New Site and Blog for the Deep Ellum Foundation

For the past 20 years, DEF has been at the heart of the success, controversy, and revival in the Deep Ellum neighborhood. They came to Marblehead looking for a way to represent their point of view in the growing online community discussion.

Deep Ellum’s Online Voice

The DEF site is built to meet three basics needs: First, it serves as an online brochure tout­ing the rich cul­tural his­tory of the Deep Ellum neigh­bor­hood for poten­tial build­ing owners and future ten­ants. Second, it is a cen­tral loca­tion for resources like area maps, com­mu­nity links, and useful city per­mits. Third, it takes the first step in get­ting the foun­da­tion involved with the online com­mu­nity by pub­licly releas­ing monthly meet­ing notes, pub­lish­ing a blog, and tying into the Deep Ellum Flickr feed.

Wordpress to the Rescue

Making all that func­tion­al­ity work seam­lessly in a site that has to be updated on a reg­u­lar basis is a tall order. Lucky, we have web wizard Blake bend­ing Word­press to his will. The fin­ished site acts like a reg­u­lar web page most of the time, and then turns into a blog when it needs to. The best part is, every sec­tion can be updated in a snap by folks that don’t know a line of code.

Functional Layouts Wrapped in an Industrial Design

Every site we build focuses on how to deliver con­tent quickly and clearly above all else. We like lay­outs clean enough to eat off of not because we are min­i­mal­ists, but because they work well online. How­ever, design should also under­stand and respect its mes­sage and audi­ence. Anyone who’s vis­ited Deep Ellum knows its any­thing but clean and tidy. 90+ years of patina build a won­der­ful aes­thetic char­ac­ter that should shine though. The fin­ished prod­uct is an effort to strike a bal­ance between clear text lay­outs and old build­ing textures.

In addi­tion to the brick tex­ture, the bottom of each page fea­tures a blog feed and a random selec­tion of Deep Ellum pho­tog­ra­phy from the com­mu­nity. We took an after­noon strolling around the neigh­bor­hood taking photos of the clas­sic signs hang­ing from the sides of sev­eral build­ings. The sign photos are used as accents at the bottom of each page. All these ele­ments work­ing together give the site an indus­trial look that pays trib­ute to the community.

About the Deep Ellum Foundation

The DEF is a non-​profit orga­ni­za­tion charged with devel­op­ing, pre­serv­ing, and enhanc­ing the com­mu­nity of Deep Ellum while nur­tur­ing the ongo­ing devel­op­ments, art, music, cul­ture, and com­mer­cial interests.