Designed, developed and delivered by Flow SA, the striking new website is the result of weeks of consultation, development and design by a team of dedicated Flowstars.
Project Manager for the website revamp and Flow SA MD Tiffany Turkington-Palmer is excited by the company’s involvement with such a prominent client.
“Flow is honoured to work with the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory on its online platforms and web presence,” she says, grinning. “We are very excited to have been involved with the revamp of the current site and to have been able to work with the great minds from Google on the archives initiative.”
“We’ve been working with the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory (as its now known) since 2006. We’re very proud, honoured and privileged to have them as our client,” she says.
“The work we’ve done with them has been viewed across the globe, whether it’s a Mandela Day billboard for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the interface for a new website, or publishing Nelson Mandela’s letter of congratulations to Barak Obama after he was elected President of the United States.
“Our working relationship with this client is filled with special moments and memories.”
For Flowstar programmer Stephen Frank, one memory he won’t forget anytime soon is being thanked personally by Sello Hatang, spokesperson for the Centre of Memory, for his involvement in the programming side of the site prior to the Google launch.
Modestly he relates the programming needed to revamp a site that represents one of South Africa’s greatest icons. “The new site was re-developed with renewed focus on bringing a rich media experience to users and showcasing the Centre’s ongoing projects in a visually appealing way,” he explains.
Social networking tools were incorporated from the ground up, he says, to ensure that real interaction between the world and the platform could happen.
“The three main menu navigations are basically the three main areas of work for the Centre of Memory,” he says. “I got the inspiration for the animation effects from one of my university projects.”
The website features a blog, a multimedia gallery that plays video, and a very cool On this Day feature (Dimitri’s personal favourite) that, when you click on it, tells you what happened in Mr Mandela’s life on that day.
“There’s a rich history of content on the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory site, so great care and effort was put into migrating this content from the old site to the new,” says Flow sub-editor Keith Nicholls, who checked and re-checked all the news and static content before the site went live.
“It was a considerable and challenging task, but well worth it. The new site is the perfect gateway to access this information.”
The new website was officially launched worldwide at the Centre of Memory in Houghton on Tuesday alongside the Nelson Mandela Digital Archive, a partnership project between the Centre and the Google Cultural Institute.