‘Twas the Night Before WCAG!
‘Twas the holiday season and all ’round the spot Not a creature was crawling, not even a ‘bot! Agency staffers were snug in their beds but questions of access swirled round in their heads… “How shall we keep up with the changing constraints? Our intentions are good, but designers we ain’t!” When, from my computer, […]
There Goes My Hero!
Super Delly is the hero we all need. He’s here to save the day, as it pertains to making your homepage as inviting and accessible as possible! For the sake of clarity, the hero section that we’re actually going to be talking about is the large image and text beneath the header; essentially, your homepage’s […]
Thankful for Sharing!
One of the things we’re most thankful for at the GIC is the opportunity to help Delaware agencies share important information with the widest possible audience. The development of the Lighthouse design system is going to benefit agencies and visitors through content organization, efficiency improvements, and increased accessibility standards. That all adds up to inviting […]
Using Lighthouse …to Navigate!
We chose the name Lighthouse for our new state website design system for several reasons. It’s a nod to the many Delaware lighthouses that dot our beautiful coastlines, like the Harbor of Refuge Lighthouse in Lewes, seen above. Symbolically, a lighthouse is a comforting landmark to help sailors orient themselves, avoid trouble and find their […]
Unveiling our New State Branding
We’re going to step back a bit from our usual focus with this post. While we’ve detailed some of the upgrades coming to many Delaware state websites through our new design system called Lighthouse, there are other improvements in the works that are also worth calling out. We’ve already shared the new website header, which […]
Choosing New Fonts for Lighthouse
One of the GIC’s main goals is to put accessibility at the forefront of our process. We always want to keep in mind those with visual, hearing and other disabilities as we make each website design decision. This approach calls for reconsideration of colors, backgrounds, and the text itself that we use. Many different fonts […]
End of Summer Dev Updates
Hello again! The GIC team is engaged in an important internal debate, agonizing over a hotly-contested issue: Is it actually summer until September 22 as the calendar says, or do Labor Day and the start of school mark the real beginning of fall? Our team is split into devoted camps of those who are still […]
Mid-August Lighthouse Dev Updates
The GIC team is hard at work, building our new Lighthouse design system. Every couple of weeks we’ll be checking in with a brief update on some of the more interesting aspects of our development efforts. Here’s what we’re working on now! Our web team has been building new components for Lighthouse, including: Let’s dig […]
Designing a New Header & Footer
Previous iterations of the Delaware State Common Look and Feel (CLF) provided a consistent header and footer for state agency websites to use, such as the ones on this webpage. Our new version of the CLF is called Lighthouse. Lighthouse represents a comprehensive design system that will unify even more elements of state websites. This […]
Welcome to Lighthouse!
A New Vision for Delaware’s Common Look and Feel Guidelines Delaware’s Government Information Center (GIC) is excited to share a new vision for the State of Delaware’s digital experiences! It’s called Lighthouse, and it represents a comprehensive approach to the redesign of state agency websites. A quick reminder, the GIC was chartered in part to define unified design […]
