Inner Metro Green

4 comments | Posted: 4 January 09 in Featured, by Nathan Smith

URL: innermetrogreen.com

This site recently came to my attention, in an IM conversation with my friend Yannick. Inner Metro Green is a church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania that is pastored by Shawn Anthony. Before I get into details about the site, let me say that Shawn is someone for whom I have a great deal of respect, because he has humbly documented his struggle with, and return to, faith in Christ. His earnest seeking has no doubt has made him a better pastor.

Awhile back, Shawn started a Christian blog network called The Daily Scribe, that now sports quite a few theologically minded individuals amongst its membership, such as Ben Gray and Jesse J. Anderson. But I digress.

The IMG site itself was designed by Justin Carroll, who joined the church staff as Art Director earlier in 2008. He has done a marvelous job at creating a site that is very edgy, yet also inviting. I especially like the roots in the footer, implying that the site and the church it represents, is planted firmly. The city skyline is also a nice touch. As I dug further into the site, I was pleasantly surprised to find that each sermon series has a uniquely crafted visual identity, almost like mini movie posters, with accompanying MP3 downloads.

As for the markup, it looks to be nice and tidy XHTML 1.0 Transitional. I believe it was probably coded by pastor Shawn himself, who is a dab hand at front-end development. Overall, I think the site has a (dare I say) perfect blend of urban and organic elements, to create an engaging user experience. I’m sure this is indicative of the sort of warm and progressive attitude of the congregation.

Discuss This Topic

  1. 1 Larry

    Hmm… I live in Lancaster and never even heard of this place. I’ll have to check it out sometime!

     

  2. 2 Adrian Rodriguez

    That is a beautifully designed website. Very inspiring.

     

  3. 3 Matt

    Nice write up Nathan. I do like the style of IMG. I’m also impressed that the site gracefully works without JavaScript.

     

  4. 4 Shawn

    Thanks, Nathan. You guys are all awesome.

    Justin is also the man. He did an incredible job with the art direction and concept work. He also did the majority of the coding. I went back and made things cross-browser compatible and tweaked a few things, but he handled most of the load on this one. My “dab hand” was developing other things that day! LOL!

    Be well, God Bit. Keep up the fantastic work.

     

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