Robin Taylor

The U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) asked me to put one of their courses online: The Certificate Course in Interfaith Conflict Resolution (link goes to USIP site). USIP had already posted one course on conflict analysis, so they had already established the course structure and design template.The course content, which they provided, was fascinating. The course includes two case studies, Nigeria and Guatemala.

In reading the Nigeria case study, I learned about “the pastor and the imam” — two religious leaders who arrange interfaith dialogue in troubled communities, in a brave and powerful effort to bring peace to their region.

The Guatemala case study was a sort of “behind the scenes” look at the peace process that brought an end to thirty-six years of misery in that country.

I had several tasks for this project:

• Researching, selecting, and editing photos to illustrate the content and themes of the course. I used photos provided by USIP, and others I found on the United Nations and other NGOs’ web sites. Best of all, I used an AP Images account to through some of the most striking and powerful news photos ever taken.
• Writing multiple-choice test questions based on the content. I have to admit this part was more challenging than expected, but very satisfying when I worked with the client to get the questions and answers just right.
• Coding all the web pages from a template provided by USIP.
• Proofreading the text.

After completion of my tasks, my contact at USIP said,

“Thanks so much for your help with the project.  Not only your first-rate technical work and editing support, but most of all your experience as a photographer.  Those photos help put the visual into visual storytelling, and help explain the continuing flood of enthusiastic feedback.”

Another custom website for an artist friend, including a hidden page with a “secret door” leading to it! Each page background is based on a different photo by Mark, from his Reflections series.

Mark’s site was certainly different from any other I had worked on, and a lot of fun.

From the projects page, clicking on a portfolio pops up another window with the portfolio inside:

Schmaps are interactive maps that you can download. They include photos and reviews.

This photo of a statue in Boboli Gardens appears in the third edition of the guide to Florence, Italy. (You can see the photo in the page here without downloading the whole map.)



These two photos of the National Gallery of Art appear in the third edition of the guide to Washington, DC.



You can see these photos in the Washington, DC Schmap guide here and here.

I have granted permission to OTTN Publishing (Stockton, NJ) to use this photo of Senegalese fishermen setting out in the morning. I took the photo from our hotel in Toubab Dialaw. OTTN says, “the book in question is entitled Senegal and is part of our Africa: Continent in the Balance Series, which we are publishing through Mason Crest Publishers, based in Philadelphia, PA. Each book in the series profiles an African country and reviews the people, the government, the economy, the cultural traditions, the history and the land itself. They are full-color, glossy paged, hardcover books aimed at middle-school library readers.”

As Geekcorps Associate at IESC in 2006, I was tasked with redesigning and rebuilding the Geekcorps website with a new CMS. (The original site had not been redesigned in years and used a custom-made Microsoft Access-based CMS that had become somewhat unwieldy with age.)


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Adapted Consulting, a newly formed company, was building a website. They had their own developer but needed a designer to develop the look and feel, and build an XHTML/CSS template that they could replicate throughout the site.

I made mockups, and coded all the XHTML and CSS except the dynamic menus.

The Agricultural Stewardship Association (ASA) site needed an update. Another designer had provided them with mockups but had been unable to complete the project and implement them.

I made new mockups, suggested some improvements to the design, coded the HTML and CSS for all the pages, and updated much of the content.

This photo now appears in an About.com article, “Looking at Paintings: Where Do You Stand?”

The jenny-press was established in 2004 to contribute to the critical discussion of artists’ books. It publishes scholarly articles about the arts of the book, in limited editions with covers designed and hand-printed by editor Jae Rossman.

The jenny-press needed a simple site to showcase the latest issue and to offer information on how to order publications and stationery. I based this design on one of Jae’s paintings, called Sage.

The inside pages, which show the current cover artwork, are muted so as not to clash with the cover art.

The Association des Municipalités du Mali (AMM), with their partners the Service de Coopération et d’Action Culturelle de l’Ambassade de France au Mali (SCAC), needed to put their central clearinghouse of decentralization information online. Through ICVolunteers, I became a CyberVolunteer responsible for designing the look and feel of the portal.

I worked with another CyberVolunteer in Bamako. After I designed the graphic look-and-feel of the site, and coded the HTML and CSS, he integrated my code with SPIP templates and built the working site you see today.