Submitted by: Lea Alcantara (@lealea)
Role: Designer & Developer

It’s a quantum leap to the future from where it was originally: static pages, no CMS, random sub-domains for no particular reason, outdated (dare I say ugly?) design, and it was just a general, unusable mess. Because it had stagnated for a while, I wanted to make sure that the new site used bleeding edge web techniques: HTML5 with graceful fallback, a sprinkling of CSS3, and a little bit of jQuery to round it out. Of course, the site is souped up with ExpressionEngine goodness.

ARPA members were the priority and I wanted to make sure the site reflected who they were and their needs; that meant, designing something that was warm and multi-dimensional (hence the dropshadows and textures), professional, but with the occasional pop of color and vibrancy from the photos.

This is a very well done website for the Alberta Recreation & Parks Association. The drop down elements for the site’s navigation and marquee areas, while not overly complex, are really well executed. They’re fast and simple enough to see everything quickly. I really love the “back to top” button that appears as you scroll down. The sub pages begin to get a bit monotonous, but this seems like a very large content driven site that’s likely powered by a CMS of some kind – can’t have it all. But what’s here is top notch.