Blue Mouse Monkey Blog

It’s difficult to share the work we do behind the scenes of organizations, but at least we can show a screenshot. The Northwest Health Foundation needed an internal portal. They were tired of communicating via long email strings, and tired of piecemeal distribution of information. They needed an easy archive-and-retrieval system for their meeting materials from their multiple committees. Plus they wanted a central space for announcements, and an internal blog. Additionally, they needed to control granular access to this material: it was important to allow some committee members full access, and others access only to the minutes, materials, and blog posts relevant to their specific area of work.

We created an interface design based on NWHF’s public website, to make the new portal familiar and friendly to the staff who use it. We also used Expression Engine’s membership tools to allow granular access at different levels of membership. Named “B0utros” after a staff-member’s dog, the new portal has become the lively, always-accessible home to the foundation’s communications and record-keeping.

Scott Sparling is a Portland writer and author of the forthcoming novel Wire to Wire (Tin House, June 2011). Scott came to Blue Mouse Monkey for an exceptional and innovative design solution to showcase his edgy novel. Combining large-scale imagery with content that pulls you into the world of the book, this author website transcends the genre.

The Urban Mamas redesign project has been rolling out incrementally for a while now, so it seems odd to announce it as a “launch”. But looking back at how much has changed on this dynamic online community for mamas who want to share tips, advice, reviews, ideas, fun, and challenges, I see it’s time to put out the announcement. The UrbanMamas team came to us with an already successful multi-page blog that needed its content restructured and a design facelift. A combination of owner- and user-generated content made for some interesting challenges as we shuffled the information around in this heavily-trafficked site. The new design reflects the hip mamas style of the site owners.

Austin Granger is a photographer and writer who has produced three books, and wanted us to create online versions of each of them. The challenge was to reproduce the books in web form in a way that preserved as much of the flavor of “book”, with its concomitant hierarchies of information, while maintaining good digital user interface and information design. The resulting triple-website presents nearly 400 photographs, along with Austin’s 9-chapter essay on Point Reyes. Check out the three books: Elegy from the Edge of a Continent: Photographing Point Reyes, Lights and Keepsakes, and Astoria.