Marblehead Gives the DSVC a Fresh Look Online

The Dallas Society of Visual Communications has a 50 year history filled with great work and service provided by creative professionals worldwide. When the time came for a new web site, the DSVC reached out to Marblehead for a fresh look.

DSVC Online History

In the early 90’s before the web, DSVC mem­bers started a monthly pub­li­ca­tion called Rough Mag­a­zine designed to announce upcom­ing events and keep mem­bers con­nected to other people in the club. In 1998 the DSVC took that con­nec­tion to a new level by launch­ing their first web site. The site pro­vided basic infor­ma­tion about the club, a list of upcom­ing speak­ers, and a clas­si­fied page for job list­ings. Since then, the site has gone through 4 major redesigns. Each new ver­sion has con­tributed design and tech­nol­ogy that reflects the period. We are pleased to be included in that his­tory with a 5th major redesign.

The New DSVC Site

From a design stand­point, the new DSVC site takes full advan­tage of larger view­ing areas and faster inter­net con­nec­tions. Large screens and high speed allow for big crisp images, bigger text sizes, and spa­cious lay­outs. The over­all struc­ture is built around a simple grid hold­ing inter­change­able copy and art­work. Great art­work and copy is some­thing this club pro­vides on a reg­u­lar basis. With this site, all that cre­ative work will have the oppor­tu­nity to shine.

On the tech­nol­ogy side, the site is built around a brand new ver­sion of Drupel to manage the ever-​changing con­tent. We are also big believ­ers in clean, standards-​based CSS coding so the site is built by the book, and built to last.

Bringing the Community Together

Every DSVC site has been about con­nect­ing the com­mu­nity. The newest ver­sion pushes those con­nec­tions fur­ther with the abil­ity to com­ment on announce­ments, and the addi­tion of RSS feeds for the job board. We are look­ing for­ward to improv­ing com­mu­nity aware­ness even more with blog and flickr group feeds in the future.

We’ve also added a whole new sec­tion to the site called the DSVC Museum. The first page features 100 Rough covers. Mem­bers are cur­rently help­ing us track down pieces to be labeled and added to the museum. As is grows, this area will archive and dis­play 50 years of award-​winning cre­ative work from the club.

Special Thanks

This was a big project and we couldn’t have done it with­out the effort from our colleagues Jenny Bean and Jordan LaMons. Jenny laid out sev­eral inte­rior pages, made a master style guild, and got all the art per­fect for coding. Jordan pro­vided a lot of tech­ni­cal sup­port hook­ing a full fea­tured site up to Drupel. We’d also like to thank The DSVC web board member, Michael Grif­fith. He plugged us into the project and guided our efforts the whole way.

About DSVC

DSVC is the largest inde­pen­dent cre­ative club in the coun­try. They offer mem­bers a way to con­nect to other pro­fes­sion­als through monthly meet­ings, an annual design show, par­ties, and their own pub­li­ca­tion; Rough. The orga­ni­za­tion also makes a big con­tri­bu­tion to cre­ative stu­dents by host­ing a national stu­dent design con­fer­ence loaded with great speak­ers and sev­eral schol­ar­ships. For cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als in the Dallas area, this club is the orga­ni­za­tion to be involved in.