We’re happy to announce the new Mormon.org today, the newest Church website launch from our group. Pepe Sustaita and I worked on this site, with hours of help from many other designers on our team.
This project will definitely be written up for a case study at some point, as we encountered so many crazy problems and challenges. This final product represents over a year of hard work, and includes thousands of design decisions and compromises based on technology, client taste, feasibility, content constraints, and other unique circumstances.
The site also represents the work of not only many designers, but our excellent teams of Java developers, QA engineers, Flash developers, program managers, product managers, infrastructure teams, and many others. All in all, over 50 people had a hand in getting this product off the ground and in front of the millions of monthly visitors.
Challenges aside, Pepe and I definitely can stand behind our work and we believe it will bring our church’s most basic beliefs to the world in ways it never has before. One huge feature is the ability for any visitor anywhere in the world to chat live with a member of our church, any time of day. The site is also designed to coordinate with a national print and broadcast advertising campaign around the “Answers to Life’s Questions” theme.
Pull it up and take a minute to browse through it, and please let us know what you think. More details and insight coming soon, for sure.
21 comments
Beautiful work Jason and Pepe. Congratulations on creating this amazing design.
comment by pv 29 minutes later
Looks awesome, Jason and Pepe. Good work.
Now every time someone in my family sees it, they’ll ask me, “Did you do that?” It looks good enough that I might tell them “yes.” :)
comment by Clifton Labrum about an hour later
I’m being redirected to http://mormon.org/mormonorg/eng/ and it’s saying “500 internal server error”
The screeenshot looks nice though ;)
comment by Jeff 2 hours later
Launch day kinks, I’m sure.. :) Give it a few mins.
comment by Jason Lynes 2 hours later
Love the new, cleaner look. Well done! The videos look great. The iframe looks a little weird for the “Worship with Us” section… but I guess that is what you have to do. Overall, very nice.
comment by Keanen 3 hours later
I really like the layout of the content pages and the richness in the typography, but the home page feels a little off balance due to the position of the woman in the poster movie. The hard cut off at the bottom makes her appear like a sculpted bust. Perhaps you could use something like at the bottom of the left-hand navigation to soften the cut off.
As for the color, while I’m glad to see something other than muted blue and beige, the solid blacks and greys make it feel a little cold.
On the video player, the elapsed time of the video clip is shown, but not the total time. Showing the total time as well, lets me know how much time I’ll need to invest…am I watching a 40 second clip or a 15 minute clip? It also feels odd for the play button not to be centered vertically.
comment by Brian Sweeting 4 hours later
Bri, great feedback, and I agree on each of those points. You’ve pointed out just a few of the hard compromises we had to make due to a variety of circumstances. One of the hardest aspects of this site was that we created a shell for a content management system, and once we’re done, it’s someone else’s baby.
As such, the video production, and Flash player, were out of our hands.
As for the colors scheme.. the final decision was to match the colors to the national advertising campaign already developed for the Church’s Missionary department. The treatment on the site you see now was designed by our team and, while not our first choice, is much warmer and more inviting than some of the alternatives. ;)
I should also say, despite making compromises, many of these battles aren’t quite done – we may still win some people over with time. Also, others in the process made equally considerable compromises in our favor, and like I said above, Pepe and I still stand behind the site and I think it’ll do wonders for sharing some of our more basic beliefs.
Thanks everyone else for the feedback!
comment by Jason Lynes 6 hours later
Hey Jas, thanks for the response and explanation. I always count on there being give and take to get to the end result. :) Looking forward to the case study.
comment by Brian Sweeting 9 hours later
Very nice and nice targeted to your audience. There are some weird, buggy things (alignment, scrollbars, etc.) that I wouldn’t expect on a production site from you guys.
Unfortunately, it misses the mark when it comes to accessibility… again.
comment by Jared Smith 11 hours later
Well done! I have seen a few church sites (other churches), they are good. The designs,however, usually outweigh the message. In this case, the message is powerful and the design should not distract visitor from that. My first impression was that it looked like a “missionary” site. The “tag” on the left and the crisp lines. Simple. No distractions. But you know… things can always be improved. Most important though… does the Lord approve? ;)
comment by Ryan Botha 13 hours later
Didn’t this site get redesigned within the last year or two? I sorta find it disappointing that other languages of mormon.org are still two site designs/versions behind and yet English has been updated twice. I hope the other languages will be brought up to date soon.
comment by Karl Greenwood 14 hours later
What a great website! The content is laid out very well. It is clean and accessible, and very unintimidating. Congratulations on a very successful build and roll out!
comment by Chris Manning one day later
I really like the functionality of the new site. I think the yellow hyperlinks are a bit hard to read. The questions on the video frame seem to be scrolling through too fast for my preference, and I’d like to see the links below the fold moved up a bit so that they’re visible when you first land on the home page. Otherwise, it looks great. Keep up the good work.
comment by Aaron one day later
This is such a great missionary tool! We’re telling the Elders here in Florida about the new design and they will refer investigators. We’re so proud of you, Jason, and sent the address/ site to our friends in Orange County as well as the family.
comment by Missionaries grandma and grandpa schilling about a day later
thanks, grandma!
comment by Jason Lynes about a day later
Looks nice overall but there are some pretty significant layout issues when viewed on an iPhone.
comment by keola 3 days later
love the simple colors + typography. nice to see things move away from marble texture + feathering + drop shadows.
comment by rg 4 days later
I have always loved this site and referring my readers and friends to it. I appreciate all of your hard work, and the wonderful resource that it is.
However, I have to say that I miss the old template. The colors were warm and inviting, and more in keeping with the LDS look – this all-white look may be viewed as crisp and simple, but it seems much too sterile to me. However, that’s a personal choice on your part, and just my humble opinion.
Something I would like to BEG for you to modify is your type print! It is WAY too small for any “over-forty” eyes. Please increase the font size!
Thank you :)
comment by Mormon Soprano 5 days later
Suggest to look into the following: 1. The top part of the homepage seems to be disconnected from the part below (maybe a bit higher res photo on top? ;o) 2. The overall alignment on homepage
comment by Christine 7 days later
To be honest, I was really disappointed with the redesign of mormon.org. I think the overall feel of simplicity was taken to to the extreme of of being “too simplistic”. The color pallet could be nice, but was executed poorly, there is not a high enough contrast between the stark white, yellow and grey’s used.
I guess just compared to great reviews I had heard from others about you guys, I was just expecting a lot more.
The video functionality is nice but felt is could have been integrated within the site better. The video “pop-up” player seems to be a little off in alignment as well.
So yeah, just a little disappointing, also the the “liquid” layout style looks a little unfinished with the box at the bottom, and how it is just centered on the page. I guess I am hoping there is more to come for this site soon.
comment by Joshua Giblette 17 days later
Just had a non-member friend visit the site. Well, I had a good laugh. She says the text that slides in from the left makes her feel uncomfortable, she doesn’t want to know about what happens to her when she dies. She wants a “stop” button, so it can stop asking her such personal questions!! LOL! No matter what the response, I guess the site does the job: calling the world to repentance.
comment by Ryan Botha 20 days later
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