Timeline
5 years
January 2015 – March 2020
Context
The NV Ball is the most prestigious ballroom dance competition in the state Nevada, hosted in Las Vegas.
Problem
We need a new brand and a new website that will be kept updated with the latest information.
The NV Ball's old website did not do everything that the competition organizers wanted, and the brand that had been created for it needed to be updated. I built them a new website and brand, simplifying the user experience and creating a new elegant brand.
Process
Building the Brand
To start the project, I needed to rebuild the NV Ball's brand. After a lot of sketching and testing out designs on my computer, I decided that the juxtaposition of the curved serifs and straight lines of the seriffed font-family that I chose fit the NV Ball nicely. It is a competition that has been around for over a decade that is refreshing itself; the straight lines represent its history and roots while the curved serifs represent the refreshed brand and new direction of the competition.
The competition's logo is the lotus, which has cultural significance around the world. In many cultures, the lotus represents growth, which is fitting for the NV Ball given the changes being made to its brand.
The color palette is comprised of the complementary colors blue and orange, with each color expanding into several shades. Given that the competition is held in Las Vegas, I felt that the muted shades of orange paired with deep blues represent the city's being next to the desert nicely.
Building the Skeleton
Once I developed the brand, it was time to build the website. Due to the NV Ball's old website having a good deal of content on it, I felt that the best approach was to build a skeleton of the site before making decisions regarding content. I built the site's infrastructure and created the templates for all of the pages along with sample elements showcasing how the content would be displayed. Once my design decisions were approved by the competition organizers, I carried over the existing content from the old site that was earmarked to be kept.
Creating Content
With the skeleton built and the old content carried over, I had to create new content to fill in the gaps. I created all of the competition's registration forms, prepared the rules and regulations and competition schedule, along with several other things. Forms need to be updated each year, so I take care of that as well.
I finished the website in June, a few months before the competition, leaving enough time for competitors to register and make travel arrangements.
The Competition
Each year while the competition was going on, I worked on-call to keep heat lists and results up to date and accessible. Competitors have high expectations when it comes to accessibility of the competition schedule, heat lists, and results. The posting and updating of all of this information must go on without a hitch.
As the competition came up each year, I updated time-related and time-sensitive content.
Next Steps
The NV Ball was sold in 2020 to new owners who brought their own team with them.
The brand and website work that I did has since been changed. You can find it at thenvball.com.
Biggest Takeaways
- Establishing checkpoints with superiors during the design and development process helps the entire process run as smoothly as possible
- Mobile responsiveness is crucial, especially when competitors need to access the site at all times during the competition
- Never forfeit the opportunity to brand the users' experience over to social media sites