A New website for Northport Arts Association

Mar 1

Welcome to Northport Arts Association’s (NAA) new website and our blog. We’re excited about our new site, upgrades and changes. Our goal behind the revitalized site? To ensure our community’s experience is easy, enjoyable and adds value to our members.

This past year and today continues with many life changes and experiences. We see businesses, schools, governments and communities evolve and revamp. This includes how we communicate, interact and live out our daily lives.

NAA website keeps up with our changing times

As a thriving and active association, we too must make adjustments and changes . We consistently seek feedback from our members. We evaluate opportunities to better serve our membership and community both in person and online.

New approaches to connecting artists with artists and our community remain top of mind. Today, all of our in-person exhibits and events follow social distance protocols. Additionally, we offer our members and non-members online art venues to display and sell their work.

With these new expectations, we outgrew the capabilities of our current website. As a result, we’re revitalizing our site.

Our new website Design & Content

Our new logo, A team effort:

Following an invitation for our members to submit designs, we received an amazing collection to choose from. As we did not want to direct what the logo should look like, our request gave artists the opportunity to share their own interpretation.

The outcome? Ten beautiful submissions to choose from.

Members voted and we used the logo with the most votes to finalize the design. As a board team, suggestions continued and our final logo is official. We’re loving the artist’s brush of our Michigan blue water with the graceful flow of the text.

Additional website content:

New look and feel - There’s valuable content in our legacy website moving over in addition to a few new categories. Our new site includes art from our artists. Small elements from the *Northport Marina mural reflects our local vibe in a few of our borders across the site. (*The G. Marsten Dame Marina (Northport Harbor) mural pictured below was designed by Northport Arts Association member Kat Dakota, an artist and designer from Suttons Bay, Michigan. Painted in 2018 with more than 200 residents and tourists of all ages and abilities participating).
Ease of use for our artists and members - Our front page welcomes our users with current, colorful up to date information and upcoming activities. Steps are streamlined for class and event registrations.
Revised menu and content - When we built our first website, it was based on the current activities and needs at the time. Today, how we interact with our members, teams and communities continues evolving. Our community expects greater visibility into our history, vision, mission, plans, resources and events.
Online galleries and shopping - NAA’s store is open for business with a few items for sale and more on the way. We’re continuing online art venues in the near future too.
Blog - Many of our artists have their own blogs. Some artists seek to provide guest posts without the work of maintaining their own blog site. We’re offering our blog platform for our artists to either link a blogpost to their site or write a guest post.
Improved interaction - Our new site offers seamless integration with our social media platforms. Plus, engaging with NAA is simplified with donate, newsletter and contact buttons throughout the site.
Robust platform - As users and visitors to the NAA site, we don’t see the work behind the scenes. Our website volunteers appreciate the ability to make quick changes and updates as needed.

Going Forward

We hope that you’ll take the time to explore our new website. If there’s something you’d like to see included, don’t hesitate to send us a suggestion to northportartsforall@gmail.com