My first major site launch of 2021 was close to my heart— Dream Chicago. This Chicago-based nonprofit starts the conversation by asking, “What’s your dream?” The responses fuel a program that brings art programs and opportunities to underserved populations through a dynamic group of artists, dancers, photographers, and writers.

Design-wise, we had a lot of fun, introducing a lot of animation, bright colors (inspired by Chicago’s flag!) and playful fonts. We invited interaction with the Dream Map, where visitors could submit dreams and see them populated on the map.

Founder and Executive Director Heather Treadway said: “I’m so INFINITELY grateful to have discovered you–I began 2020 with my broken foot, followed by a pandemic and more seemingly broken professional and creative dreams…yet hearing your story of recovery (from the same injury, nonetheless), working with you to make our virtual home / website more real and welcoming, and then finding out you have a background in books as I’m trying to realize that dream as well…it just all seems to good to be true. So 2020 is the year I discovered Lisa, and that is something worth celebrating and marveling about!”

The site I designed for Healthcare Services Acquisition Corp launched just before its December 22nd IPO. HCAR is led by investors, operators and leaders in the healthcare space. The site introduces the company, demonstrates its proven track record in the healthcare industry, and shows its viability for future investors. We used Squarespace as the platform to make it easy to launch a robust site on a short deadline. Check it out here: healthcarespac.com.

HRGi is a company focused around reducing costs and regaining control in the medical industry. Offerings include medical cost containment, pharmaceutical cost optimization, and claims reconciliation and analysis. While they further refine their messaging and prep for their official relaunch, we designed this site to tease the offerings and invite interested parties to learn more. This preliminary site was designed to help establish its search engine footprint, tease company offerings and invite engagement from users. We used a page flip scroll to share the content in a visually appealing way and bold graphics to highlight the messaging. Check it out at: hrgi.com. 

Leslie Jonath is one of the most intuitively creative people I have ever met, so of course it was an utter delight to collaborate with her on her site redesign. Years ago, she founded Connected Dots Media, an agency devoted to bringing creative content to life. The redesigned site shows the variety of beautiful projects she has created, particularly in the world of art and design, cooking, gardening, and children’s publishing.

I’m delighted to announce the launch of Sourcerock LP, an equity fund using fundamental research to invest within the energy ecosystem. We wanted to show off the strengths of this fund through copy, charts, and imagery, giving potential investors the information they need to jump onboard.

We just launched the site for McCraw Oil & Propane, an energy company with branches in Texas and Oklahoma. For this project, we brought the separate oil and propane sites together under one URL with a new design. Customers can place orders directly from the site, learn about energy-saving opportunities, and learn about the company and career opportunities.
 
The biggest challenge was combining a LOT of content, while making it all easily navigable. We used tiered navigation and broke the content into digestible blocks with lots of cross-links.
 

And now for one of the most ambitious and exciting site launches in LHDE history! Boys vs. Girls is an epic animated adventure series for kids aged 5 – 12 from Stick and Rudder Films. We built this site to show off each character’s distinct personality and added plenty of animation to keep visitors engaged and moving through the content. The production quality of the video and art is so incredible that we went big with the graphics to show it all off. This team was wonderful to work with and I’m thrilled to announce this site’s launch!

Next up in recent launches is Boardified. This organization offers customizable tools, programming, and extensive resources to strengthen nonprofit board leadership skills. We started this project pre-COVID, so the focus quickly shifted from physical to virtual events.

The first phase of this site introduces the organization, introduces its association with Northwestern University and the Board Member Institute for Jewish Nonprofits. A true team effort, If Not Now Creative wrote the copy and Hazen Creative, Inc. did the logo.

The client said, “We truly appreciate help, expertise, and guidance in making sure we put our very best branded self out in the world. We have received nothing but positive feedback from our stakeholders, many of whom have commented on how beautiful and clean the website looks.”

We’re already working on the next phase of this project, but happy to help this worthy organization pivot to meet the needs of this uncertain time.

I set a personal record of launching four sites over five days. The next featured site is Astraius, the first site we have ever done for the space industry. The UK-based client wanted a clean, compact landing page that promotes their service of launching small- to mid-sized satellites into orbit. There are so many puns to be made here about how this project was “out-of-this world” and that it was “great to launch” this site, but let’s just say we had a lot of fun with this one.

Jennifer Diamond is a Chicago-based psychotherapist who was in the process of launching her private practice when COVID hit. Using Squarespace as the platform, we worked together to create a site that would speak to the significant challenges potential clients might be facing during this unique time in a clear and accessible way. We intentionally avoided the therapy trope of calming nature scenes in favor of bold and colorful graphics and type. We also used a subtle gradient video in the background to suggest change and introduce movement, and wrote the copy to be direct and accessible.

I’m so happy with how it turned out! Check it out yourself at the link below. As an aside, I met Jennifer when we both taught yoga at The Yoga Shop Chicago — she was one of my all-time favorite teachers!