Website Redesign for Chippewa Ranch Camp
Chippewa Ranch Camp is a traditional, overnight summer camp for girls in Eagle River, Wisconsin. I first worked with them in 2012 when they approached Ronningen Design for a new website. During the early 2010s, photorealistic textures and drop shadows were all the rage, and I used them liberally when designing the new site. By 2019, however, the client needed something cleaner.
The 2012 site had been conceived as a media hub for the camp community, leading to a content-rich home page and an even denser blog. In time, however, as smartphones grew in prevalence, the camp shifted most of its community engagement to social media, which their clients kept up with on their phones. A new website was needed to restore focus on the camp's story and their distinctive program.
A section of the home page as it looked in 2018, before the launch of the new site. Chippewa's message was squeezed to one side in favor of a social media/news dashboard — with some camper photos in between for good measure.
The client also wanted to move their brand away from the heavy textures and patterns towards something lighter and brighter — something elegant, but retaining a sense of whimsy and unpredictability to match Chippewa's fun-loving personality. During early planning for the site, I began researching grid-based, asymmetrical layouts.
Home Page
Chippewa's mission and values took prominence on the new home page, followed by a basic summary of the camp's location, program, and amenities. Next comes a countdown, ticking off the seconds until the summer. Believe it or not, many new and returning campers visit the site regularly just to see the days remaining (it's a camp thing).
This site is worth visiting as the developers added parallax to the photos, giving the site a sense of depth.
Navigation
Navigation on the old website had also been a challenge. Getting to most pages on the site required at least two clicks — click on a section name in the primary nav to go to a landing page, then click on descendant link in the sub navigation.
For the new navigation, I used a compact, fly-out menu which kept every page on the site immediately accessible.
The primary navigation header remained fixed on scroll, keeping the fly-out menu available.
Favorite Details
Number one favorite thing on this website — the big, red scrolling marquee next links. You just don't see things like that on the Internet much anymore.
Logo
As the name suggest, Chippewa Ranch Camp began life as a riding camp and still maintains one of the best equestrian programs in the midwest. Their logo was based on a horse brand, combining their initials — C.R.C. — into a circular logomark. Unfortunately, the line weight of the encircling "Cs" didn't match the contained "R." In addition, a free-standing "R" doesn't fill a circle very well, leading to the addition of distracting serifs to compensate.
Early in the website redesign project, I sketched some ideas for a new logo that maintained the camp brand (in every sense of the word) while updating the logomark for modern usage.
In particular, joining the bottom ends of the two "Cs" with the legs of the "R" gave the mark a uniform appearance while ensuring it was easy to read on screen and at small sizes — even down to 16px square for the new website's favicon.
I ended up producing more logo variants than I would have liked, but the camp produces a wide variety of t-shirts and other licensed apparel — on a yearly basis — and needed options that worked on top of different colors and in a wide range of applications. The reverse variant, with yellow and white on top of a dark background, is my favorite.
You can see the site live at chippewaranchcamp.com.
