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The mission of the Dambach Peacebuilder Endowed Fellowship is to honor Charles F. “Chic” Dambach and his dedication to global peacemaking. By honoring their OSU alumnus, Chic, and his life work, the Dambach Fellowship Founders’ Council aims to empower OSU students to follow in Chic’s footsteps and learn how to change the world as Chic once did.
When the Dambach Peacebuilder Fellowships Council approached us for website design and development services, they had already begun their initial fundraising outreach efforts to award the first two students an endowment to pursue graduate studies at the School of Global Studies. However, despite these efforts, they lacked the online presence to push forward their fundraising effectively. The council then hired us to design and develop a website that would cater to prospective donors and OSU student recipients of the Dambach Peacebuilder Fellowship endowment.
We aim to bring the Dambach Peacebuilder Fellowship into the digital landscape by creating a new responsive website featuring robust information architecture and straightforward navigation. In addition, we would make the website look and feel unique yet embody OSU, Chic F. Dambach as the fellowship’s inspiration, and the School of Global Studies’ mission.
We also aim to design a calming and peaceful yet modern aesthetic. Finally, the website’s goal would include fostering a strong connection to the foundation through purposeful calls to action to motivate fellowship student participants and donors, encouraging users to explore the site and learn about the fellowship, its mission, and inspiration.
We started the project with a discovery meeting, explaining our design and development processes, and familiarizing ourselves with the Dambach Peacebuilder Endowed Fellowship, its council members, mission, and goals. We discussed content and the new brand. Information gathering enabled us to identify, clarify, and reach stakeholder consensus on the website requirements and target audiences.
The site’s audience is comprised of two groups. The first is potential Fellowship award recipients, including prospective and existing students of the School of Global Studies at OSU. The second is current and potential donors.
During initial meetings with members of the council, we listened intently to the members as they explained their profound devotion and connection to the fellowship through their inspiration; their friend and colleague Chic F. Dambach. We heard first-hand accounts of the experiences the members had during their formative college years in the 60s during the Vietnam war and, most importantly, during the free speech and academic freedom movement, inspired by Chic, that was happening at OSU on campus at the time. The conversation was emotional yet necessary. The stakeholders’ experiences, mission, and passion would be instrumental in setting the future design and tone of the website.
Next, we begin the planning phase. During this time, we work with the stakeholders to review content thoroughly and make recommendations. We will also begin mapping the information architecture by creating a site map. In addition, before entering the design phase, we will consider which design features will best help achieve the stakeholders’ website objectives.
Creating the site map for the OSU website spurs productive discussions about content hierarchy, content, page navigation, and organization. Our objective is a clutter-free, readily navigable design. The homepage will contain a powerful hero section and a compelling call to action. The remaining pages will include the foundation’s inspiration, or “Our Inspiration,” informing students and donors who Charles F. “Chic” Dambach is and his profound impact on global peacebuilding efforts. There will be a page to outline the fellowship, including requirements that existing and prospective OSU students would find helpful. A “School with a Vision” page would center around OSU and the School of Global studies. And finally, a “Contact” page for donors will be provided.
Next, we’ll map the essential features of the site’s user experience, structure, and design.
We will assemble the information and insights from the previous phases, bringing them to life in a visual representation.
During our discovery meeting, we learned that a mandatory website color would be the primary orange (Hex #Fe 5c 00) used in OSU’s logo and brand.
In creating the website’s color palette, capturing the Fellowship’s unique mission and passion is critical while ensuring the colors will be recognized as part of the larger OSU community. Therefore, we will create a complimentary color palette that will appeal to students and donors. We will convey energy, freedom, and motivation with orange as the primary color. Including pale and heavier blue tones will balance the intense emotions of orange with feelings of calm and peace.
We chose Google’s Montserrat sans serif font as the primary typeface for the website. Our goal was to use a modern and versatile font for eye-catching headings and sleek-looking body text. With that, a lighter weight and round font like Montserrat will ensure that text-heavy pages appear soft and welcoming. These choices will positively impact the brand, conveying strong yet calm emotions by the Fellowship’s goal and mission. Montserrat is also designed for specific use at small sizes and mobile devices, so this font is an excellent choice for responsive design.
To complement the iconography and overall tone of the website, we chose elements that would convey peace, love, and strength. In addition, we included soft color tones of dove illustrations for their spiritual symbolism and connection to peace and compassion. By subtly sprinkling these elements throughout the website, we create continuity and flow, encouraging website engagement and exploration.
We created a style guide to capture the website’s essential UI elements and visual direction.
While building the website’s brand and style, we propose two mid-fidelity wireframe versions of the site’s homepage for the client’s feedback. Here, the visual layout of the website begins to take shape.
Next, it is time to incorporate our UI elements and apply visual direction by creating high-fidelity wireframes.
The final phase is website development, testing, and deployment. We determined that WordPress would be the robust content management platform best able to accommodate the Foundation’s immediate needs, its plans, and the Council’s mission, providing Council members the ability to add and edit content. Keeping content up to date would be essential to the future growth and evolution of OSU’s reach and mission. In addition, WordPress would allow the site to be responsive to mobile users, which would help drive traffic to the site from even more prospective students and donors.
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