Date created: September 2011

Web Address: www.barnardos.ie

About the Project: I recently joined Barnardos as their Online Executive and one of the first projects I was asked to undertake was a refresh and update of their official website.

A review of the site showed that it was well designed and worked well from a usability point of view.  It did not require a major overhaul, but rather a minor cosmetic update and a reworking of the way certain information was presented.

The changes that I applied included:

• An updated colour scheme that adheres more closely to brand values
• Redesign of site homepage with new social network widgets
• New imagery on key section homepages
• A grid-based layout, using the 16 column, 960 pixel web grid.
• Promotional boxes for the right-hand menu
• A new structure for links on the section homepages
• Installation of social sharing for content with ShareThis
• Update of headers and menus for a clearer hierarchy

This is the Web Content Guide that I give to my clients. Presentation of your written content online is just as important as your site’s visual design. I’ve seen many beautiful websites that have grown to look unprofessional because of sloppy writing and formatting.

Writing for the Web

Keep in mind that the Internet is a different medium to print, and that different rules and conventions apply.

Research shows us that most people scan web pages rather than reading them carefully. By following some simple steps, you can ensure that your pages are comprehensible.

• Use bullet points to deliver information
• Use clear headings and subheadings
• Headings should be descriptive and meaningful
• Write short sentences, in short paragraphs
• Be concise, clear, and use language that is simple and to the point (avoid jargon!)
• Highlight key words in your sentences. The reader who is scanning the information will get the gist of it from highlighted phrases.

Things to avoid

• Don’t use all capitals as they are sometimes difficult to read clearly on a screen. Also, when you’re online, all caps means shouting.
• Don’t underline words for emphasis, as the convention on the web is that an underline means a link. Use bold text for emphasis.
• Resist the temptation to play around with font formatting. Pages with lots of fonts in different colours and sizes do not look professional. Your fonts are determined by a document called a stylesheet, and the only formatting you should be doing is making certain words bold, applying headers and creating lists. If you want a font changed, ask your web designer to update the stylesheet.
• Apply headings rather than just bolding a text. Use Heading 2, Heading 3, etc – the page title is usually Heading 1 so best to start with Heading 2 in the text itself. Check with your web designer if you are not sure about this.
• Text should always be left-aligned. Centred and justified body text is not a good idea online as it can be difficult to read.  See webdevblog.co.uk for comprehensive details.

Quality Control

This should go without saying, but make sure everything is proofed and spell-checked. Research shows that bad spelling reduces user confidence and trust, which is particularly important if your website is intended to represent you professionally or you are using it to sell online.

Naming Pages and Posts

• Page names that appear in navigation menus should be kept short.
• Every website should have a ‘Home’ and a ‘Contact’ link as users expect to see these and may be confused if they are named differently.
• Every post should always have a unique title. Giving multiple posts the same name (such as ‘This Week’s News’) is confusing to both users and search engines. Instead of calling the posts ‘This Weeks’ News’, name them ‘This Week’s News: July 7th – 14th 2011′, etc

Web Terminology

‘Website’, ‘email’ and ‘online’ should all be written without a hyphen.

Links

Links should be descriptive. This is good practice both for users and for search engines. Instead of writing ‘click here to read our Annual Report’, write ‘our Annual Report is now available’. There is no need to write ‘click here’ as users are aware that links are opened by clicking.

Microsoft Word Ruins Everything

If you are using a content management system such as WordPress, be careful when copying and pasting from Microsoft Word documents. It adds a load of junk code and carries across formatting which can be very difficult to remove unless you know HTML code. Use the ‘Paste from Word’ button, or copy and paste the text from Word into Notepad if your system does not have this feature.

More Help

There are lots of resources available online to guide you in writing web content.

Some useful links:

• ImproveTheWeb.com – How to format text content
• CopyBlogger.com

Any questions, comments or suggested additions, please comment below!

So I’m putting the word out to web people in Irish NGOs to see if there’d be any interest in getting together once a month (or thereabouts) for some friendly discussion sessions. I’m just thinking about informal, sociable evenings where we could discuss things like tools, best practices, social networks, interesting charity initiatives that we’ve seen, and so on.

Let me know what you think – if there’s a reasonable amount of interest, I will get a group or web page of some kind set up so that we can communicate and arrange a time and place. You can contact me on hello@jeanobrien.com, or leave a comment below if you have any suggestions or queries.

If you’re interested in finding out more about the Ecampaigning Forum, presentations and notes from the workshop are available here: ecflive.fairsay.com, and you can see a list of participants here: apply.ecampaigningforum.com/ecf2011/participants

Update:

I got a very quick and positive response after putting the word out about this on Twitter, thanks so much to all who RT’ed!  I’ve set up a Google Group so we can discuss the best way to proceed with this, so if you’re interested, please join the Google Group (make sure that you provide your full name and the name of the charity that you work for).

Click the image above to see a selection of spreads from Oxfam Action, or download a pdf of the entire issue here

Date created: Spring 2011

Web Address: www.oxfamireland.org/about/oxfam-action/

About the Project: Issue 2 of Oxfam Ireland’s magazine for supporters.  I did the complete layout and design for this issue, and also wrote a number of the articles.

Sorry for shouting, but I can’t count the amount of project hours that I’ve lost dealing with hosters who have bad customer service, poor systems and the inadequate services for the job at hand.  It’s particularly frustrating because I know well which Irish hosting services are good, and a simple question before making the purchase can save so much time.

The temptation when you’re planning a website is to race out and buy the domain name straight away, in case someone else gets it. However, domain squatting is not the problem that it used to be, largely because you have to have proof that you own a business name when you’re buying an associated .ie domain.  Even if you’re very keen to nab a domain name, speak to a designer or developer first, even informally – booking a domain with the wrong company can cost you time and money.  I have personally paid double domain charges, and advised clients to do the same, in order to move a domain away from a poor hoster – the time it takes in dealing with shoddy customer service is simply not worth it.

It’s best to buy your domain and hosting from the same company – ask your designer for their recommendation, and for the following info:

• What kind of hosting plan will I need? How much webspace and bandwidth?
• Should I buy a Linux or Windows hosting plan? (Boring and techy but very important, as this choice can affect how your site performs in search engines)

My personal recommendation for a .ie domain name and hosting is Blacknight, and many other Irish designers feel the same way.  I use them for most of my .ie projects and always recommend them to clients.

This site is hosted with Tigertech, a US based hosting company, who I’ve been with for over ten years and who have been consistently reliable and affordable throughout all that time.  I absolutely recommend them for international or US-based .com sites

Date created: February 2011

Web Address: www.turnofftheredlight.ie

About the Project: Turn Off the Red Light is a campaign to end prostitution and sex trafficking in Ireland. The campaign was set up by an alliance of NGOs and was coordinated by the Immigrant Council of Ireland.

I designed the identity for the campaign, and built the website through WordPress so that the campaign could manage their own updates and post regularly to a blog. I worked on the project with Colin Murphy of Polity, who provides media services and production.

Date created: January 2011

Web Address: www.petermatthews.ie

About the Project: I built this website for the very talented Peter Matthews, a Bray-based photographer.  The brief was to keep the site quite clean and minimalist, in order to make Peter’s beautiful photography the main focus.  The site was built through WordPress, and contains a slideshow gallery on the homepage.

Peter has an extremely impressive portfolio and cv – his work has appeared in the New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, USA Today and Newsweek.  He is also a personable and lovely individual, and would be a pleasure to have around at a wedding – I would very much recommend getting in touch with him if you are looking for a wedding photographer.

Click the image above to see a selection of spreads from Oxfam Action, or download a pdf of the entire issue here

Date created: Autum 2010

Web Address: www.oxfamireland.org/about/oxfam-action/

About the Project: For years, Oxfam Ireland had three separate publications for our supporters: Oxfam Reports, for donors; Campaigner, for, well, campaigners; and The Engine Room, for volunteers. Our Marketing and Communications department led the initiative this year to combine all these publications into one single magazine, to save on costs and to try to move away from the tendency to segment our supporters.

I coordinated this project and led on the design and content of the new magazine. I have worked on magazine design before, but this was my first project where I was required to conceptualise and design one from scratch. It was a very interesting and challenging process, and I owe big thanks to magazine expert James Kelleher who gave me a lot of useful advice and feedback.

Issue 1 of Oxfam Action was circulated to Oxfam supporters and our shops in October 2010. The magazine contained a survey to gather feedback, and the response was overwhelmingly positive – 88% of respondents rated the magazine’s design and content highly.  Issue 2 will be published in February 2011; you can sign up to receive it on the Oxfam Ireland website.

Date created: November 2010

Web Address: www.mamanpoulet.com

About the Project: I recently created a custom WordPress theme for Maman Poulet, one of Ireland’s most popular and highly-regarded political blogs.  The site had previously been using a standard WordPress template, and Suzy of Maman Poulet wanted a new, cleaner and personalised look.

The chicken illustration is by minimil at iStockphoto.

Click the image for some large screengrabs of the new website.

Date created: May 2010

Web Address: www.oxfamireland.org

About the Project: In the spring of 2010, I redesigned and rebuilt Oxfam Ireland’s main organisational website, www.oxfamireland.org. The objectives of the redesign were to:

• Improve and modernise the look of the site
• Install a CMS for updating content
• Add tags and categories to cross-link content
• Clean up the homepage, make Oxfam’s organisational priorities clear
• Simplify the content
• Encourage the users to explore the site with interesting content snippets
• Improve search engine optimisation with fresh content

I researched a number of CMS options, and in the end came back to good old WordPress.  The excellent WordPress MU system allowed me to set up a WordPress installation with multiple blogs (a feature that is now available in WordPress 3.0).

WordPress MU is good deal more challenging than WordPress, as there is less online support available, and I found that I had to hack, slash and burn my way through templates, code and plugins in order to get everything working.  I’ve done lots of WordPress customisation before, but this was the most complex one yet. It was very satisfying -  I learned a lot and ended up with a really nice CMS that has lots of excellent features. Updating is so much quicker than it was before, and best of all, content is output in a really useful, flexible way.  Our feeds are going to other sites and social networks without any duplication of work.

Some of the plugins that I used and found invaluable were:

• Sitewide feed – creates a feed of all posts from the multiple blogs. Tricky to get working as the plugin is no longer supported – there’s probably a better solution in WordPress 3.
• WP Menu Manager – creates custom menus without coding, handy if you need other people to be able to add pages
• WordPress Mobile Edition – creates a very well designed mobile version of your site
• Redirection – sets up and manages really quick 301 redirects. Crucial if you are redesigning an existing site and are changing page addresses
• Latest Posts by Category Archive – this plugin enables you to show latest posts in a single category on a page.  Really handy for a site such as Oxfamireland.org – I can now automatically feed the climate change news to the climate change campaigns page, for example.
• Mass Page Maker – also a lifesaver.  WordPress is great for many things, but creating or duplicating lots of pages is not its strength. This plugin allowed me to create our 50+ shop pages all in one go, and much more.
• CMS – this plugin makes handy adjustments to the WordPress backend, allowing the administrator to drag-and-drop pages, and add multiple content blocks to pages.

Click the image to see a slideshow of materials from the Haiti Lives exhibition

Date created: June 2010

Web Address: www.oxfamireland.org/haiti-lives

About the Project: Haiti Lives is a photography exhibition that was organised by Oxfam, to show the recovery work that Oxfam is carrying out in Haiti in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake of January 2010. The exhibition featured 30 beautiful, inspiring images taken by photojournalist Ami Vitale, Jane Beesley of Oxfam and Jorge Silva of Reuters, and was on display in Dublin’s Powerscourt Townhouse Centre for the month of July.

I was in charge of designing the identity and all materials for the exhibition, and preparing the photographs for print and display.  Materials included a brochure, a poster, exhibition display graphics, the photo captions, large form prints for the windows of the exhibition and giant round 4m² displays for the Powerscourt Centre.

The exhibition’s run in Dublin was extremely successful, attracting a large number of visitors and garnering very positive press coverage, including a feature on RTE News.  You can see the photographs that appeared in the exhibition on the Oxfam Ireland website.

Date created: May 2010

Web Address: www.oxfamireland.org/shop/oxfam-donation-days/

About the Project: Attracting a sufficient number of good quality donations is always a challenge for Oxfam, and Ireland’s recent economic downturn has made this even more difficult. Many of our shops were in urgent need of stock, and so the Donation Day project was devised.

Four Oxfam shops around the country were picked to host the Donation Day events – a day of music, fun, treats and celebrity visits.  The events attracted a great deal of excellent media coverage, and over 400 new bags of stock were donated.

I created the posters and banners that were used to promote the events.  The brief was to create something fun and light-hearted, encouraging people to come down and get to know their local Oxfam shop staff, as well as bringing down their unwanted clothes, books and homeware.  I used a mix of stock images (tying this campaign into our ClearURGear campaign) and hand-drawn type.

Watch out for a Donation Day in your local Oxfam shop, and of course, any time is good for a spring clean – Oxfam is always happy to accept your quality unwanted goods.

Date created: From May 2010

Web Address: www.oxfamirelandshop.com

About the Project: The press team at Oxfam had the idea of redesigning our Fair Trade product press releases, which were previously just Word documents with no particular design, to make them more attractive. We regularly send out releases for our extremely wide and eclectic range of products, and have started displaying them in a magazine-spread style layout in the hope that they will catch the receiving editor’s eye. It’s had some good success: we’ve had lots of positive feedback and Oxfam’s Fair Trade products have been featured in a huge range of lifestyle spreads in magazines and supplements, such as the Sunday Independent, Prudence Magazine and Kiss Magazine.

Click the image for close-ups of the bookmarks

Date created: April 2010

Web Address: www.oxfamireland.org/shop

About the Project: Every year, Oxfam prints our own charity Christmas cards, and the offcuts from the printing run are used for a variety of purposes. This year, our retail managers asked me to do some bookmarks that would encourage donations to our shops .  I designed a set of three, each with a retro design theme and text that aims to remind people that there are plenty of goods that Oxfam shops are delighted to accept and sell on.

About this guide

I ♥ WordPress.

I use it for nearly everything now, and am delighted that its scope will be expanded with version 3, which is due out in the not-too-distant future.

One of the strengths of WordPress is how user-friendly it is.  Clients of mine who are not particularly tech-savvy are using it and blogging and editing away.  Once they know the basics, I find that they rarely come back with problems.  However, the basics are sometimes tricky to find all in one place.  WordPress.org’s documentation is comprehensive and excellent, but is aimed more at the expert/administrator/developer level and there isn’t much basic info there for people who simply want to post and edit their content.

I’ve created a Guide to WordPress 2.9 for Editors, which I send to clients once their WordPress site is set up.  I’m sharing it here as I think it might be useful to other designers.  It just runs through the basic functions of adding a new post or page, editing posts and pages, adding and editing links, and managing comments.  It also includes a brief introduction to WordPress and explains the difference between categories and tags.  It’s a short (five page) pdf that can be saved and used as a reference.

So feel free to download and share this document. I just ask that you leave my credit on the footer, and that you comment below with your feedback if you have a spare minute.  Do you think the document is useful?  Any ommissions or errors?

Date created: February 2010

Web Address: www.oxfamireland.org/schools

About the Project: The Oxfam schools website is a resource aimed at providing teachers and students with more information about the work that Oxfam does.  It shows the variety of ways that schools can get involved: by fundraising, participating in Oxjam, campaigning, insisting on Fairtrade products in the staffroom and much, much more.

Date created: January 2010

Web Address: www.maevehiggins.com

About the Project: A WordPress blog and site for the comedian Maeve Higgins. The brief was to make the site very clean and minimalist, with a few small feminine touches. Maeve is one of my favourite comedians of all time, if you haven’t seen her, go check her out.

Date created: Winter 2009

Web Address: www.sammcmahontrust.ie

About the Project: I built this website on a volunteer basis for the Sam McMahon Trust. Sam McMahon is an 8 year old boy from Dublin who suffers from Friedreich’s Ataxia, a degenerative neuro-muscular disorder.  Sam’s family set up the Sam McMahon Trust to raise awareness of the condition and raise funds for the Friedreich’s Ataxia Research Alliance (FARA).  Sam’s family are doing great work: it’s very inspiring to see how they are becoming advocates and reaching out to others with the condition.  The Trust runs frequent fundraising events, such as a cookery demonstration with Neven Maguire which is coming up in March.

The site is a simple WordPress customisation, which I based on the free theme by Dimox.  The background pattern, illustration of Sam and Sam McMahon logo were designed by Elizabeth Davis.

Some of my high points from Offset 2009:

• Scott from AAD, who did a great job of balancing a presentation of their work with a wider discussion about design and creativity.
• Design legend Massimo Vignelli, who was extremely engaging and funny as he showed us decades worth of his elegant work. He had an interesting insight for me about why perpetual calendars (which I am constantly tempted by but never buy) don’t work: you have to tell them the date, which defeats the entire purpose of a calendar.
  
  House Industries: I’ve been a big fan of House Industries for a long time and it was great to see their presentation. The attention to detail that they devote to their study of type is mind-blowing. Their Photo Lettering project – the preservation of a huge archive of lettering – is fascinating, and their Photo Lettering online tool will be a great resource when it’s ready. Also, their Alexander Girard collection made me whimper with longing.  I bought this print the same day that I saw their presentation.
• Chip Kidd showed us some of his famous work and explained his creative process, and on top of that was just completely hilarious.  He’s quite similar to David Sedaris, an author that he has worked with many times.
• I probably took more pictures of Oliver Jeffers‘ work than anyones, and he did a lovely little doodle and autograph for my small girl.

Dave McKean, David Shrigley, Linda Brownlee and Anthony Burrill were also notably wonderful. And my pals Johnny Kelly, Chris Judge and Gisele Scanlon were all fantastic too.

I was really, really impressed with the polish and professionalism of many of the speakers, and how funny and charming they were.  I’ve been at a couple of presentations and conferences since Offset, and they’ve really emphasised how good the Offset speakers were.  These are clearly some people who are extremely skilled communicators, not just visually but verbally as well.

I can’t recommend Offset enough:  I’m still racking my brains as to how they managed to present such an amazing line-up and only charge €150 per ticket.  It inspired me in more ways than I could have predicted, and I’ll be there again for sure next year.

• Sign Oxfam Ireland’s petition calling on the Irish government to ensure a fair deal at the UN global climate change negotiations at Copenhagen this December.
• Donate. The world’s poorest people are the ones most directly affected by climate change.
• If you have a blog, you can write about Climate Change for Blog Action Day too.  Full details at www.blogactionday.org
• This is a design site, and I’ll repeat the call I made to designers on Blog Action Day 08: think about volunteering some of your talents and time to a charity or campaigning organisation.   A strong image may only take you a few hours to produce, but a non-profit can get years of value from it.

Date created: May 2009

Web Address: www.oxfamireland.org/clearurgear

About the Project: Brand new website for the ClearURGear project. The awesome posters were done by Hunter Design, I can’t get over what a great, fun, colourful redesign of the brand it is.

I put together this simple minisite to provide information about the campaign, and to promote its new look.

Oxfam shops are seeing a welcome increase in custom, but because of this, they are running low on donated stock to sell. If you have good quality homewares, books, music, clothes or accessories that you don’t use any longer, now’s a great time to do a clear-out and bring them to an Oxfam shop.

I just received my Postcard Box from Chris Judge in the post (things in the post! yay!) today.  Chris is a Dublin-based illustrator, a lovely chap and very very talented indeed.  He’s currently selling this collection on his website for an extremely reasonable €20.  I’m addicted to buying art on the web, and this might be one of the best deals I’ve come across.  Take a look at Chris’ site and blog to see his  colourful and joyous illustration work.

Facebook have changed this yet again. The steps are:

1. Access your Page manager here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/manage/
2. Go to your Page and click “Edit Page” beneath the Page profile picture.
3. Select “Applications” and next to “Notes” please click “Go to Application.”
4. On the bottom left hand side of the page select “Edit Import Settings”

However. Lots of people (myself included) have had problems with this function. Facebook is returning an error message that feeds are invalid. I have been experiencing this problem with a feed that I know is valid, because it’s working on another Facebook page.  Sigh.

Original Instructions

In a few simple steps, here’s how you can import your blog (using the RSS feed) into a Facebook page (rather than profile).

How is it done?

1. Go to your Facebook page (or create a new one here)
2. Click on the Notes tab in the top left hand corner (you  may have to click on the plus sign to display it)
3. Select ‘Write a new note’
4. Once you’re in this window, you can access the Notes settings.
   
5. On the right-hand side of the Notes area, you can choose to import a blog.
   
6. Copy and paste the location of your blog’s RSS feed.
7. The page will then import your blog.  After you have posted to your blog, the post will show up a little later in your Facebook page.

Updated – Dec 2009

Facebook changed this option slightly after I wrote this post, and many commenters ran into problems with their feed appearing on their personal page instead of on their fan page.  Big thanks to commenter Leela Robinson who identified the correct way to do this. In short – use the Notes tab at the top of the page, not the one at the bottom right.

Facebook page?

A Facebook page is different to a Facebook profile: a profile is a personal account and must be linked to an identifiable individual, whereas a page can be set up by an individual to promote a brand, product or service.   The advantage of a page is that people can become fans of that page and can be contacted en masse, sent updates, use discussion boards, upload photos, etc.  Updates to your page will then appear on their Facebook homepage.

Why import a feed?

If you are creating a Facebook page to promote your blog, importing the blog to the page means that all your blog posts will automatically appear on your Facebook page.

What’s difficult about it?

Facebook is strangely user-unfriendly when it comes to setting up and editing pages, groups, etc.  The process is a bit counter-intuitive, as you can see above.

Lots of blogs give pointers on how to import a feed into your profile, but I had trouble finding one that gave instructions specifically for a fan page.  So I noted down the instructions here in a rare fit of helpfulness.

Some of my Facebook pages:

• Oxjam Ireland
• Oxfamhome, Belfast
• CheapEats.ie

Date created: April 2009

Web Address: www.oxfamireland.org/drc

About the Project: Noted fashion and portrait photographer Rankin travelled to the Democratic Republic of Congo with Oxfam in 2008, where he photographed residents of refugee camps in the northern Kivu province.

These photos can currently be viewed by the public in a unique outdoor exhibition in Wolfe Tone Park, beside the Jervis Centre in Dublin 1.  The exhibition will run until Friday 31st July 2009, and is part of a fundraising appeal for the people of the DR Congo.

Date created: February 2009

Web Address: www.resonatepr.com

About the Project: I recently built this site for Orlaith Finnegan, a freelance PR consultant.  Orlaith did some PR work for us on the website CheapEats.ie, and I can’t recommend her highly enough; she did a really great job in a very short amount of time.  If you’re looking for PR advice or services, Resonate PR is an excellent choice.

Date created: March 2009

Web Address: www.oxfamireland.org/oxfamvintage

About the Project:  This was one of those responsive jobs for Oxfam – I have a million billion other things to do, but Oxfamvintage is currently getting a lot of coverage and the shop page became one of the most visited pages on our site, so I thought it needed a bit more than just a very basic information page.  I did the design above based on a kind of mood board/scrapbook, and am really happy with how it turned out.

Date created: November 2008

Web Address: www.oxfamhome.org

About the Project: A simple minisite for the Oxfamhome furniture shops. I used WordPress to set this up so that the shop staff and volunteers can update it themselves.

Date created: December 2008

Web Address: www.cheapeats.ie

About the Project: This is my new baby, a food blog edited by myself and my good buddy Peter McGuire. CheapEats is all about eating well in Ireland while getting value for money, and we’re covering everything from shopping tips to restaurant reviews to recipes. Check out the site, leave your feedback and send us your tips on the best places to get good food in Ireland.

Date created: November 2008

About the Project: These posters were created to raise awareness for World AIDS Day (Dec 1st) and to encourage people to show support by wearing a red ribbon. They were printed in A2 and A3 size and displayed in Oxfam shops around the country

Date created: December 2008

Web Address: www.dealmanagementlimited.ie

About the Project: A simple corporate site for Deal Management Limited, a Dublin-based consultancy.

A gorgeous, funny, evocative poster collage of one canvasser’s experience in the US election.

[ Via Social Design Notes ]

Date created: November 2008

Web Address: www.oxfamireland.org/ecards

About the Project: I’ve just updated our ecard site with some free seasonal cards. Why not go green this year, and send virtual cards? And you can always make a donation to Oxfam instead…

The programming of our ecard site was kindly done on a volunteer basis by Juan of Instinct.ie.

Date created: November 2008

Web Address: www.oxfamireland.org/oxjam

About the Project: We’ve started a Heroes of Oxjam series on our Oxjam website, to thank all the great musicians and organisers who did such a fantastic job this year.  If you were involved in Oxjam, keep an eye on the site; you may be one of our prize winners.

The superhero illustration is adapted from an istock image.

Date created: October 2008

Web Address: www.oxfamireland.org/christmas

About the Project: Each year I create a Christmas minisite for Oxfam Ireland; it brings all our Christmas products and content together, and shows shoppers that they can do all or most of their Christmas shopping with Oxfam.

Date created: October 2008

Web Address: www.quadcore.ie

About the Project: A brochure site for a new Dublin-based IT Consultancy firm.

NB: I just installed the Lightbox plugin for WordPress, so click the image above to see a larger version.

I’m the Web Co-ordinator and Graphic Designer for Oxfam Ireland, as you’ll know if you follow this blog. There can sometimes, for me, be a disconnect between the work I’m doing and the work that we do. Sometimes it’s hard to connect sitting at a pc drawing colourful starbursts for Oxjam with our partner programs doing HIV testing in Uganda, or buying school bags for children in Tanzania. It’s also hard to talk about it without sounding sanctimonious, as though I’m praising myself for the great work that is done by our organisation, when in fact nothing could be further from my mind. I get to spend most of my working week being creative and learning new things, and the job is so incredibly rewarding: I feel very lucky to be here.

So when thinking about how to blog about poverty for Blog Action Day, I decided to briefly cover just two things:

How Little It Takes To Help

It only costs €18 to buy a set of schoolbooks for a child in a developing country. €18! That’s about four pints. (Note to self: try to stop always using pints as main unit for measuring cost.  It looks bad.) We all know that education is the key to breaking the cycle of poverty. Small contributions can change lives; don’t be put off donating because you feel that you can’t donate very much.

Why You Should Volunteer To Design For A Charity

Anyone who works in or cares about design knows the power of a strong photograph, a compelling poster campaign, a striking slogan. Charities often struggle to find the budgets for design work, and are endlessly competing for attention with consumer advertising. If you can donate a few hours of your time to design something for a charity, it could provide the charity with a cohesive identity for a project, and potentially be used in lots of materials. If you’re a photographer, a high quality photograph can make a huge difference in mailouts and press (photography, particularly, is so important to charities). Check out Volunteering Ireland’s arts and culture / office-based work sections or contact your favoured small charity and offer your services. People often associate volunteering with a regular weekly commitment, but a one-off or infrequent donation of skills can be really valuable as well.

Oxjam blogs for Blog Action Day »

Irish bloggers on Blog Action Day »

Date created: October 2008

Web Address: www.oxfamireland.org/oxjam

About the Project: I put this flyer together this morning for my colleague Pip’s Oxjam fundraiser. It’s a very quick and simple job, but I love the colour combination of black, white and aqua, and may try to use it for another project soon.

iPod photo from www.sxc.hu

Absolutely gorgeous poster work from Scott Hansen, the posters are gently distressed and textural without being overdone.  His site uses Flash beautifully as well.

Via Grain Edit.

Date created: Spring 2008

About the Project: Every year Oxfam Ireland prints about a billion Christmas cards, and our printers allow us to use the offcuts from these cards for other projects. This year we used them to print off little handouts for Oxjam; they’re business card-sized and can be filled in on the reverse with details of gigs. I’m really pleased with how they turned out, the colours are really vibrant and I ended up using the artwork in lots of other Oxjam projects.

I’ve seen the incredible illustrations of Jesse LeDoux around the place, but just found his website today through the lovely Design Freebies blog.