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Revize · City website · Approved August 2026

Williams, Arizona

Williams is a small Route 66 town at 6,762 feet, the Gateway to the Grand Canyon, inside the largest Ponderosa pine forest in the world. The site had one unusual requirement: it must look nothing like the City of Williams, California.

Art DirectionVisual DesignADADesign Systems
Home1440 × 4314
Home design

The brief

Not the other Williams

The city's identity matters mostly because it separates Williams, Arizona from Williams, California. A wide illustrated lockup made for the web couldn't hold up at navigation size, so its wordmark goes in the nav and the official city logo goes in the footer.

The city also wants its website, not Facebook, to be the source of truth. That drove several decisions: a Watch Live card that lands on a page of the site instead of YouTube, public notices in place of a news feed nobody would keep fresh, and no mayor's message, because mayors turn over every two years.

The approach

Mile Marker 6762

I explored three divergent art directions and chose national-park-poster Americana built only from what Williams has: the last bypassed stretch of Route 66 and a pine forest at 6,762 feet. Then I cut the decoration back over several review rounds, removing shields, dashed centerlines, and sawtooth ridgelines, until the photography and the copy carried the idea.

TypeBesley, a Clarendon-style display serif, with Archivo for body text, deliberately rotated away from the pairings recent projects had used.
HeroA tall hero built to take the city's background video, a welcome panel with its own search, and five quick-link cards overlapping the bottom edge.
Both pathsSome residents rely on dropdown menus and some never touch them, so the site keeps both: full dropdowns and quick-link cards for the same tasks.
Events firstA month calendar with category filters sits right under the quick links, because the old community calendar was the city's pain point. Event titles stay out of the grid cells so the grid keeps its shape.
Accessible goldThe brand's Aspen Gold fails on white, so it carries the motif only. A darker gold ink handles any gold text, and buttons map to the primary blue, which keeps every one of the 56 button variants accessible.

Palette · contrast measured against white

  • Alpine Lake#256B875.95:1 on white · AAPrimary
  • Ponderosa Pine#28513F8.98:1 on white · AAASecondary
  • Mountain Slate#25323913.17:1 on white · AAA
  • Aspen Gold#D8A63F2.22:1 on white · accentMotif only
  • Gold Ink#7C5E166.05:1 on white · AAGold as text
  • Alpine Mist#F3F6F2Surface

The rest of the approved set · desktop, 1440px

Interior page1440 × 2558
Interior page design
Department template1440 × 2700
Department template design
Interactions and menus1440 × 4314
Interactions and menus design

Outcome

Fewer motifs, more Williams

The direction went through a series of internal review rounds that each took something away, then went to the city and was approved after a single revision round. It was built natively on the company design system, so every component it added is reusable.

56
button variants kept accessible by one token decision: buttons use the primary blue, and the gold stays decorative.

The system behind them

Revize Design System↗