Dexter M. Thomas

Website Design & Development

The Client

The Associated Students of Westminster (ASW) are the student government of Westminster College, a private liberal arts college in Utah. ASW enlisted my aid to design their new web presence in order to encourage student participation in campus events, student clubs and organizations, and involvement in student government.

Designing the Website

When designing a website, I first work with the client to figure out the purpose of the website. What are we trying to say and accomplish with the website? It was clear that ASW basically wanted a professional and fun website that outlined what they are, advertised campus events, encouraged participation in student government, and gave students an easy way to contact them.

I used Writemaps to create a sitemap for the website and Balsamiq to create wireframes for each section of the site to block out the basic elements and to give me some blueprints to work from.

Designing the Brand

After doing some research into the official Westminster College colors, typography, and logo, I decided that the student government branding needed to also have a professional aesthetic that still appealed to students. I wanted to create a logo that represented ASW and its ideals to serve the student body. I used GIMP to explore a variety of ideas. We decided on a less abstract approach to keep the focus on representing the ASW acronym.

A Great Result

It was refreshing to work with clients who really care about other students and involvement on campus. We were able to work together to create a website and brand that not only fulfilled its purpose, but was one that we could both be proud of.

“ At Westminster we were overhauling the student government website and we had the incredible fortune of hiring Dexter to do the job. He not only performed almost all of the work related to creating and designing our replacement website, but also was a huge hit with the various other students that were in and out of our office all the time... Dexter gave it his all and became one of our most valuable investments; he went above and beyond the amount of work than was necessary given are student-sized budget and made sure that we had a world-class portal for connecting with the students. Any web shop would be lucky to have Dexter on their team.

Jacob Kovac Founder at Chaos Buffalo, LLC.