Hi Munimak,

Thanks for commenting. We really appreciated all the designs you completed for our project and you were one of the five designers whose work we considered as a "finalist" for our award.

We surveyed approximately 50 of our supporters and advisors to consider those 5 finalists, and there was a consensus that Aspery's design was the best fit for our organization, so that's the one we chose.

Best,
Elie

Quick comment about colors. We're happier with subtler, less shiny color schemes.

Examples of schemes that are inline with what we're looking for:

#51,#54,#44, and #58

I've uploaded a wireframe for a slightly different organization of the homepage. Key points:
- The only images in this version would be (a) the charity logos and (b) the pie chart. (I've also uploaded the pie chart. Currently the chart is very ugly. We'd appreciate it if you could redesign that chart rather than just use my image.)
- Shifting the charity listing the main part of the page should provide enough space to show both the logos and give a brief description of the charities' activities.
- I also shifted the "Key Research Findings" section to the left and reduced the font size, so it fits.

To be clear, the menus (top and bottom), logo and signup box would all be unaffected by this.

Thanks for all the good, we really appreciate it.

We're interested in considering designs that don't use any photos. (We've had a lot of trouble finding appropriate photos in the past, so we don't want to rely on finding them now.)

I've uploaded the logos for our four top charities (available in our design brief), which we'd consider as images on our homepage. (We'd also like to consider homepages without any pictures at all).

Thanks,
Elie

Here are some more general comments that I hope are helpful.

1. We continue to look for and find websites we like. I hope this helps:

http://www.att.com/
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/
http://www.31three.com/
http://www.mint.com/
http://www.woothemes.com/

2. We tend to prefer the designs that put the menu in smaller font (For example, #3). I dont think the menu needs to be a large banner across the middle of the page.

3. I wonder if organizing the "research findings" in a way other than a linear list would work better. #3 tried one layout that we find promising.

4. One thing the mint.com site makes me think is that a lot of professional sites use less bold colors. Mint.com only uses a bright color for the focal point, to get the user to act in the way mint.com wants and click the button.

5. http://www.31three.com/ makes it seem like great sites use different fonts and font sizes to separate/organize information and tell the separate different parts of the page for the user.

My last comment are some general thoughts on all the designs we've seen, what we're looking for, and some of the main issues that are coming up.

1. Colors. We're not stuck on purple - we'd rather find a great website design and change the logo color if necessary. And we definitely don't want the site to be entirely purple or very heavy on purple.
2. Clean organization. Aside from the dark feel of our current website, it also feels a little messy/disorganized to us. We're looking for a design that organizes the information on the home page cleanly. The highest rated designs on this page do this well.

We like the color scheme of #2 better than #1. We think it's more along the lines of what we're looking for.

I think one of the main problems on our current site is not just that the color is dark and monochrome, but also that the layout seems "messy". I think design #1 made some progress addressing that with the gray boxes for the "key research findings."

But, with #1, just having one color and have it all such a strong, dark purple is not our preference. Also, we're not sure we like the big "donate now" buttons. That's a little pushy for our frontpage.

Re submission #1

Overall, I think there's too much purple here. We're trying to go for a look that's clean looking. For example, like http://www.brookings.edu/. (We've added some sites we like to the requirements section of the brief.)

I also think this image is not really what we're going for. It doesn't really tie in well with what we do.

I do like the general approach with the top bar menu and updates submission form.