Sherwood School District

On the precipice of restructuring their district, Sherwood recognized an opportunity to reintroduce itself to the community through a naming, branding, and website overhaul. The project encompassed not on the district’s parent brand and website, but extended to each individual school as well. We wanted to help them make a good first impression on families and staff members adjusting to this new change.

My Role

As this was both a branding and website project, it was imperative that I work closely with our branding team throughout this project. I also worked closely with our strategy team to come up with an efficient system for handling the school district’s diverse and broad set of content. Our other web designer, TJ, ideated the design concept for the site, while I built it out around our strategy work.

My Team

Renee Dimalla,
Art Director

Krystal Jeffries,
Producer

Lily Martin-Chamberlain,
Content Strategist

Tijani Stewart,
Web Designer

Ben Martinez-Bateman,
Backend Developer

Amy Hwang,
Frontend Developer

1

Main District Website

6

School Micro-Sites

7

Communication Channels

This project kicked off in the community. Our team hosted grassroots workshops with the residents of Sherwood, which ensured that our work was representative of the families that the district served. The community members themselves voted on new names and characters for each new school. From these workshops, a new identity was born.

 

In addition to the district website, we also created a micro-site for each school within the district. Each school’s website needed to function as its own standalone site while simultaneously integrating into the district’s greater web presence. In addition to creating an effective visual language, we were also tasked with building a system robust and flexible enough to house all of the school districts content - from elementary school up through high school, from the drama club to the football team.

Process Deep Dive: Organizing Info

  • An Extensive Sitemap

    The sitemap gave our first clue into how much content we’d be dealing with. This website would be an important resource hub for faculty, board members, students, parents, and community members. Each of these pages may house up to 30 resources in a various formats.

  • Announcements

    Announcements are an important way for both the district and schools to disseminate important information. It was imperative that we design announcements with a strict set of rules to ensure visibility without compromising usability.

    District-wide announcements would be visible across all seven sites and were not dismissible, but would scroll out of view. School announcements would appear on each school’s respective site only. They would be sticky but could be minimized to an icon.

  • Quick Links

    The district utilizes a huge variety of media to share information. We wanted to keep this easy to maintain while displaying resources in a helpful manner. We created “Quick Links” which took URLs and automatically generated iconography and titles to cue users in to what type of resource they were opening (Google Doc, PDF, external link, etc).

  • Communication Channels

    We also had several structured communication channels to account for: Board Agenda & Minutes, Resources, Press Releases, District News & Events, and Individual School News & Events to name a few. Each piece of content received special consideration to ensure it was accessible as possible.

  • Map Makeover

    Ultimately, the client decided they preferred showing all map markers at once along with topography, so the map itself got a facelift as well.

Final Thoughts

Sherwood School District invested in a new website because they recognized the importance of staying connected to their community. On the precipice of a pandemic, that perception became an invaluable asset to families and staff members alike looking for guidance to navigate such an uncertain time. Sherwood’s new website, in conjunction with their new brand identity, set a foundation for the school district’s leadership role moving forward.

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