The Anne Frank Project
The Anne Frank Project, a program of SUNY Buffalo State University, uses the power of stories as vehicles for community building, conflict management, and identity exploration. Inspired by the wisdom of Anne Frank, AFP surfaces, develops, and shares stories stifled by oppression.
The Anne Frank Project was born after BSU Professor Drew Kahn directed a 2006 production of The Diary of Anne Frank at SUNY Buffalo State that paralleled Anne Frank’s story with that of a Rwandan genocide survivor. The production united BSU’s diverse student body with a story about social justice, showing that there is an “Anne Frank” in every genocide and in every conflict. Since the Holocaust, the world has been busier than ever with genocide and mass atrocities, and so the audience left with this question: How many “diaries” have we missed? The answer is sobering.
Today, Drew is the founding director of The Anne Frank Project. What an honor when he and his assistant director, Jonise Hall, came to me and asked if I could help them reimagine their website!
The original website
The Anne Frank Project already had a Squarespace 7.1 website that they had built themselves. But over the years, many university student interns had worked on the site alongside AFP’s own staff members. The result was a sprawling website that wasn’t aligned with the BSU brand and didn’t look as polished as the BSU site. Some of the information had grown out-of-date and it was hard to get a sense of the important services that AFP offers.
We needed to start fresh, and the Anne Frank Project was a perfect candidate for my Custom Web Design option.
To give you an idea of where we started, here’s a look at their original home page:
The web design process
Their needs were simple: A website that would make it easy for students, teachers, donors, and members of the community to quickly find relevant information.
The first item on our list? We needed to take a hard look at their existing website to consolidate and simplify information, eliminate extraneous pages, and create clear visitor pathways through the site. Once Drew and Jonise gave me an idea of the content they needed to have on the site and how that content was related, I was able to create an action-focused sitemap that grouped relevant pages under headings like Learn, Engage, and Attend. Those headings were used on the home page and throughout the site to help visitors quickly find relevant information.
With a sitemap in-hand, I began designing their website. Here’s a quick glimpse of how the website design came together:
I leveraged the Buffalo State University brand to create stripes of bold color on every page and dramatic headings to help visitors navigate.
I dipped into AFP’s treasure trove of gorgeous, professional images and selected powerful images that would illustrate the diversity of voices and perspectives that make up AFP’s work.
I reimagined the blog and created new categories for news, events, and updates from the annual Rwanda student delegations.
I built several easy-to-update event calendars to help visitors find meaningful engagement opportunities.
I created a simpler way for visitors to find PDFs of AFP’s play scripts and the programs from past Social Justice Festivals and MyStory Days.
I added drop shadows for depth and subtle hover animations for interest.
I connected the site to Bengal Connect, BSU’s student engagement vehicle, so student visitors could easily find events.
I set up Squarespace Email Campaigns so the AFP team could easily collect email addresses and send blast emails.
Whew! I’m so pleased with how it all came together. Check out their new home page design:
