Interim Home Page

Looks fantastic!

Yes. Yes. Yes.

The impact of your design changes is immediate and leaves me happy. Readability is up, and the space dedicated to the header image is perfect. I am looking forward to seeing how the new images will fill that space. Thank you for getting rid of the tiled header image. It was so static and dated.

The new map to replace the old links integrates well and looks sharp. I also really enjoy having obvious RSS feeds on the page.

Great interim website!

Matthew

Hey, just took a look at the new front page, looks pretty great. Very sharp and clean. Great job, all of you!

The only thing - in the upper right corner the links are hard to see. I was confused by the dot up there, until I realized there was a west coast map up there and the dot was Portland.

Best, Tanya

Fantastic resource!! I am definitely grateful that there is a channel of communication open for LC users to comment on the web redesign. I love the beta version–so much cleaner!! Cheers.

I’d like to suggest:

1) that archived stories that aren’t time-dependent be recycled as part of a move to provide fresh material through frequent turn-over of what’s on the LC homepage(s). The current page of change is glacial.

2) that the story on LC vineyard connections, which I rediscovered recently by poking around the archives, be one of those. Wonderful piece, and should be intriguing to visitors.

I’d add to this, as part of an earlier conversation about better highlighting the 4 annual symposia at CAS, that we could run overviews on each of them that include highlights on previous high-profile speakers, art shows and performance events. (Could this be done in a slide show format that opens in a new window with a clickable series of 8 or 10
photos?)

The subtle design changes are very nice and improve readability on the site; thanks!

I’d also like to suggest a move away from the visually redundant column of identically formatted head shots + text, mixing up the layout and adding some landscape or people-in-context shots to the individual portraits.

Thanks again for soliciting input about content and the design process.

Best wishes for the new year,

– Deborah

The redesigned web site is gorgeous–surprising in its greater impact visual impact. I confess that I was a doubter: I’ve always thought that our web site compared well with many competitors–with good writing, and strong content. But clearly others knew better than I how to provide greater wallop! Thanks to everyone over there for the good work,
Jane

As we end the year I just wanted to send cudos to all of you for the great new web look for L&C! Thanks!

DGE

I like the new home page!

The new format and look of the L&C webpage is gorgeous. I was really ready for some new photos. Some were ancient or some professors never age! I wonder though if the two coeds on the new web cover are models. I hope not. Anyway, nice job, long overdue.
Loretta

Re: Tanya’s Comment on 18 December, 2007 at 5:05 pm —

Tanya — thanks for the compliments. With the map, it was intended to “just” stand out if you really look at it, mostly because I did not want it to emphasize the vertical line of the right-hand side of the page above the main box. (It felt limiting when I had it darker and increasing openness was a major goal here.) I might yet darken it a slight bit more, but I want to sit with it for a while to see what other comments come in.

Oh my goodness, this looks fantastic! I was so surprised when I opened my browser window this morning. The new homepage is much more readable & immediately engaging. Way to go.

A CAS faculty member brought up some concerns regarding the selection and use of photos (for the large horizontal header) in the new home pages. What follows is a summary of those questions and my responses.

1) It seems to me that for CAS, there are few faculty pictured, relative to the other
two schools. Further, the ONLY CAS faculty depicted are from MNS. Why no one from social sciences or humanities?

In answer to your question, the format of the photo is a ratio of roughly 6 to 1 — very horizontal — so we were limited in the photos we could select from our photo database. While photos did have to meet additional criteria, no element of choice between faculty member or their disciplines played a role. I simply grabbed as many as I could find — showing faculty/student interaction photos was one of my primary goals to humanize the home pages.

It may just be that we don’t have a lot of extreme horizontals of non-MNS faculty members — I am too new to know which. In any case, we haven’t yet traversed our entire stock, and will be adding more photos in the future, and I hope to get extreme horizontals as a standard part of future photo shoots to help us.

2) I was just talking to someone about the ‘bait and switch’ character of our current catalog, which suggests to prospies that 1 in every 3 students at LC is African-American (just one of the three depicted LC students is identifiably ‘white,’ and I’m told
she in fact is Egyptian). Aren’t we doing much the same thing on this home page? Do the pictures really reflect the actual demographics? I’m all for ‘aspirational’ representations — but only up to a point. We end up with some seriously disappointed students, who find the campus reality NOT to resemble the representations.

Since we as an institution are seeking a greater degree of diversity, I do aspire to show our actual diversity plus some margin of that (so say 100-150% of current). And I do seek not to do this in every individual photo, but across the entire series. Otherwise, trying to satisfy every measure of diversity we follow in an environment where,
as you note above, perceptions do not often divide people by percentage (they either are considered a underrepresented minority or not), would leave us too few photos to from which to select, and those photos would invariably look “staged”, which is even worse in my mind, since it is then insincere as well. Image selection in regards to diversity is always a difficult balance, and I always feel we can do better, so we’ll keep re-balancing as we go.

I thought I’d pass along this interesting bit of info, since I’m reminded of it each morning when I first check my email: We are receiving /much/ more email communication from visitors to the website since the interim home page launched. I have (or, more precisely, the public account has) received around 10 requests for information and assistance since the new site launched. Before that, I’d only see one every few weeks. I think it’s a testament to the readability and navigability of the fresh, new home page.

Cool stuff!
Emily

The front page is classy and I am jealous! Our page looks so year 2000 now and I can’t wait to update it. Congrats and good luck with the redesign process.

One more thing, I agree with Deborah. Some shots of just the campus grounds and/or buildings would be nice. But again, a wonderful interim site!

I think everything about the new design looks good. I just wanted to note that the elimination of “College” in the title of the new page is a bit strange.

Is this Lewis & Clark State College; is it Lewis & Clark Trail Heritage Foundation; is it Lewis & Clark Expedition…? I hope you get my point. When people see the term Lewis & Clark, it is unlikely that their first thought will be Lewis & Clark College.

Just a thought.

I visited the L&C website for the first time in a while and was immediately struck by the more relaxed, roomy, layout. I realize this probably isn’t the final set of changes for the redesign, but as an interim step it’s a great improvement. Good work!

Alan Humphrey ‘81
President
Board of Alumni

Just a quick note to thank you for all the changes to the home page. Also, I was personally pleased with the placement of the Poetry Symposium announcement, and the event was a huge success.

thanks again,

Rishona