Nearly three years ago, the Adventist Design Framework, and Adventist.org, was launched. While it was a huge effort to launch what is there, in the ensuing year, not much tangible has happened. The Design Framework was launched with the goal of making a series of themes that would make it easy for Adventist websites around the world to launch a site that felt Adventist, but didn’t have to replicate the work of design over and over for each new site.

It was a good plan, but in an ever-changing world of design, with new devices and evolving design standards, there were updates need. Unfortunately no updates have been made to the framework since it was launched.

Well that’s changing

In January the Adventist Church signed a contract with Superfriendly, a design collaborative based in Philadelphia, to create a pattern library that any Adventist church, school or institution can use.

What’s a pattern library? Good question. I’ll give you some examples in a minute, but here is a great way to describe it as someone said in our kickoff meetings for this project, “A pattern library is a like a bucket of LEGO. If you need to build a website, you can reach in and find the parts and pieces that you need to create the site you need.”

Here are a few examples:

• Future Learn Pattern Library
• DoSomething.org Pattern Library
• A Pattern Apart – A List Apart’s pattern library
• Code For America
• Many more are available from StyleGuides.io

When Superfriendly hands off the pattern library to us at the end of April, the work will be just beginning. From there, its up to the Adventist community. While we would love to be able to answer every design question with the first iteration, there are so many variations that we can’t do it all from the General Conference. But that is where you come in. We need your feedback, ideas, and collaboration.

Join in

Over the coming weeks and months, we will be sharing updates about what is going on with this project, ways you can provide feedback, and requests for your help in shaping the future of this project. Our desire is to develop this project in an open and transparent manner.

Want to follow along as we go? Keep checking back to this space and sign up for updates! You’ll be the first to know when we write something new!