NYU Doctoral Students approached me to design a website (and accompanying identity) for a conference that they were organising in Las Vegas in January 2010. Their pre-conference was held alongside the prestigious Society of Political and Social Psychology Conference (SPSP). A number of such events are usually on offer to prospective attendees, making the challenge to show the event as being both interesting and well organised, and thus a better event to attend than the competing pre-conferences.

Having designed the identity (which you can read about here) I decided to pick up on its bold and graphic nature in the site design. The color palette chosen alludes to the NYU purple with a complementary turquoise green, giving a sense of newness and vitality, which was important to the nature of the conference as organised. Strong typography and copy kept the site on-message throughout, while also reminding academics why they loved political psychology and why they should therefore attend (also due to a very impressive speakers roster and an opportunity to swap ideas and present work in a more intimate forum setting).

To provoke discussion and generate interest in the subject area, strong imagery representing different times and important figures of politics (and the psychological shifts in the nation that occurred from those people and events) were used on each page to frame the content. Each image is relevant in some way to the conference information being also shown (Sarah Palin on the speakers page for example). This served to add an extra layer of meaning to otherwise straightforward content, the significance of each would not be lost on the intended site audience.

I had also helped to write the sites’ content, working with the doctoral students to present the event in a manner that is quite different to the more standard (and academic) norms with such websites. Moving from thought-provoking large copy to more irreverant and light-hearted directional copy helps to show the forum as being both well-organised and professional, without taking itself as seriously as most alternatives, and thus a more pleasant way for attendees to spend their day.

The site lead to a very successful day for the organizers, with maximum capacity at the pre-conference (quite unusual). They aim to repeat this at next years event, to be held in San Antonio in January 2011. The site has been updated for a new year and audience, and is shown above as well.

You can see the full site here if you like.