Designer: Diana Demaj @SUNY WCC ITECH
Project Title: History with Grit – Riseupnational.org Website Redesign
Course: ITECH 240 New Media Projects 2026
DESCRIPTION:
RISEUP created the History of Grit Project, a pilot documentary about the legacy of John Edward Grit Bruce, a Pioneering Black Journalist, Republican Party activist and Pan-Africanist who lived in Yonkers from 1903-1916. RISEUP has many people collaborating and wants people to join or contribute to their current project. My goal was to help the Executive Director of RISEUP, Robert Baskerville, redesign his website for viewers to easily find information on his work and help contribute in his projects. Giving RISEUP a simple yet modern new look.
Before Images:
RESEARCH:
I began my research by trying to learn who is Edward Bruce and more knowledge on the History of Grit Project. By reading the information Robert already provided on the website, googling information about Bruce and seeing what information is on Wikipedia.org and Blackpast.org. Even learning about facts from the research my classmates did to help with his documentary. For the web design aspect, I tried finding inspiration on Google, Pinterest and WordPress themes that help me decide what design would work best for this historical site.
CHALLENGES:
Some of the challenges I faced was deciding what design actually went well with the information and media I was given. The website was originally made with Elementor but since I don’t have any experience on Elementor and wanted the website to be easy to use for Robert. I went with WordPress editor and it felt like I was starting from scratch since the Elementor design didn’t convert to the WordPress editor. Another challenge was making sure the website was mobile friendly, I didn’t realize at first that some of my UX design didn’t work on mobile view until closer to the deadline of my project.
STRATEGY:
I tried to create and find many ideas to experiment how I should visually change this website. Figuring out what layout I should do for each pages and how I should create a template for the site to look uniform and following the theme so nothing looks out of place. Refining was the most important, I kept refining, making small changes so everything aligns the way I wanted and small changes makes a huge difference.
DESIGN APPROACH:
Throughout my work, I used the design thinking approach every step of the way. From defining what I need to do, researching on this project, ideate what design will go well for this historical theme, creating the actual protypes, asking user testers what can I approve on and evaluating and looking back if I’m satisfied with the results. I tried to keep my design as simple but visually pleasing for users to keep wanting to look through the site. Adding old imagery and current images of Yonkers since the company is located in there and their project is about Yonkers back in the day with Bruce. Adding black and white imagery to have an historical feel while the website itself is colorful using the original color pallet Robert chose.
RESULTS:
Overall final design of the RISEUP Website:
YouTube Video of RISEUP:
I enjoyed being able to design an entire website myself and learn new skills and strengthen old ones as well. My goal was to create a cleaner design and consistency through out the website. Making users being able to find information and call to actions like “joining” or “donating” for the company. Visually, I wanted to add more imagery compared to the old design where some pages was mostly blocks of texts.