Maine town needs a Fun and Eco-friendly tourist/community travel website!

Boothbay Online

We are an existing website that promotes our community and tourism (we are a prime eco-friendly tourist destination in Maine). We wish to clean up and expand upon some components of the existing site with a strong "Buy Local" campaign and social media presence.

http://www.boothbayregiononline.com

If you review the current website, you'll see that there are many existing elements that will be eliminated. We're really looking to streamline it all, so keep that in mind: http://www.boothbayregioninfo.com/

Our favorite Maine tourism website is: http://www.visitmaine.com/

We love the atmosphere, layout, and style of these fun websites: http://globetrooper.com/ especially the handwritten notes and the way the footprint from the logo carries through.
http://www.dealchicken.com

**Home Page**
The look of the site should be professional and evoke trust but fun and friendly. Please use the full logo in the main header, and accompanying characters throughout your design. The site is used as a tool for the local community with a heavy focus on eco-friendly tourism. Be creative!

We are looking for an original design featuring the attached artwork. Please note the full logo, and then seperate "characters" which we would like to be used creatively throughout your design. We will need the design to evoke our area, Boothbay, Maine, so please google some images to get a feel for our rocky coastline.

The "Buy Local" campaign is new to the site and should be a heavily emphasized feature of the home page. This is not an online store. It is a grassroots movement to keep local shoppers at local businesses, creating a stronger local economy. A similar campaign is well underway in Portland, Maine, and you can see what it is all about here: http://www.portlandbuylocal.org/ Keep in mind that we are not looking to copy this website. It is informational only. We want our site to have a very strong Buy Local presence, but retain the tourism tools from the original site as outline in the navigation below.

Overall navigational elements should include:
* Buy Local
* community calendar
* weather/tides
* FB and Twitter
* maps
* Events
* Eco-Travel
* Contact Us
* Advertise with us

**Community Calendar Page**
Have some fun with this. The calendar will be updated on a regular basis so it needs to be functional, but should be fun and interesting to look at. Think about the visual page, but also what would happen after clicking on an event? What if we have 15 things on the same day? How would you make that work?

**Maps Page**
This will be the starting point for our visitors to see what this area has to offer. We will have interactive maps of the Boothbay, Maine area, use your imagination to come with an attractive layout for this section that uses your characters from the home page. Keep in mind that maps will need to be programmed and searchable. What would you look for as a tourist to this area? Make sure to include things that you would want to see. There is plenty of inspiration at http://www.visitmaine.com but we need to see your original ideas.

**Eco-Travel**
Let's go green in this section which will focus on eco-travel here in our naturally beautiful state of Maine. This section shouldn't be overly "touristy" as it will be used quite often by local people looking for cool, eco-conscience things to do here. (Extra points if you find some actual ones to incorporate into your design)

**Buy Local**
This page has to be phenominal (we know, all of your pages will be!) and it's all about local people buying local and creating a self-sustaining economy on our own. Research Boothbay, Maine. We have a little bit of everything and businesses will be showcased here, and premium businesses can even have their own coupons, custom mapping, whatever you can imagine for our local business community should be incorporated into your design. This section of the site can use some or all of the characters from the home page. It may eventually become it's own entity, so it can be a little more stand-apart than the rest of the pages - but not so much that our visitors wonder where we went.

We cannot stress enough that this site is a tool for the local community, and for people visiting the region. We want it to look interesting but be easy to navigate, and fun to use! Please, no clip art or copy-cat submissions.