After graduating the University of North Carolina, one of the most prestigues colleges he begun his career in Europe. During the first 3 season abroad Marcus had a simple website that served mostly an information outlet. Seeing the possibilities that were ahead of this young and promising athlete we knew that his web presence and digital identity could distinquish him from other athletes. We were given full creative freedom to present our ideas and capabilities in this exciting project.
A Responsive website based on Bootstrap Framework
Introducing: MarcusGinyard.com by LowGravity
Marcus Ginyard is a professional basketball player, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumnus. Currently in his third year abroad playing for a Polish club, Anwil Włocławek.
LowGravity has been selected by Marcus to redesign his previous official website. The new project had to be a breathe of fresh air after the generic and outdated website. Marcus wanted to have a bigger control over his content and possibility to discuss and interact with fans.
Our main target was to engage fans through the possibility of reaching MarcusGinyard.com from various locations using wide range of devices (from mobile to desktop). As a base for our responsive grid we chose Twitter Bootstrap Framework and its fixed responsive layout. Thanks to this framework we were able to target a wide range of screen resolutions – from 300px small mobile devices to fullHD 1920px desktop stations.
Second most important thing was giving Marcus a possibility to update his website with ease. We made our decision very quick – we used fabulous open source CMS – WordPress – as for many our previous projects. This CMS allows Marcus to write new posts, add galleries, scores and many more within a blink of an eye.
Unique and interesting features: scoreboard & in their words
Aside from having the fans joining the discussion, reading about player’s career we wanted them to stay up to date with his game-by-game performance. Our scoreboard feature used in many previous projects is being constantly developed. Currently we have two versions of this system: basic and advanced. Both of them allow player to add any number of games they played along with their personal performance. With players being abroad it’s often very hard for their families and friends to stay up to date with their schedule. Thanks to our solution they always know how the latest games went from any device at any time.
Scoreboard feature is built on top of great WordPress plugin called podsframework. You can read more about this plugin in our blog section where Kamil has written few tutorials about this plugin.
One of the more interesting sections that Marcus’ website features is the In their words space. Our client wanted to include testimonial from some of the most important people he encountered in his life. Friends, teammates and former coaches speak about his on and off the court character.
Branding
Along with new web presence our client wanted to work on getting his branding updated too. After listening to his guidelines and ideas we’ve teamed up again with Lunatic Agency to create the logo design.
The main idea of the logo was to connect many symbols that were important in Marcus’ life. The largest shape in the logo, which holds inside of “MG”, is the Old Well, an unmistakable symbol of the University of North Carolina. As being an alumni of University of North Carolina, Marcus wanted to have that significant symbol in his brand mark.
Raised as a child of two military officers he wanted to have dog tags as one of those symbols (Marcus has an exact copy of his father’s US Marine Corps dog tags tattooed around neck). On top of everything the logo contains a map image which was added to emphasize his current profession where a basketball player has to travel the world and play in various countries. The logo can be used in a version with and without the map image.
Additional services
Aside from preparing the website and branding we were also responsible for Marcus’ Facebok fan page and his first website event – the website launch giveaway. We’ve prepared posters that fans were able to win by signing up for Marcus’ mailing list. Later on Marcus met up with them in person to give the prizes and take a commemorative picture. Two of the winners were Anwil Wloclawek fans and third one was from the United States.
We’ve also created an easy online registration, camp posters, flyers and Facebook cover for Marcus’ another event – his 2nd Basketball Camp for children which will take place on August 3-4, 2013 in Jacksonville Commons Recreation Center.
Selected fan responses
Visit new official site of Marcus Ginyard @MG1NYARD congrats bro! http://t.co/yXRxw1Uj #tarheelnation
— Tito Papá (@tpismyhero) February 15, 2013
Basketball camp
Beginning of August 2013 was scheduled for the second Marcus Ginyard Basketball Camp. During the first camp all the registration, payments and paper work were handled by e-mail, print etc. With our solutions the process got a lot easier. We modernized the process with an addition of simple registration form for parents to fill out. Connected with PayPal payments and Gravity Forms the process was made incredibly easier than before. Along with the registration Marcus introduced donation plans that would help children from poor families get to the camp. That was also one of our tasks to set up a simple donation that would lead to more kids attending the camp. Both projects were a success and brought much needed simplification to the process that was more time consuming before.
