swim design

Washington, D.C.’s Folger Shakespeare Library —outside of Great Britain, the largest repository of letters, drawings and other ephemera related to the life and work of the Bard—asked Swim Design to redesign its visually and functionally outdated Web site. The extensive project spanned the entire development lifecycle: from needs assessment and site-architecture design, through implementation, staff training, launch and ongoing maintenance and enhancement.

Since Swim Design’s completion of the site overhaul, visitors may choose to view www.folger.edu in its entirety, or to narrow their focus based on areas of specific interest, whether it’s “19th-century Macbeth playbills” or “resources of use to college students.” The site has been integrated with the Folger’s popular gift shop with “page creators” that present links to merchandise related to the searches visitors undertake; Swim Design also created a centralized data library where documents, audio and video clips and external links to related organizations reside. On the back end, Swim Design created a content-management system to help staff members make use of a vast array of digitized collections as they keep the Web site current and satisfy image requests and inquiries from scholars and other visitors.

Delighted with Swim’s work, the Folger asked the firm to handle ongoing site maintenance and to develop new content areas and features that will further enhance the institution’s unique, multi-faceted nature—in the real world and the virtual one.

View Site | Tags: Web Site Design, Development, CMS, Library

Homepage with a dynamic Flash animation highlighting upcoming events.

The custom CMS offers a wide variety of templates to ensure consistency across the site without sacrificing flexibility.

The calendar offers visitors multiple ways to filter upcoming events to suit their needs.