overview
Digital Home for a World-Class Collection
We redesigned and developed the A. E. Seaman Mineral Museum website to make its extensive collection, exhibits, visitor information, and resources easier to explore. The new site pairs a cleaner, more flexible content structure with a visual system inspired by the museum’s brand, while custom photography helps bring the minerals and museum experience to life.
Client
A. E. Seaman Mineral Museum
Services
Website, Photo
The challenge
The museum’s previous site had grown into more than 100 static pages that were difficult to manage and update. Staff relied on FTP for edits, while visitors had to navigate a large amount of information about exhibits, collections, events, and visiting the museum. The site also needed to work better across phones and tablets while giving the museum’s remarkable specimens more visual impact.
Our solution
We built a responsive Drupal website that gave museum staff an easier way to update content, add pages, and manage images without relying on a developer for every change. We organized the site around clear visitor paths, carried the museum’s visual identity into the interface, and added custom photography of minerals and exhibits to create a richer, more engaging experience across desktop and mobile.
The Goals
1) Highlight the minerals—from Abswurmbachite to Zonochlorite
2) Guide visitors through thoughtful design choices
3) Keep visitor information easily accessible
4) Make image uploads and web edits unbelievably easy
The Design
The museum had recently acquired a new logo, and asked Lauren to design the new website to follow their brand guidelines. The website design features squares and rectangles in the navigation, on the slideshow, and in the call-to-action buttons—all in support of the "boxy" theme set by the logo mark.
The Details
Small details can boost a design from 'blah' to 'brilliant.' The texture on the home page slideshow images is an abstract representation of a mineral's crystalline structure, and also ties into the square shapes seen throughout the website.
The Website
The A.E. Seaman Mineral Museum of Michigan Tech has the largest collection of minerals from the Great Lakes Region and it’s also home to the largest slab of native copper – all 17 tons! We worked with the museum staff to create a responsive Drupal website that displays (proudly) the history present on the Michigan Tech campus. The website responds beautifully, from the page content to the menus.
The Photos
Lauren likes to understand as much about a client as possible, so her designs truely represent their unique brand. She sent Matt on a boon-doggle to capture photos of the mineral exhibits and gift shop. Several of the 'test' photos were so great that they made it onto the website!
Boon-doggle (noun): fun errand that takes place outside of the office.