IPA France
From the Crude un-schematic design to the Minimalist Blue Butterfly that was made to order for IPA.
Design for us is not limited to the size of the Header, type or colour combina- tion used. We believe design is the integral part of the identity of the client. Here it is the IPA France Association, a 10+ year old body representing esteemed luminaries, who’ve brought together professionals of Indian origin in France to promote professional and social interaction, to share individual experiences for mutual benefit and provided a forum for exchange of inter-disciplinary knowledge by organizing meetings, seminars and conferences with Indian and French experts.
We sat down to design this identity, reflected in the characteristics of it’s members, namely:
a) Maintaining the Logo of the IPA and integrating the (shade of) Blue as required by the IPA IT Committee, we not only moved away from the “Cliché” Blue of the “Les Bleus” but also continued to establish the identity of IPA with a unique Blue and it’s combinations.
b) Straight-forwardness and equality across the members of the organisation, reflecting in the the combination of Blue Pin-Stripes as the background of the site
c) The Humble and unseen Backstage volunteer work by the President/MC/ WC/other committees of IPA which reflects in the colour separation of the background Pin-Stripes, with a lighter colour at the top, showing that although being on top of all work all the time, they are giving prominence to the mem- bers and organisation!
d) Experience, Elegance and Panache of all the high profile members and guests of IPA reflecting in the Curve-splashed header with a 3D effect behind the name of the organisation and so on..
Apart from the Design Scheme, we’ve also improved upon the Visual Aspects of the System enabling easy adaption and working for the members like understanding the “Click-ability” of a Link by either highlighting it in One Single Colour all across the Site or by putting a Tab/Button which has “Mouse Over” Effects, not only for the cursor but also the text & Background, enabling easily spotting.
We improved upon proper Tabling, Form layouts, Sections & Separators and umpteen other such details creating a simple, yet clarified navigation and link- ing of the content. From the random clubbing of data under Sections to Streamlined and logical Hierarchy of the Sections, sub-sections and Content, we believe we’ve co- created with the IPA Committee’s valuable inputs, an easily understandable system of Navigation and Processes.
An important improvement over the original Step Down menu, which wasn’t prominent and obvious as being a Sub-Menu of any section, we’ve provided with the latest option in market today, a Drop-Down menu. In addition we’ve created Section Tab Pages, with the same menu options, in case some user is not comfortable with the “Quick Action & Interactive” Drop down menu, considering that most members of the IPA are above 50 and without taking away any credit from their early adoption to technology, might be facing problems with Quick Changes in instances of Mouse Over and so.
Any content on any part of the Website is editable by the IPA Admin without having to depend upon our development team. Every page had a neat text editor with various options & guidelines to the IPA IT committee to carry out various changes as they come up. All members/users of the C2C System of IPA are given roles, which can be changed by the IPA Admin, so that if after the Elections the MC/WC/President Changes, the Admin can simply change the roles and all the related content in relevant pages, viz. Organisation, Contact us, Address-book, etc. will automati- cally change.
IPA IT committee had requested us to integrate the existing method of upload- ing with Google Picasa Web Albums and we’ve achieved that flawlessly. On top, we’ve maintained the Photos as Albums with their titles and have added the “Lightbox” facility, which is when you click on a photo it enlarges to it’s original size and the rest of the browser area is darkened to be able to focus on the Photo. This is a special plus, given that even Google the original pro- vider of the Photo Albums doesn’t provide this until now.
There are at least a dozen more such features and functionalities which we’ve either added, like the Address-Book, Polls, Presentation Material, etc. that we will not elaborate here as we’re trying to keep this, short and interesting. Special Thanks to the IPA IT Committee in general and Mr. Naresh Shah in particular for helping us realize this project in its entirety. It would’ve been unable without his tireless efforts and insistence on quality control all across. Mr. Shah himself an ex-IBMmer has guided us on key aspects of this installation whereby we could make it easy and useful for the member of IPA France.
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