This week at Covenant Web Design, we launched a new website for Reflections Dance of McKinney. First I will go over a little bit of information about this very neat McKinney, Texas dance studio and then I will review some of the website building and design elements that were important for this project.

Reflections Dance of McKinney is a local dance studio off of Laura Lane and specializes in ballet, tap, jazz, hip-hop, and lyrical dance. Reflections Dance of McKinney offers many classes throughout the day for dancers based on their age range. The class for the youngest dancers is very special as it has a custom curriculum developed specifically for dancers at the age of two. As young dancers grow, they can progress into higher age and difficulty levels.

For the Reflections Dance of McKinney website, there were several elements that were very important for us to include on the site when we were in the design process.  Among these was the gallery. Of course we need a gallery for such a fantastic dance studio! The gallery is a great tool for adding life to a webpage. Websites are great for information but can be visually boring without nice pictures. So the gallery that we included can flexibly showcase the studio and the students while providing organization as well as character to the website.

A second design element that was important for the Reflections Dance of McKinney website is the design. This is best seen on the home page. As for all projects it is important to tailor a website to the appropriate audience. For the design, we collaborated with the team at Reflections Dance of McKinney and chose a pastel violet color palette. For accent colors for this McKinney dance studio, we chose to go with bold pinks and deep purples. After we had nailed down the major colors and the accent colors, we incorporated the use of some fun scroll graphics to theme the website and tie the design together.

A third elements that was crucial in building this website was the presentation of the scheduling information. Having the Reflections Dance of McKinney class schedule available for dancers is very convenient because if someone misplaces a paper copy of the class times, then the information is available to access on the website. Even though this may seem like a standard element, it serves the central purpose of providing the class times for Reflections Dance of McKinney for web users.

This project was so fun! I enjoyed working with the Reflections Dance of McKinney team very much to build a website that was updated and functional but also charming. I hope that the dancers will enjoy the Reflections Dance of McKinney website as much as I have.