napCincinnati has been around for a number of years and obviously their website has contributed to that, but there has to be a certain point when you take a hard look at your main form of selling your product and just know it needs to be updated. This project initially started out as me filling my downtime, I would constantly take a client's outdated site and give them a much needed facelift (www.napcincinnati.com).
I originally started out just messing around with a new homepage design, then I was asked to go ahead and flesh out what the rest of the site would potentially look like. I quickly realized I need to take a step back and layout a sitemap to get a better understanding of the site since it is a parent site of about eight apartment communities in the area. From getting into the mind of a new tenant I moved to laying out a few rough designs to get a general idea as to how the new site would flow and how they would sell themselves to new or returning tenants.
As a designer we tend to pour our heart and passion into a lot of projects we work on and sometimes those projects never see the light of day, sadly this is one of those projects. It will always be one of my favorites, being able to see the pros and cons of what is working for the brand and where they should be selling themselves to potential tenants and not just assume what worked in the past is continually working. That paired with the new, brighter and more neighborhood focused brand message and look makes this brand feel as though they would have updated themselves for the better.