All Golf, All the Time

Hard to believe, but for the past few weeks all my energy and time has been applied to golf. Not playing golf, but the creative direction, design, and coding of various tournament web sites.

Normally I have at least a couple of freelance projects on the side to help alleviate the repetitiousness, but summer is chocked full of tournaments, and there is only so much creative energy to tap into. So lately I've been saying "thanks, but no thanks" to numerous outside projects; something I hate doing, but for my own sanity it was the right response.

So with that, what have I been working on? A couple of things -- first, a redesign of the official site for the 2004 PGA Championship. Right now the 2004 version is nearly identical to 2003, which last year received a lot of attention and positive feedback. The existing style, color, and typography will stay about the same, but the xml-driven Flash menus will disappear (going all CSS this time), and the templates will be reconfigured. There are also plans for a new Flash-driven interactive piece, but I'll have to remain quiet on that for now.

Second, the 2004 Ryder Cup. This one is brand new, for the tournament only comes around every couple of years (and I started working for Turner Sports Interactive in Spring '03).

For the non-golf fans out there, The Ryder Cup is a kind of golf olympics, with the best golfers from the United States and Europe battling it out. It has a very long history (dating back to the 20s) and is a spirited, international event compared to the typical one-individual winner model of most golf tournaments.

And because of that unique model, we are developing not just a site, but two sites to capture the spirit and unique editorial content of both teams (and their home audience).

Development wise, it's the perfect event to exploit CSS, for with one style sheet (and a handful of common templates) you can style not only generic content (paragraphs, structure, navigation) but also apply colors, icons, and other presentational elements according to which team site the user is viewing.

The goal is to keep document structure simple and consistent (so editors and developers can easily use them), and leverage CSS to thoroughly alter the presentation so fans of each team has a site to call their own.

Sometime between now and August, a 'soft' launch of the sites will happen, and I'll write more about them then. Stay tuned.