If you know a professional musician in Austin, Texas you know someone who has been affected by HAAM. The Health Alliance for Austin Musicians is a non-profit organization whose mission is to provide access to affordable health care for uninsured working musicians. HAAM is also one of GSD&M’s favorite pro-bono clients. Each year for HAAM benefit day we design posters, logos and banners. This year, we were asked to help HAAM improve their website.

The new HAAM website had to be appealing to the musicians who were seeking assistance, as well as potential donors. It need to be cool, but also simple to navigate. It would house tons of information on the organization, upcoming events, volunteer opportunities, and the HAAM blog. At the same time it had to be a repository of medical practitioners who worked with HAAM musicians, and those musicians needed an easy to navigate interface to find care. In addition to all of that we had to keep in mind that donations run the program and ensure that the donate section of the website was always prominent.

Collaboration was key for this project. The creative team consisted of Eduard Matamoros, Justin Miller, Ben Hodgin, Dylan Reese, Jefferson Burruss, our developer Rob Pennington, and myself. Because we worked as a team, there was a sense of community ownership of the project which allowed us to be more nibble and adjust any element that needed to be adjusted. This collaboration and attention to detail was evident when we presented to our fabulous client Carolyn, and we sold through our work with minimal feedback. The site went live last week, and in the same spirit of collaboration that was present for the rest of the project we are still working with Rob to improve the live experience.

If you didn’t catch any of the tons of shows yesterday or have a chance to donate to this great cause, be sure to check out the site to learn more: www.myhaam.org.