Washington State Convention & Trade Center
Art Direction
Washington State Convention & Trade Center is an events facility located in Seattle with a website that lacked a strong representation of its capabilities. My role in the project was to showcase the facility and its offerings, so I began with the center’s visual identity and sweeping architecture as inspiration. A quiet color palette allows content to visually breathe, and the brand was given a modern facelift to route visual tension back to large photographs of the center.
Selected Case Studies
Work availability
Talk about hectic! If you’re in no rush—great! Neither am I.
How to contact me
Extreme Makeover Convention Center Edition
The previous site for WSCTC used frames, a Java applet to display the navigation, and animated GIFs to highlight other programs—that was just the home page.
The Center’s visual identity has several incarnations in signage and marketing collateral, the inconsistency of brand usage creates a visual identity crisis for visitors.
The Center provided fantastic photographs of the facility, but looking at the previous site it was clear that the Center was taking a backseat to its brand.
The general rule of print design is to always make the client’s brand larger than life (the client can never have its logo large enough). The web, however, allows designers to reduce the visual dominance of a brand since it will remain persistent throughout a site experience. With a brand requiring less visual real estate on a web page, other elements can take center stage.
I replaced the condensed italic treatment of the WSCTC lettermark with a simple, modern presentation which allowed for easier placement within a page masthead. Next, I lifted the navigation out of its vertical treatment and ran it horizontally across the page, with adequate space for persistent navigation and an ability to search the site.
The only thing left to do was let photographs display the Center’s beauty and grandeur.
