Today we relaunched the PEER website. The site’s content was simplified, which meant that fewer pages were needed. I used this as an opportunity to simplify and clean-up the existing look and feel. When it comes to web layout and design, I always lean towards minimalist tendencies. Minimalist designs don’t distract from the content, but complement it.
The PEER website homepage previously looked like this:

And the new website homepage now looks like this:

You can see that the main navigation was simplified and a larger, bolder image is being used for the main banner. The main navigation was also adjusted to take up less real estate on the header. The fonts were also tweaked to create a more modern look.
The process of updating the website included finding strong images and finding ways to code the layout so that it would shift smoothly when viewed on different devices. It also included creating additional views in Drupal to manage the updated Resources section, and a different format for sharing published articles.
The previous version of the site was something I designed a couple of years ago. It’s amazing how quickly your style can change and improve over time.