On June 9, 2007, I left New York to travel to Johannesburg, South Africa for a design fellowship made possible through Open Society Institute and Parsons Communication Design + Technology department. My fellowship entailed working with Women’sNet a non-governmental organization (NGO) that empowers women through technology by providing training and accessible information for women and girls in South Africa.

Women’sNet ten year anniversary was quickly approaching and their identity and website had not changed since the organization’s inception. Because the Women’sNet website is content driven, the NGO decided to build a new site using the Drupal content management system. My role as a designer was to build a new theme for Drupal that would appeal to the NGO’s target audience through usability and aesthetics. In developing the graphic user interface, it was also determined that the logo was overdue for an update. More…