19 Oct 2008 2 pm eastern

Housing Works launch

We call ourselves web designers, but sometimes we are more than that. Sometimes we get to participate, in however small a way, in something much larger and more important than ourselves.

Started in 1990 by four members of ACT UP, Housing Works helps people who are homeless and have HIV or AIDS. Housing Works not only saves lives, it restores dignity, purpose, and hope to those whom society has cast aside. Happy Cog is honored and humbled to have worked with this amazing organization and to announce the relaunch of the Housing Works website, redesigned by Happy Cog.

Our thanks to Housing Works’s Christopher Sealey and his team—we bow endlessly in your direction, sir. And my thanks and commendation to the amazing people at Happy Cog who did the work:

[tags]Housing Works, AIDS, HIV, homeless, homelessness, advocacy, hope, happycog, work[/tags]

Filed under: Advocacy, business, Community, democracy, dreams, engagement, Happy Cog™, homeownership, New York City, NYC, Philadelphia, poverty, war, peace, and justice, work

21 Responses to “Housing Works launch”

  1. RayMcK said on 19 October 2008 at 4:42 pm:

    You should all be proud.

  2. Carolyn said on 19 October 2008 at 6:48 pm:

    The art direction on this…well, everything…is wonderful.

  3. Mike T. said on 19 October 2008 at 7:03 pm:

    Beautiful. Nice work, design-wise and human-being wise.

    (psst…where’s the favicon? sorry, had to ask)

  4. Scott Powers said on 19 October 2008 at 9:39 pm:

    Wonderful job on the site guys. You guys should be very proud to have such a part in such an awesome organization.

  5. Steve said on 20 October 2008 at 6:16 am:

    Great work for a great cause – kudo’s to the team!

  6. webchick said on 20 October 2008 at 6:31 am:

    Really outstanding design and great color scheme – did the team select the colors based on this photo (http://www.housingworks.org/volunteer/thrift-shops/ :-) What attention to detail!

  7. Dale Cruse said on 20 October 2008 at 7:18 am:

    Congratulations all – the site is gorgeous. And what a great cause!

  8. Steve Killen said on 20 October 2008 at 8:06 am:

    I’m not fond of the logo but ILOVE the website’s design. The great use of the background image to focus attention coupled with the quote is masterful and taken straight from magazine design, I believe. I love it and hope to achieve something similar with the next iteration of my personal site.

  9. Josh Stodola said on 20 October 2008 at 9:45 am:

    It’s a lovely web site. Fantastic work. Hate sIFR tho!!

    JSM has a trademark style that is unmistakeable.

  10. Jeffrey Zeldman said on 20 October 2008 at 11:32 am:

    JSM has a trademark style that is unmistakeable.

    Actually, the site design is by Daniel Mall. Jason worked on a design direction that was ultimately not pursued.

  11. Jonathan said on 20 October 2008 at 3:50 pm:

    Did all caps suddenly become readable again? I missed the article.

  12. Aaron Irizarry said on 20 October 2008 at 5:51 pm:

    The site looks great… how awesome to be able to work on something for a great cause and have it turn out so nice.

  13. Shane said on 21 October 2008 at 3:24 pm:

    Fantastic site for a fantastic cause. Great design Dan – well done.

  14. Trip Kirkpatrick said on 21 October 2008 at 8:25 pm:

    Looks like a million bucks, but there are a couple nits to pick.
    1) The “More Stories” & “Donate to Housing Works” links on the large photos get lost against some of the pictures. I’m cognizant of the difficulties of having consistent visibility of a color against a photo, but there you have it.
    2) I find the bottom portion confusing. As in not knowing what’s important in the bottom section aggregation but not really being able to read LTR either.

    That said, the photos and quotes are very compelling, especially for those of us who have shopped at the Housing Works stores have not had their mission explained to us in that process.

  15. Don Ulrich said on 23 October 2008 at 9:41 am:

    It flows and reads like a good book. I could not stop reading untill
    I finished the site. Very compelling. *what Carolyn said*

  16. Creating image dates with PHP, in webtoolkit4.me said on 27 October 2008 at 4:24 pm:

    [...] a 10/10 project. Design, typography, colors, coding. Everything. You can read more about it at Mr. Zeldman’s blog. As with every HappyCog’s project i just spend an hour or two exploring the site, the source, [...]

  17. greg said on 28 October 2008 at 4:10 pm:

    Very nice design. I am noticing that the headers (h2) in the standard columns are not working in firefox 3.0.3. with win XP.

  18. antoine butler said on 29 October 2008 at 1:18 pm:

    How did I not see this until now? Great Job. Another job more than well done by Happy Cog.

  19. Happy Cog Studios: Housing Works Website Redesign said on 18 April 2009 at 1:30 pm:

    [...] Jeffrey Zeldman: Housing Works Launch [...]

  20. Lynn said on 8 July 2009 at 1:45 pm:

    Looks great! A little late, but you better double check it with FireFox on the Mac.

  21. handbags said on 6 January 2010 at 2:35 am:

    My classic was my own boss actually, who praised the design to high heaven at the meetings, and two weeks into season holidays, after coding and uploading everything, he asks me to come back to work early because he’s got a whole new idea about how the site should look.

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