The original look was pretty average as far as community newspapers go, but the publisher had just inherited ownership of the paper and wanted to give it a real "presence."

The TJP Guide to Jewish Living was the large annual project — it was a 72 page directory of listings of Jewish businesses and organizations. The Guide was also well-used by readers but again, the publisher was looking for a completely new look.  

The old web site was run and maintained by a service that specialized in newspaper web sites, but it wasn't terribly functional — online advertising was hard — we didn't have a lot of control over the look, and it looked dated. The email section still had an animated mailbox .gif, and the in-house Click and Subscribe ads also needed an update.