Illinois Arts Council - Robert Morris College
Web Design Project
The Artstour Program Website was designed as part of an educational
collaboration between Robert Morris College (RMC) of Chicago, IL and the Illinois Arts Council (IAC).
The Project
A team of six RMC Art and Design students spent 4 months, from December 1998 to March 1999, designing and producing a web
site for the Illinois Arts Council's Artstour Program. The Artstour Program provides grants to eligible
not-for-profit Illinois organizations to fund performances by selected Illinois artists. The students took the
information from an existing printed booklet, which includes an application and guidelines and a roster of
selected Illinois artists. The completed web site contains almost 200 separate web pages. Because the ArtsTour Roster has been updated, our version of the 1999 - 2001 Roster is no longer available on the IAC website.
The six students earned internship credit for their work and gained valuable experience working on a real-world design project for a client. The IAC, Illinois' state art agency, provided RMC with a grant to cover part of the cost of this educational project.
The Designers
Six specially chosen advanced Art and Design students, Velvett Donis, Eric Malone, Francoise McGinnis, Jessica Pezalla, Gabriel Rodriguez, and Ruth Rodriguez, participated. They met twice a week with a faculty supervisor, web design teacher Claire Prucher. Two outside professional web designers, Tony Wright and Steve Barsotti, also visited the class to critique student designs as they worked. Students also worked closely with two staff members at the IAC; Rose Parisi, Web Master, and Joanne Vena, Director of Arts in Education and Local Arts Agencies Programs.The Design Process
The students met with Rose Parisi and Joanne Vena to learn the IAC's requirements for the web site. They worked on proposals for the navigation, screen layout and visual style to meet the IAC's needs. They presented their first designs to a panel at the IAC. Based on the feedback from their presentation, the students worked together to create two new designs. The IAC choose the design that they wanted to use. This process took all of the winter 1998-9 term (10 weeks).Two of the students, Francoise McGinnis and Jessica Pezalla, continued working on the project during the spring term and completed it by the end of March. They copied information into the final templates to make each individual artist page.
- First Proposal - navigation, layout and look
- Second Proposal - two complete designs based on feedback from first proposal
- Final Color Scheme - color scheme used in final web site
- Final Templates - used to produce final web site
Last updated: 7/24/02
This project was funded in part by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency