BioBlitz
Live site: http://bioblitzsb.org/
Purpose
The Santa Barbara Botanic Garden approached me to design a site for BioBlitz 2007. They needed a visual identity as well as a means of communicating with the public about the BioBlitz event.
Look and feel
I did the visual branding for the client, and I wanted to convey the sense of the hunt associated with BioBlitz. Since the event is about cataloging the diversity of organisms present in a given natural area, the focus of the event is on the little details — the small plants, the little mushrooms, the tiny insects. Those are where most of the biodiversity in an area are; it's not the trees or the more typically charismatic megafauna like squirrels or deer. The client requested a design that was "kid-friendly" and would work well on merchandise like hats, shirts and mugs. To fit the brief I made a logo that is a bit more complicated than logos usually are; it has some of the complexity of the natural world. It is presented with a dragonfly, to balance out the plant-centric elements and provide a splash of color; it is modelled after a species of orange dragonfly native to the Santa Barbara region. The bright colors are appealing to children, and the dynamism is very attractive to kids of all ages.
The site was designed with similar ideas in mind. The page shows a riot of vegetation with brightly colored animals in it. Some are insects, some are lizards; there is even a worm in the "underground" footer. The bright colors and outdoor metaphor make the site feel very Santa Barbara in a way, as well as communicating the theme of the event.
Site features
In addition to the static content, the garden wanted to build a collection of images of the organisms it found, and to show them off. The initial set of photos were seeded by myself and Bob Haller, a legendary botanist in California. Every page shows 3 random photos from the collection. The collection itself is browsable by taxonomic group. In addition, we needed a system to easily provide results information, again by taxonomic group. There is some web expertise at the garden, so the system had to be maintainable by the garden staff.
All of the data, for the photos and results, are stored in XML files which are easily editable. This solution, although not as full-featured as a real database, is sufficient for the site's purposes, and meant a much shorter development time and therefore increased savings for the client.
