Tamara Olson Designs was approached by Lisa Guernsey (from New America) and Michael Levine (from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop) to built a website for a new upcoming book. Scheduled for release in fall 2015, Tap, Click, Read describes itself as “a guide to promoting literacy in the digital age.” In addition to wanting a way to promote the sale of the book, the authors were also looking to build a platform for sharing related content and upcoming events.
Phase 1: User Experience
During our kickoff meeting, Lisa and Michael explained the objectives of the website: Sell the book, as well as provide a place to promote and discuss the movement. From our hour-long deep dive, we were able to put together a site map outlining how all of the content they described would be organized. View site map and wireframes
Phase 2: Visual Design
The next phase involved applying a visual language to the finalized wireframes. We decided during our kickoff that it made the most sense to extend the look and visual language already present on the book’s cover, including the use of red and the “Raleway” typeface.
Phase 3: Development
We built a custom, responsive WordPress theme for the Tap, Click, Read website using the starter theme Super Hijinksified by Amber Weinberg. The “book style” animation on the homepage was built from scratch using jQuery animation effects. For the calendar functionality, we used the fantastic plugin by Modern Tribe.
