Web design class helps nonprofits, students alike

Each year, an instructor at the College of Southern Nevada expands his syllabus to teach students skills that go beyond the classroom and into their community.

David L. Hardy, who teaches Graphic Design 276, works with the class to create a professional website for a local nonprofit while teaching students new skills in their journey as graphic designers.

“The class is an opportunity for students to encapsulate everything that they’ve learned and connect them with a cause,” Hardy said. “It provides students with real-world experience and offers a professional service for nonprofits that do not have a big budget.”

Hardy, a former guitarist with the band Two If By Sea, spent his 20s sleeping on floors across the country while touring. He decided to focus on graphic design and moved to Las Vegas in 2009 after receiving his Master of Fine Arts degree in integrated design at the University of Baltimore.

As the former senior web designer at MGM Resorts International and creative director of artsvegas.com, a website that focuses on local art, culture and entertainment, he uses his experience to structure the class similar to a professional work setting.

During the first six weeks, Hardy puts students through a bootcamp to get them back to speed. Then, the class is divided into four teams, which include design, user experience, front-end development and project management.

The teams help students learn what it is like to work for a firm and learn how to collaborate with different departments.

There are approximately four students on each team, and students are allowed to switch if Hardy deems it appropriate.

The design team is in charge of creating the visual components of the website, such as the color scheme, typography and format sizes.

Students on the user experience team focus on understanding the users and their needs, abilities and limitations. They take into account the business goals and objectives of the project.

The front-end team takes the completed design work and implements it into the website using hard code.

Afterward, the project management team takes the product and communicates with the client to make sure that everything is up to speed and the client is content with the team’s progress.

“You have to get them excited to push beyond their initial solutions,” Hardy said. “It’s not art, and it’s not business. It’s somewhere in the middle. Graphic design is solving a problem in a creative way to get people’s attention.”

At the end of the 16 weeks, the website is about 60 percent complete, and Hardy works with the client to complete it.

This is Hardy’s third time teaching the class.

“The first time I taught the class in a formal way,” Hardy said. “I realized that what students were really interested in was creating a real-world project. That’s where the idea was spawned to partner with different nonprofits.”

Hardy picks nonprofits that have an outdated website or need a Web presence.

He first partnered with Push Forward, a nonprofit that focuses on serving at-risk teens through skateboarding. This past semester, he worked with the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth. Hardy is putting the final touches on the website, which is set to launch in December.

“The class has substantially improved the website for us,” said Arash Ghafoori, executive director of the partnership. “They took our vision and created a viable product. His class is a great example of how academia and nonprofits can work together to contribute to a good cause.”

The class is taught once a year in the spring semester.

Hardy is taking requests for nonprofit organizations that are interested in partnering with his class.

He added that organizations can expect a clean and modern standard-spaced website that performs well on desktops, tablets and mobile devices at a fast and reliable pace.

“The response has been really good. Students are happy that they have something to show, and we’re serving the communities at the same time,” Hardy said. “Everyone wins in the end.”

For more information, call Hardy at 702-651-4651 or email david.hardy2@csn.edu.

Contact North View reporter Sandy Lopez at slopez@viewnews.com or 702-383-4686. Find her on Twitter: @JournalismSandy.