Noblesville Methodist Preschool & Parent's Day Out The Noblesville Methodist Preschool and Parent's Day Out Program is a ministry of the Noblesville First United Methodist Church in Noblesville, IN.  Their goal is to create a fun, professional, educational, and Christ-centered environment in which your child will grow and learn.  Some of our programs have been around for over 20 years, so you can be assured of years of experience and wisdom in the classroom.

A Place to Learn, Grow, and Love

The Situation

The preschool and parent's day out program has been a consistent and growning part of the Noblesville First United Methodist Church for nearly 20 years.  From the time the church created a website, the program has had an informational page listed under the ministry section.  The board that overseas the preschool program desired to take it to the next level and create it's own website in order to allow more families in the community to become aware of all it has to offer.

The Opportunity

Creating a strong online presence with an integrated branded message would place the Noblesville Methodist Preschool and Parent's Day Out (NMPPDO) program in the top search results relating to preschool and childcare programs in the community.  Utlizing a content management system for the website would allow the administrators and teachers to provide up-to-date information about what is going on at the preschool and in individual classrooms.  Placing registration forms online and integrating with an online payment solutions would allow new students to register and make payments online.  

From a branding perspective, Creative Underground had the opportunity to work with, and modify - if necessary - the existing logo for the preschool.  Along with that, developing and extending the brand into other media, including business cards and brochures, will help strengthen and communicate the experience and caliber of the NMPPDO programs.

Creative Underground set out with the following goals:

• Design a fun, bright, and easily navigatable website
• Integrate a CMS to make updates by administrators and teachers easy.
• Place registration forms online and integrate with a payment system
• Use &/or improve existing logo
• Create a streamlined/consistent brand
• Extend brand and design collateral (business cards, brochures, letterhead, envelopes, etc) displaying the developed brand.

The Project

The preschool was open to new visual ideas and they had a good grasp on the project deadlines - when they needed their website to be launched and their print materials to be in hand.  In this case, it was their registration open house event. 

From the git-go, the project was about more than a website.  It was about creating a cohesive, bright, fun, and professional brand - both online and on paper.

The goal was to create this brand and to create an online presence for the preschool that would put them in the top search results for their services locally.

Design

We quickly put together two complete website design samples to choose from. For each design, we dropped in their existing logo and it just wasn't cutting it as far as looking clean and finished in its new backdrop.  Knowing they didn't really want to change the logo because it was being actively used on banners and not having the budget for a new logo design, we decided to clean it up and add some color so it would look nice on their new website and print literature.  

We reached a point where we all realized the logo had to be recreated to make it work.  We re-illustrated a design featuring their school house, swing set, boy & girl and smiling sun then introduced a similar font face as the original in new positions all in true vector format.  We also included an illustration free logo to use when appropriate.  The client was thrilled with the results and even added a branding guide to our project to do list.  Once that initial piece of the overall puzzle was in place, the website design was approved then the letterhead, envelopes, brochure, business cards and email newsletter designs were approved, all reflecting the rules assigned in the branding guide thus creating a streamlined look for the growing preschool.Before further design took place for print collateral, CU created a brand standards guide outlining logo usage (and misuse), correct colors (including PMS), logo-type, brand grammar and more.

The images we used throughout their projects were a mix of stock photography and photos we took of their preschool kids, all with written permission from the parents of course.  We encourage our clients  to provide or have photos taken since we prefer to use non-stock imagery when we can!

Development

The selected web design was translated into templates to use in the DotNetNuke content management system.  DNN was chosen for this project based on defined requirements for on page content editting, enhanced role-based security, newsletter integration, custom registration forms and payment gateway integration.

Data Springs Dynamic Forms was chosen as the module to use for the registration forms.  Dynamic Forms allows you to customize workflow based on form fields and submission, as well as custom validation, email confirmation and event integration with major payment gateways.

CU customized an additional plug-in for an e-newsletter feature.  This feature allowed for opt-in and opt-out based on email addresses.  The administration feature allowed for easy customization of the e-newsletter as well as adding any additional roles or users as recipients.  The user list was also easily managed.

Additional features in the development included a news/announcments section, a photo gallery, an integrated calendar, and teacher pages.  Custom templates were created for the teacher pages in order to allow for general information, classroom calendars, and class photo galleries.  Access to the teacher pages is restricted to registered users (approved by the administrators) in order to protect the privacy of the children.

Upon completing the project, Creative Undgerground delivered all printed collateral and held a training session with administrators and teachers on how to use the new system.

Results

When all said and done, the Noblesville Methodist Preschool and Parent's Day Out received the following:

• Newly created logo
• Brand Guidelines
• Brochure
• Director Busiess Cards
• Teacher Business Cards
• Letterhead & Envelope
• Full Featured CMS based Website with Online Registration & Payments, Events, Gallery, and more

Pending additional business directory submissions by the preschool director, the NMPPDO website (http://www.noblesvillpreschoolpdo.com) currently alternates between the 10th and 11th position when searching for "Noblesville preschool" in Google.  The link from it's parent (Noblesville First United Methodist Church) currently shows in the top 5 in Google results.