New website! Audubon Council of Illinois - Bird City Illinois
If you know me, you know I LOVE birds, so designing a new website about birds is a special treat! I recently had the great opportunity to design and launch a new website for the Audubon Council of Illinois (ACI), and their new initiative, Bird City Illinois.
Bird City Illinois is such an awesome concept! Conservation is often thought of as something global - think elephants and global warming and polar bears - but local conservation is critical too. Bird City Illinois (which is modeled after Bird City Wisconsin) helps municipalities become more bird friendly though native plantings, education and awareness is a huge win for birds and conservation!
The website was a challenge because it was 2 websites in one - the ACI and Bird City Illinois, which each required their own logo, branding, navigation and content. Fortunately, the ACI team was great to work with and I helped organize some of the great but complex content they’ve developed for Bird City Illinois. This is not a slam dunk for municipalities to achieve - they have to put in some serious effort to get official recognition - which is great for birds and for conservation!
One other key concept I’d like to mention - in addition to copy and text, imagery is so important to a website. It’s a tricky needle to thread - you want good quality but you also want authenticity, and you want local, relevant photos. For the ACI site I was fortunate to have a mix of all - professional level photos from the national Audubon, high quality local photography form their followers, and a few stock photos.
