Poppin Joe’s Gourmet Kettle Korn is a success story. A young man with Down Syndrome by the name of Joe Steffy and his family created the company as an opportunity for Joe to manage his own business. Over the years Poppin Joe’s has worked hundreds of events, serving his delicious snack to visitors with a humble grin and hard work.

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My task as a Technical Communicator was to look at Poppin Joe’s website and do a complete overhaul. Over the next six weeks, I completed a website analysis, a content strategy report, and a fresh style guide. All these documents were created with a single goal in mind:. To design a site that maintains Poppin Joe’s unique brand identity and tone, while creating a website that is modern, user-centered, and functional.

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No stone was left unturned. A wireframe prototype for a new homepage was created. A reorganization of the website’s navigation was recommended to the client. In the content strategy report, an analysis of every piece of written and visual content on the site was performed. A social media strategy detailing the company’s use of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram was created. And finally, a comprehensive style guide was drafted. This guide created a unified font, color palette, image, and writing guideline.

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These assignments were challenging and exciting. I had never done such a detailed analysis of a brand and its website before. It felt especially rewarding to perform this task on a website that has a warm and wholesome brand image. It created an interesting opportunity to think critically about branding and on the messages communicators deliver to our customers and users.