Responses by Weston Baker, founder and Davin Hazard, developer, Weston Baker Creative Group

Background: We were approached by the founders of Women in VC, a global directory of women in venture capital, to design and develop a website as an entry point for new and existing members of the network to access the directory on Airtable. The website also displays meaningful data collected through the database of self-reported entries of more than 900 women in venture capital worldwide. We were excited by the organization’s cause and took on the project pro-bono. We felt that helping these women in venture capital might also help us get exposure and open doors for our company, 15 Finches, that focuses on helping build and accelerate startups.

Highlights: In addition to branding Women in VC, we created a unique illustration style for the visualization of the database stats. The visuals and integrated quote carousels are the primary communication elements on the website that dictate the look and feel, as well as the user experience.

Navigational structure: The site is designed as a single page long scrolling website with a navigation list of sections on the side of the screen that tracks where users are on the page.

Technical features: The site is built with Gatsby.js, a React-based framework with Contentful as a content management system and Heroku as a hosting platform. When planning the development of the site, we had to consider which aspects of the site would need to be easy to update and accessible to the client. Given the large number of quotes provided by members of the network (100+), we decided to add and store them on Contentful and query them through Gatsby’s GraphQL integration to keep the quotes updated on the site as more entries are added. The compatibility of Contentful and Gatsby with automatic deployments through Heroku made managing, displaying and updating this data a simple and streamlined process.

Alternative approach: In a future iteration of the website, we would like to implement an automated feature that will use the Airtable API to pull data directly from the database to create dynamic graphics that reflect the changing data as new members are added to the directory. Currently, the website displays static image carousels, but building out more interactive data visualizations could create a more engaging user experience that represents the database accurately over time.