Let me define the word pressure for you: Designing a Web site that will be used by a global cross-section of your peers and represent them to potential clients around the world.

Early in the genesis of what would become Creative Latitude I offered my services to create and develop the site. Although I readily knew the project would be a challenge at the onset, it's full scope quickly became apparent.

After a flurry of email discussions, I began to consider the site's structure, with content and navigation ideas bouncing around the management team. This was before the logo had even been chosen. Based on these ideas, I created a sitemap to define the architecture.

One of the visual 'hooks' I had thought of was a paperchain of people holding hands. Habib Bajrami's logo idea featured a similar theme and even though it wasn't the chosen one, it still seemed to work well with Carey Numme's eventual winner. I found low resolution comps of royalty-free images on Photodisc that were perfect.

Version 1
Version 2
Version 3
Revised Version 2

I treated the site design process the same as I would for any client, even though in this case I was an 'insider'. Using Photoshop, I took a week to design three homepages - for the consideration of the group - and presented them on an extranet I created for the development phase.

Creative Latitude's management asked people to vote on the one felt would best represent them: version 1 polled 12 votes (35%); version 2 got 20 votes (59%); and version 3 brought up the rear with 2 votes (6%). Clearly version 2 was popular, but a few voters emailed us to say that while they liked its layout and emphasis, they preferred the colour scheme of version 1.

I'm not an advocate of designing by committee, but one of the stated aims of Creative Latitude was that it is to act democratically. However, I felt that it wouldn't compromise the overall design to adapt the look and feel of the winning visual with the runner up's colours. Subsequently, I produced a revised visual that was put to the vote again. In answer to the question 'Which design do you prefer - the original winner or the revised design?', 6 people chose option 1, while an overwhelming number - 28 voters, 82% - chose the updated design.

Now came the task of populating the site with content that Cat (project manager) and Neil (chief copywriter) had spent weeks collating. I laid out the lower level pages according to the structure of my earlier sitemap, taking nearly a month to produce the bulk of the live site.

I've tried to keep the page layouts as clean and simple as possible. The purpose of the site is to showcase Creative Latitude's members, not to be flashy with an overbearing personality. The navigation is clearly labelled and positioned, hopefully making it easy to use and understand. Unlike a printed brochure, Web users tend to progress in a non-linear fashion. This being the case, I've encouraged cross-sectional movement, providing readers with options to move to different areas of the site and not just stay within one.

The simplicity of the structure and page layouts also allows for the future development of the site. Our aim is to integrate a database into it, mainly in the Profiles section. For now, at least, it is fairly straightforward to perform regular updates manually with the minimum of fuss.