Reflections

Kudos from PROMYS

“We had been looking for some time for an affordable site designer who would help us create a site which would reflect our mission and character and which would be easy for us to update and expand on our own. We liked Elytra Design’s portfolio of sites because each site seemed to fit well with the nature of the organization for whom it was made, because each site had a very pleasing and uncluttered appearance, and because navigation of each site was easy and intuitive.

I spoke to Andrea and appreciated the extent to which she wanted to understand our goals and needs and that she seemed to care about the work we did with math-loving high school students and with teachers.

I asked if I could speak to some of Elytra Design’s past clients, and I was given names and contact information. I spoke to several of these clients, all of whose identities were easily verifiable due to the public nature of their employment. The clients didn’t just praise Andrea, they were thrilled to be given the opportunity to rave about both the work she had done for them and the pleasure it was to work with her. These were busy people, but they chose to speak to me at length and with great specificity about Elytra Design’s skills, special talents, and reliability. Above all, they spoke about how happy they were with the sites Andrea had created for them. I was impressed and reassured.

Andrea knew we were a non-profit and that keeping costs down for families and putting funds into financial aid were top priorities for us. We thought the price she quoted was reasonable. At this point, deciding to work with Elytra Design was a fairly easy decision.

Elytra Design took the time to learn the character and aims of our program, and paid good attention to our wishes and concerns. They met our final deadline (though there were a few intermediary delays) and we were pleased with her initial design ideas and delighted with the final form of the site. Andrea helped us shape a site which reflects who we are.

It was very important to us that the site’s structure allow for growth and be very easy for visitors to navigate. The site currently has about sixty pages and more will be added every year. The new site is as easy for us to maintain as we had hoped. As part of our design contract, Elytra Design trained us in how to work with the site (it is a Drupal site. We had no prior experience and, as promised, did not need any). We can add and edit pages very easily. Adding text, images, quotes, links, captions, and videos are all straight forward. Formatting is mostly automatic since we established with Andrea the range of fonts and styles we would need.

The most important indicator to us that the new site is a success is that applications now reflect an increased depth of understanding of the program: the goals, philosophy, community, structure, and mathematical content.

We are very happy that we chose to work with Andrea Hurley and Elytra Design and very highly recommend them. Andrea was a pleasure to work with.”

Julia Rolnick, PROMYS Director of Outreach