Greenville has been a hot spot for several years now with new businesses, residents, cultural events, and visitors arriving weekly. But how much do you know about its history? In April we launched a new site for the Greenville County Historical Society, an organization whose intent is to make sure the stories of Greenville’s past — the things that led to where we are today — are not just remembered, but celebrated.
Greenville County Historical Society’s website before the redesign.
Goals
- Increase interest and support for the organization by educating the public on the resources and collections available.
- Improve the user experience so that finding resources, becoming a member, and purchasing products are easier.
Calls to Action
- Become a member of the Society
- View the photo and resource collections
- Volunteer
- Come to a meeting
What Sets Them Apart
- There is no one else with such a vast collection of primary source records and photographs of Greenville County.
The GCHS website following the redesign.
Design & Strategy Highlights
- Photos, photos, photos! The primary thing GCHS is known for is their photo collections, and highlighting those throughout the site was a must.
- Wanting to showcase Greenville’s history and present day, we used the hero image on the homepage to show a “then and now” photo.
- With such a strong history in textiles, we tried to use as many photos as possible showcasing the mills, mill workers, mill housing, etc. that are still such a big part of the Greenville landscape.
- When possible, we used photos of areas or landmarks that users might recognize and enjoy comparing to today.
- Users can scroll through each photo collection and easily order prints.
- Bright colors. On many elements, we steered away from using the brand colors in order to use more engaging colors to contrast against the black and white photography.
- Organized and easily searchable resources. GCHS has thousands of documents, books, letters, and other primary resources that are available to the public. We created a filterable/searchable table of all the resources to allow folks to find what they need. Many of these resources will eventually be added as downloads.
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