URBAN Monitoring Website

Designing the website for McMaster University’s URBAN project was an interesting challenge, because it meant appealing to the usually staid academic audience, while also aiming for a more dynamic, general audience.

URBAN stands for Urban-Rural Biomonitoring and Analysis Network. So it’s basically about engaging normal people in scientific, ecological work. For instance, there is a very successful project in Ontario’s Niagara penninsula, recruiting bird watchers to help track migratory birds in this ecologically important region.

The URBAN website design started out with a round of logo designs. The goal was to allude to both aquatic, wetland and forest habitats, while also including the human, built-environment. After several rounds, we settled on this logo design, and the rest of the website coalesced around that.

Since this website was guaranteed to have a wide audience, including funders and government agencies, I thought I would take a stab at using a CSS Framework. Ideally, this will ensure that the CSS is compatible with the broadest possible range of browsers. I chose Yet Another Multicolumn Layout because it seems to be a mature project, and comes with some good documentation. Integrating it into WordPress came with a few snags, but overall, it seems to have worked well.