The Student Government website is still incomplete eight weeks into the semester due to contract delays and unfinished projects.
Caitlin Greene, SG director of marketing and communications, came into her position in June. During her first week, SG President Courtney Parrish told Greene the website redesign was one of her major projects, the other being SG advertising.
With the redesign in mind, Greene contacted the design company, Trig Design, about the changes SG wanted to make. But the North Carolina-based company, with an office in Tampa, was “not as supportive” as they said they could be, Greene said.
“We were going to stick with Trig,” Greene said. She then tried to negotiate with the design company over a two-week period during the summer.
“They kind of left us high and dry,” Greene said.
With new SG administration in place, “the whole site needed to change,” Greene said. The vision for the new website is to increase communication between students and SG.
“I want to make us as approachable as possible,” Greene said, “so having a website makes it easier for students to contact us.”
With the site’s revamp, Greene looked beyond Trig Designs. She met with Reuben Pressman, SG creative director, Parrish and SG Vice-President Mark Lombardi-Nelson to discuss the upcoming changes.
Pressman said he would help work on the website for free, as long as he had time.
But as the first day of the fall semester approached, there was no communication between the parties.
“[SG] kind of got screwed over. And I told them when that was happening that I don’t have a lot of time, but if I do find time, I could help work with [Trig Design] or help redo the site, if I had time,” Pressman said.
Pressman said if Greene provided him with designs for the website, he would do the coding for it.
“Designs take a lot of time,” Pressman said. “The coding doesn’t take much time, so I told them I could spend time doing that if they could provide me with full designs.”
When communication fell through, Greene started searching for another third party designer. She recommended Realizing Media because “they really know what they are doing,” and are local USFSP grads, which Greene says was “a big thing for me.” She trusts the company’s promises—“they’re going to be there, it’s in the contract.”
Along with the redesign, the company will provide training video tutorials, as the property of SG, so “everything they need to know, they can,” Greene said.
The redesign of the SG website will cost $2,000, adding to the cost of the last site, which was about $4,000.
Pressman’s qualifications for redesigning the website made sense. He has been involved with SG and he’s been a professional freelance graphic designer for about five years.
“I’ve been around for three years so the Student Government side of things, I have the history that I think their whole organization is lacking due to a loss of alumni in that organization right now,” Pressman said. “I pitched that I’d like to help, and they’ve been very happy to have me so far. I’m just doing as much as they want me to do, that I have time for.”
Photo illustration by Daniel Mutter
