West Midlands Fire Service
While working at the West Midlands Fire Service, I was partly responsible to create a redesign for the corporate website.
The site was getting a complete overhaul with an advanced CMS created with the latest Java technologies and we had the added task of making the site eGIF compliant so all the latest web design standards were required.
We wanted to create a look for the website that had a clean professional look but at the same time, grab the user’s attention.
One of the main requirements from a design point of view was to enforce the corporate colour scheme of British Racing green and maroon in an attempt to portray the message of safety and fire. Another important factor during the design process was to incorporate a liquid layout to cater for the diverse audience the website was likely to attract.
Over the space of a few weeks, I came up with several different designs, all fitting the particularly specific criteria in slightly different ways, which were then shown to the Board who decided on the final design.
Working in a small team of three, two of us concentrating on the front end and another devoting all his time to the Java backend, we finally completed the project within the allocated timeframe and the website was launched in Q2 of 2005.
Unfortunately, since leaving West Midlands Fire Service in 2007, the website our team worked on has moved on to a completely new revision so the website you see today is not what we worked on. However, much of the content and hierarchy is still withstanding so some of our legacy is intact.
