Earlier this week at work I realized it’s time to start designing several new websites for our organization before I go part-time. The first one is ym.lifeteen.com, which will be an online resource for effective Catholic youth ministry. Although this site isn’t going to be as cool to design, I know that it will be helpful for our organization.

What I am most excited about is designing camps.lifeteen.com, which will be a big website just for our summer camps division. The site will have plenty of info about our summer camping ministry, and then have three mini-sites within it for each of our camps: Tepeyac, RockyVine, and Covecrest. I spent most of the day on the phone with the Camp Directors finding out what they need in the site. Then I created an outline for the content that will give structure to the site. Then it was time to have fun…

I want the sites to make people feel like they are out playing in the woods. There are a lot of dorky nature sites out there, and I don’t want to be one of them. To make the woodsy theme relevant, I decided to give each camp mini-site its own regional theme. When you go to tepeyac.lifeteen.com, you should feel like you are in the desert Southwest. When you go to rockyvine.lifeteen.com, you should feel like you are in the wine region of Missouri. When you go to covecrest.lifeteen.com, you should feel like you are in the Blue Ridge mountains surrounded with water.

Developing these sites is exciting to me because each of these regional themes are an extension of logos I designed for each camp a year ago. I spent a lot of time and prayer designing those three logos, and they’ve been very popular since the day I debuted them. They are successful because the logos are the first chance we have to tell the story of the camp. And the logos tell it well. I have people tell me all the time, “I just look at the logos and it makes me want to go.” As a designer, what could be more flattering than that?

Now I have a chance to keep telling that story with the websites. Unlike lifeteen.com, the biggest draw of camps.lifeteen.com will not be the fact that it is updated 25 times each day. So I can be more playful with different sections of the site because I’m not bound by changing content that changes the look of the page.

I don’t have much time to develop these sites, so on a whim I decided to build it off of an existing Macromedia Dreamweaver template. I know that using a template is an absolute taboo for a proud designer, but I don’t give a damn. I understand the time limits of the project, and I don’t want to spend half of my time inventing the style sheets to tell the text how to look and where to go. I’ll focus instead on changing the template to fit each camp.

I have spent three days on the camp sites, and I already have a terrific looking site posted online.; (At a secret URL, of course.); I’m still waiting on content to drop in each section, but for the most part, the site is done. I’ve never had a turn-around like this. It’s exhilarating. I even skipped lunch on Thursday and Friday because I didn’t want to leave my computer.

This is such a contrast to how I’ve felt at work over the past year. This year has been very difficult and very frustrating. That frustration boiled into anger. A month ago I realized I was talking like a victim, and I decided to take bold moves to try to change the circumstances that have made me a victim. Designing these four sites is part of my plan to change those circumstances so I’m no longer a victim.

What I am realizing is that our organization loves what I have done with lifeteen.com, but the whole site is still just an expense one year after the next. My hope is that these new sites will become vital parts to our money-making divisions.

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I write this journal knowing that I haven’t actually added any; journals from the last three months to supafly.com. My friend is almost finished with the CSS and PHP that will shape Version 3 personal site that I designed six months ago. It’s embarrassing to not update a my personal site for three months, but I can’t put the time; rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic.

I spend that time writing the copy for my first online portfolio that will be; big section on the site. The portfolio will show off my design skills, so I don’t have to jazz up the rest of the site. I am excited just to make it cool looking but very easy to use.

It’s odd…this enthusiasm I have inside of me right now. I don’t really know how to deal with it because I’ve been angry for so long.