Built a website for a historic rowing association with AI and human art direction
Responsibilities:
- Art Direction
- AI-Assisted Development
- Stakeholder Management
- Information Architecture
- Navigation Design
- Content Strategy
Outcomes:
A new public site for the Bay Area Whaleboat Rowing Association, built around its stakeholders' needs and its maritime heritage.
Case study
Racing with history#
Whaleboat racing took its current form in the Bay Area in 1965, sponsored by maritime companies and rowed in U.S. Coast Guard Monomoys, one-ton lifeboats built for rescue work. The Bay Area Whaleboat Rowing Association (BAWRA) was formed in 1982 to set safety standards and coordinate the regattas. Today it brings together men's, women's, mixed, and masters teams from Oakland, San Francisco, and Vallejo, along with the officials and volunteers who make race day happen.
As a board member and the association's volunteer developer, I built its public website.
A site built for its stakeholders#
I built bawra.org by pairing AI-assisted development with my own art direction. The goal was a site that meets the needs of everyone with a stake in the association — rowers, coxswains, race officials, member clubs, and spectators on the shore — while honoring an organization rooted in the Bay's maritime history. Even the section labels speak the language of the sport, from "Big Oars, Big Water" to "To the Catch."
I gathered those needs through discussions with the board and with the community at races. I engaged the association's diversity chair to make sure its diversity statement was correct, worked with club representatives to update the marina and club information, and made sure the site met the association's requirements as a nonprofit.
The art direction draws on the Bay's working waterfront. I based the typography on the lettering of APL's container ships, using Archivo because Univers was too expensive to license, and paired it with colors drawn from shipping containers and strong industrial lines and grids.
I organized the navigation around what visitors are trying to do, with a clear visual hierarchy:
- Top-level sections for About, Schedule, Events, Race Results, and Resources, each with direct links to its key subsections, like the season schedules, the marinas, and resources for race officials and coxswains.
- The race waiver is one tap away on every page, with a QR code rowers can scan at the dock.
- Every active race is documented in the same structure — organizer, course, best viewing, and awards — so spectators and crews can plan without digging.
- A marina guide with maps, directions, parking, and facilities for each venue around the bay.
Beyond the public site#
I also built the BAWRA Racing System, the association's regatta scoring and operations platform. You can read about it in its own case study.
You can visit the site at bawra.org.