Silicon Valley De-Bug is a nonprofit organization operating in San Jose, California. Its mission includes three key aspects: multimedia, community organizing, and developing the art of film photography. (I assume the pun is unintentional.)

 

My challenge, as delineated in a contest hosted by UXPin, was to give SVDB's homepage a facelift, adhering to brand guidelines and taking a mobile-first (or at least mobile-friendly) design. Since the org runs largely on donations, a clear call-to-action was essential.

 

Since childhood, I have been intrigued by flag design. (I am pleased that vexillology has become quite popular in the design community thanks to podcaster Roman Mars.) I decided to apply some of the key principles of flag design to this project. That way, SVDB would get an eye-catching site on any screen size and a flag thrown in for free!

 

This design makes heavy use of two primary colors in SVDB's brand guidelines, green and navy. The simple icons were procured from the Noun Project and licensed by Creative Commons. Compared to the org's current homepage, this one packs in all of SVDB's important activities without requiring scrolling, revealing enough information to pique curiosity.

 

The red "DONATE" stripe uses one of its secondary colors to draw immediate attention to itself. The red and the heart-shaped icon both invoke blood and vitality and communicate that donations are indeed SVDB's lifeblood.

 

The final design will grab attention even on someone else's iPhone screen at the other side of a coffee shop. Like the best flag designs, it symbolically communicates organizational ideals, sending a strong message with no clutter.