Role: Web Designer / Web Developer / Illustrator
Awards: American Library Association Great Website for Kids
Animal Fact Guide, an educational website about animals, had expanded its offerings since its launch in 2008. Brown Bear Creative revamped the site by giving it a modern facelift and streamlining user experience.
The new site carries forward the fun feel of the original website, retaining the cute animal illustrations and bright color palette. But the new layout has a more open, less “boxed-in” design. Sleek details like gradients, drop shadows, and rounded corners were coded using the latest technology (HTML5 and CSS3) to enhance the design on modern browsers.
Using an approach called responsive web design, the site gracefully accommodates a wide ranges of screen sizes. This translates to an improved experience on tablets and smart phones.
Several improvements were made to how the site functions on both the front and back end. Brown Bear added a better search feature so visitors can easily locate animal fact articles, blog posts, and printable activity sheets. The site is also completely search-engine optimized, coming up on the first page of Google for keywords like “animal facts.” On the back end, the whole site is powered by WordPress, which simplifies the process of adding articles and blog posts.
The site was recognized by the American Library Association as a Great Web Site for Kids. According to Karen Lemmons, co-chair of the Great Web Sites for Kids committee, “Great Web Sites for Kids are those considered the best web sites for ages birth to 14, outstanding in both content and conception.”