The Oratory Project

The Oratory Project is a service for at-risk teenagers offered by Matt Eventoff and PrincetonPublicSpeaking.com.  As the site needed to present only basic information about the service, we choose to make it a one-page WordPress site.  I actually don’t do many “black themes” because so many sites using black as their primary color can be difficult to read and just seem “heavy” to me.  So the challenge was to make the text readable and comfortable… which I think we achieved.

As this needed a “hero image” (a large full-screen image at the top of the homepage) it needed to be something that I could lay words over and yet be representative and of the goal of the service.  Matt and I worked together on ideas and based on his inspiration I found the current video of a young person holding a revolving Earth.  The video did not loop well so I edited it to dissolve when looping.  I also made it monochrome to go with the black/white theme.  The video is responsive and can be viewed as a .mp4, .webm, or .ogv, depending on your device.  I also used a transparent mask layer over the video to darken it enough so the quote can be easily read.

The other challenge was finding background images for the other three sections.  The first explanatory section uses a darkened image of a group of teenagers, the workshop section uses a very light classroom, and the contact/get involved section uses a darkened image of two happy young women talking.  Each image works on its own to give context for the service being offered and is light or dark enough for the text on top to be easily read.

These sections are parallax, meaning they do not move when scrolling down the page, the content floats over them and moves.

The end result is a site that gets the necessary information presented in a usable way and this content is supported by the video, opening quote, and background images.