New City Website Launches through Work with IWU’s Marion Design Co. Share

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(Mar­i­on, IN) Decem­ber 21^st, 2017 – The City of Mar­i­on is launch­ing a brand new web­site on Thurs­day (today), Dec 21^st, after final­iz­ing an 18-month col­lab­o­ra­tive design process with Mar­i­on Design Co. of Indi­ana Wes­leyan Uni­ver­si­ty. The new website’s look stems from a lengthy brand­ing process con­duct­ed by one group of stu­dents, while the site’s fea­tures and func­tion stem from dif­fer­ent yet con­nect­ed group rep­re­sent­ing Mar­i­on Design Co. 

Since the sum­mer of 2016, the City of Mar­i­on has been work­ing with this com­mu­ni­ty-mind­ed team in the web­site design process. The col­lab­o­ra­tive group focused on three goals to help web­site users 1) stay informed, 2) com­plete day-to-day actions, and 3) con­nect to infor­ma­tion. The web­site is designed to per­form respon­sive­ly with today’s pro­gress­ing technology…and it’s cer­tain­ly mobile-friend­ly. Unlike the past, City offi­cials will be able to update con­tent with­out com­mis­sion­ing a third par­ty. The new web­site is also designed to be sim­ple, intu­itive, sus­tain­able, and reliable. 

In step with oth­er pro­gres­sive com­mu­ni­ties, the City of Mar­i­on is uti­liz­ing a free domain pro­vid­ed by the State of Indi­ana: www​.city​of​mar​i​on​.in​.gov.

Co-founder of Mar­i­on Design Co. and Senior Dig­i­tal Design­er Luke Anspach explains, ​“The City of Marion’s web­site is a nat­ur­al hub for com­mu­ni­ca­tion, infor­ma­tion, and acces­si­bil­i­ty to resources. Any social media plat­form con­nects back to the hub.”

He added, after the launch on Thurs­day, there will inevitably be ​“bugs” to fix. The team will work on mak­ing tweaks and updates based on feed­back from ini­tial explo­ration, and will con­tin­ue to improve the new web­site. ​“As the site launch­es, it will take a cou­ple of days to ful­ly trans­fer. If the new site is not dis­play­ing imme­di­ate­ly, don’t wor­ry. It will indeed trans­fer over.” 

City of Mar­i­on Direc­tor of Mar­ket­ing & Com­mu­ni­ty Rela­tions Lay­la Price reflect­ed on the exten­sive col­lab­o­ra­tive process. ​“There are so many peo­ple to thank who have got­ten us to where we are today. From the indi­vid­u­als who helped cre­ate this part­ner­ship, to the pro­fes­sors and stu­dents who have worked so hard, to the fund­ing partners…the City of Mar­i­on has a web­site of which we should be so proud.”

The City of Mar­i­on sin­cere­ly thanks:

Mar­i­on Design Co.; Indi­ana Wes­leyan Uni­ver­si­ty; Com­mu­ni­ty Foun­da­tion of Grant County