Bryan Bigham
Rochester Municipal Website Redesign
2023
Problem & Goal
The City of Rochester’s website, once functional, now over a decade old, no longer reflects the vibrancy of the city itself. Cluttered layouts, dense text, and outdated design make it hard for residents, visitors, and business owners to find what they need.
Goals:
Create a clean, modern experience that matches the city's identity
Simplify navigation and improve content accessibility
Enhance readability and consistency
Process
Audit & Analyze: Reviewed the original site to identify usability issues and visual inconsistencies.
Navigation Redesign: Simplified the user flow by centering the experience around a single, intuitive search bar to guide users directly to what they need.
Wireframing: Created both low-fidelity and high-fidelity wireframes to explore layout options, refine hierarchy, and test structure before final design
Visual Design: Developed a modern design system in Figma with clean typography, flexible components, and subtle micro-animations to create a more engaging and delightful user experience.
Accessibility: Adjusted contrast, type sizing, and layout structure to support a more inclusive experience.
Final Design
The redesigned website blends clarity and accessibility with a visual language inspired by Rochester’s print heritage. I used a print-informed layout and typographic system to reflect the city’s identity and apply my own background in editorial design to a digital format.
Key features:
A search-focused homepage for intuitive navigation
Modular layouts for city departments, events, and alerts
A refined civic visual system with clean type and strong hierarchy
Subtle micro-animations to enhance usability and bring visual polish
Reflection & Takeaways
This project was a chance to connect my roots in print design with the challenges of creating accessible, user-first digital experiences. Drawing from Rochester’s history in printing gave the redesign a deeper sense of place, while allowing me to apply familiar layout and typographic principles in a new context.
I gained experience structuring complex civic content, designing for accessibility, and building consistent systems from the ground up. Most importantly, I learned how to translate traditional design values into modern, usable interfaces—something I hope to keep exploring in future work.