Interim Home Page Design Notes

• 18 December 2007
• David McKelvey

http://lclark.edu/index.php

Overall

1. The design is table-less, and flex-width (between 760 - 960 pixels), which allows greater flexibility of design. See my blog post regarding the importance of this.
2. The font size for all content is larger, and the leading increased to facilitate both readability and a more open feel to the design. And, if you have them, the page will display in the proper fonts Goudy Old Style and Helvetica Neue and degrade to secondary fonts if not.

Header

1. The “Lewis & Clark” wordmark is now much stronger than before, as it should be. For school home pages, the wordmark would include the school’s name along with “Lewis & Clark,” per the standard usage.
2. Several of the redundant links in the upper-right have been removed to accommodate the “Portland, Oregon” elements and make it more consistent with the Trillium templates. The maps link is now much bigger for easy use.
3. While I would have liked to move the webmail link from that area, since it is slightly incongruent, it is also the most used link on the page, and I did not want to upset standard usage until the redesign.
4. The photo at the top is much larger and more intimate, and would be randomly selected from a series. I did consider an image rotation routine, but as the home pages are often pass-thru pages, I doubt many people would see the rotation for the trouble. The focus has been pushed to include more people photos to engage the site visitor more personally. Additionally, school home pages would show only photos from that school.

Navigation

1. The navigation is almost identical, save the application of consistent link mouseover styles.

Left Column: Spotlight Features

1. The spotlights now take up just over half of the available area, giving the space both a better emphasis as to what’s more important, but also a more dynamic design. It is led with the title “Featured” to emphasize that it is not changed every day.
2. There is now a “suggestion box” for spotlights woven into the “More, More, More” segment at the bottom of the section. It sends emailed suggestions to New Media.

Right Column: Today’s Information

1. The right column now focuses your attention to the “daily” quality of it, specifically with the date appearing beneath the “On Campus” column/segment title.
2. “On Campus” is a new content element intended to highlight prominent news and events items with a focus on the campus. It can hold up to three elements with one always shown and two available via the “see more” button. When a low-level emergency is occurring (e.g. weather closure), this section will be replaced with the appropriate notice. (Serious emergencies cause replacement of the entire page.) This content is fed to the home page via RSS.
3. The news feed is direct from the new newsroom also via RSS. Additionally, when a podcast/mp3 file is available with the article, you can click and play it right from the home page. There is also a permanent news podcast link at the end of the “Headlines” section. Please be aware that the newsroom is in flux as we move towards it’s simultaneous launch with the home pages.
4. The calendar has been simplified and is now RSS. (Which prepares us to begin using EMS Master Calendar late next semester.)
5. The shield placement complies with the upcoming style guide and historic usage.

Footer

1. The footer is expressly simple, with only a minimum of links.

Filed Under

• Information Design
• Redesign
• Trillium