van den Berg Design Archives

Building Nonprofit Websites in King County

Posted on July 13, 2021November 11, 2021

A redesigned WordPress website for The 4C Coalition – a community-based nonprofit, founded in 1999, that helps black and other youth of color succeed in school and in life. The 4C Coalition offers one-on-one mentoring, group mentoring and tutoring to 12- to 17-year-olds in King County.

Scope of Work

content migration
copywriting
creative strategy
color palette development
front-end web development
online data management
performance optimization
security hardening
search engine optimization
visual design
WordPress training and consulting

Performance

Page load speed ranks in the top 15% of sites.

WebPageTest Speed Index: 1.737 (median = ~3.591; top 10% = <1.388)

Total Page File Size: 1.3 Mb (In 2020, the median web page size = ~2.1 MB; the average page size = ~2.4 Mb)
Total Web Server Requests: 48

Web Design Team

Content Strategy: Rita Cipalla
Photography: Rebecca Sullivan
Visual Design: Joan van den Berg
WordPress Theme Development: Scott Marlow

Original Websites for Original Artists

Posted on May 27, 2021September 5, 2021

A redesigned WordPress website for musician-composer, Glenna Burmer. The new site merges content from burmermusic.com into a single domain for the award-winning artist. Visitors can listen and watch concert clips from SoundCloud and Vimeo. Stay tuned for the teaser trailer for the award-winning animated short film, Nana korobi, Ya oki.

The new website is simply FANTASTIC! Absolutely beautiful!
Glenna Burmer

Scope of Work

content migration
copywriting
creative strategy
color palette development
front-end web development
performance optimization
security hardening
search engine optimization
visual design
WordPress training and consulting

Performance

Page load speed ranks in the top 10% of sites.

Google Lighthouse benchmarks
Mobile Speed: 85/100
Desktop Speed: 97/100
Accessibility: 96/100
Best Practices: 100/100
Search Engine Optimization: 93/100

WebPageTest Speed Index: 1.169 (median = ~3.591; top 10% = <1.388)

Total Page File Size: 489 Kb (In 2020, the average page size was ~2.4 Mb; the median size was ~2.1 Mb)
Total Web Server Requests: 24 (4 Scripts + 5 Images + 6 CSS files + 4 fonts + 2 Other + 1 HTML )

Team

Content Strategy by: Rita Cipalla
Visual Design by: Joan van den Berg
Banner artwork: Descending Dragon by Nobu Burmer | Banner photo: Sakurajima volcano, Kyushu, Japan, by Glenna Burmer
WordPress Theme Development by: Scott Marlow

Nonprofit Website Training

Posted on April 26, 2021June 10, 2022

Puget Sound Training Center provides career training and employment services to immigrants, refugees and under-served individuals. PSTC trains individuals who are clients of Washington State Labor and Industry (L&I) and Department of Rehabilitation (DVR); PSTC also partners with CBOs (Community Based Organizations) to provide customized skills training.

This website redesign project involved upgrading the job training center’s decade-old static HTML website into a mobile-first responsive layout, powered by an intuitive WordPress Content Management System. During the redesign, nonprofit staff were trained how to add and edit website content – including text, images, and links – using WordPress’ new Gutenberg Block Editor. In addition to editing content, staff can now use the block editor, which has been custom-branded to their identity, to create mobile responsive layouts.

Scope of Work

creative strategy
color palette development
front-end web development
performance optimization
security hardening
search engine optimization
visual design
WordPress training and consulting

Team

Visual Design by: Joan van den Berg
Photography and WordPress Theme Development by: Scott Marlow

Beautiful WordPress Websites

Posted on August 30, 2019November 5, 2019

Visual Design by Joan van den Berg
WordPress Theme Development by Scott Marlow

A fine visual refresh for a fine Seattle furniture consignment store.

Trish Wills’ new mobile-friendly website features easy-to-update product Posts that customers can browse by category. A modern, minimalist design draws visitors eyes to product details, with descriptions in a readable, classic serif/sans-serif typeface.

The previous non-mobile responsive site had been developed with a custom database that store employees could no longer update in-house. The new WordPress site allows any staff member to publish and edit new inventory as it arrives.

With a homepage size of 223 Kb, and only 23 web server requests – this store site scores in Google’s 90^th percentile for page load speed.

WordPress: A World of Difference

Posted on August 29, 2019September 20, 2019

Copywriting by Rita Cipalla
Visual Design by Joan van den Berg
WordPress Child Theme Development by Scott Marlow

An overdue mobile-responsive website upgrade for my writing colleague, Rita Cipalla.

For this website redesign, we chose to skin an existing template WordPress Theme, Argent, by Automattic. The Argent Theme is based on _Underscores, so theme skinning is fast and straightforward – and the final product is guaranteed to be compatible with WordPress software and Plugins.

Overall Page Size is a lean 584 Kb, ~25% the industry median page size, with only 32 web server requests. As a result, page load speed is well optimized for mobile devices.

The site features Rita’s custom travel photographs for an authentic look. A classic combination of custom serif and sans-serif fonts are typeset in very readable line widths, with bold red and yellow call-outs for emphasis. And, unlike her previous static HTML site, Rita can now easily add and edit portfolio and blog content.

I love it! Thank you so much.