contains all the information about the user's challenge as well as for the ones he's connected to (look at subsections in sitemap).
- The left-hand site column with the profile/search and ads subsections should be about 1/3 to 1/4 the width of the entire site.
- The two larger subsections (my challenges, challenges I donated to) should have room for more detailed info about challenges. Descriptions here could contain a photo, text, and a meter showing how much has been donated thus far.
- The directory of challenges would be a Yahoo-like directory sorted by subject.Homepage Layout

A drawing of the homepage layout can be found here.

The homepage is the default entry point for an unregistered user. It contains content and media that should draw the visitor into exploring the site or registering to become a challenge host.
- There needs to be a bar at the top used for searching by person or challenge name and for site login.
- The two subsections below the bar (flash movie, how a challenge works) needs to be clearly visible on a 1024x768 resolution. The flash movie section should be a little larger in terms of height. (you don't need to do the flash movie, just put a placeholder here for now)
- How a challenge works has a graphical list of steps for starting and completing a challenge.
- The news/featured subsection just talks about whats been going on (current events or cool challenges)
- The hot challenges subsection is simply a list of popular challenges which users can click into 

 

Logo

We would like the company logo to reflect the theme of a million suns. It should be bright but still fit the color scheme of the website. Though we envisioned maybe a sun shining down from the top left corner of the site, please be as creative as you'd like with the design. Ideally, the logo should reflect the collective radiance of a group of individuals.

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Contact

My name is Rui and you can e-mail me at rjiang@northwestern.edu. Though our correspondence will be forwarded to the rest of the team for discussion, I will be your primary contact. Feel free to ask about anything at all, from the purpose of the site to detailed layout concerns. Keep in mind that we value quality over quantity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This contest was originally listed in multiple categories:
- Logo Design
- Web Page Design (Coded)