College website redesign

Project overview:

The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at the University of Illinois needed an update to their existing web presence. The old site’s design did not align with the campus or college brand and the current CMS was clunky and did not allow editors to easily add and update content.

The goal for this project was to design a theme that will incorporate more campus branding elements yet allow the college to stand out as their own entity both among peers within the university and other Liberal Arts colleges.

My role as lead designer/developer was to design and implement a CMS theme for Drupal and system of components that could be used by content editors to create web content and page layouts. I collaborated with the college’s lead print designer to incorporate elements of the college brand into the web theme.

Project duration: 2018-2019

User research

My role as lead designer/developer was to design and implement a CMS theme and system of components that could be used by content editors to create web content and page layouts. I collaborated with the college’s lead print designer to incorporate elements of the college brand into the web theme.

Pain point: Outdated design

The current website was over 5 years old and did not reflect the current branding used by the college. It also did not match the look of other recently updated unit sites.

Pain point: Editor experience

The current website was not using any standard CMS and was clunky to update. We needed to move it to a standard framework that could be easily updated and maintained.

Pain point: Navigation and messaging

Messaging and information hierarchy was currently not set up to center around student recruitment.

Pain point: Accessibility

Using updated accessibility standards, we needed to create a design that was usable and accessible.

Design iterations

The first iteration put focus on the header and menu structure. I worked closely with the marketing department to create categories that would focus on student recruitment and make it easy for students, parents, and faculty to find information.

The second iteration was more magazine-like. I kept the audience-focused navigation, but worked closely with print designers to incorporate some of the branding elements that were consistent with printed materials.

I further experimented with different header styles and color combinations.