The redesigns are coming hot and heavy this morning as Andrea of Interllectual announces the new Humboldt website. Forefront to me in this refreshing design is the font treatment. Lucida makes a classy-yet-understated change to the sparer Verdana or Arial usually found in higher ed designs. The logo type, alphabet spread across the top for the a-z index, call-to-action links (“explore, inquire, visit, apply”), topical links, and light “Go Humboldt” make for more interesting elements immediately present to the eye. The color scheme, like the font choices, is somewhat modest but retains the overall refreshing feel. The off-white and khaki tones remind me forcefully of A List Apart (which is a nice thing for a design to remind you of). Further details include the translucent quick links drop-down (in Firefox), and excellent photography features that rotate on reload.

Secondary pages off of the main site are disappointingly inconsistent, though strong on their own accord (I happened to click “Admission,” “Explore,” and one of the letters of the index first.) Second tier pages are strongest where they have obviously been refreshed to echo the new design. The sparseness and typographical focus is carried through very nicely.

My main critique to the new design is in relation to the navigation. As with many college and university websites, there just seems to be too much of it. The homepage offers six distinct different navigational schemes (topical, audience, call-to-action, quick links, search, and a-z index). If you assume that someone is coming to the site to answer a question or complete a task, then they may find so many doorways bewildering and more of a hindrance than a help. Only focus groups or time will tell, and I’d love to know what the results are like. Also navigation related, the second tier pages carry through the multiplicity of schemes with both topical and audience based menus combined with a contextual menu. These are displayed on parallel columns that sometimes shift depending on the page’s other content. While I was able to understand them immediately, I wonder if they will feel a little confusing to some visitors. A last caveat: the rotating content on the homepage happens on reload. I have written in detail about the danger of this in the past.

On the whole, the new Humboldt site raises the bar for the rest of us in terms of visual appeal. There are very few other college and university sites that look so good—it’s like mint for my eyes.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006 at 11:13 am and is filed under Design, Higher Education. It has been viewed 1173 times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

From ‘A Softer World’

There is an argument made against privacy that says someone who isn’t engaged in criminal behavior has nothing to hide. This method of thinking allowed the US government to slowly sap away our civil liberties in the wake of the 9/11 attacks–many have just accepted that trading privacy for security is acceptable and used the “nothing to hide” argument to rationalize what was, essentially, a decision based on fear. However, limiting the government’s ability to intrude in our private lives is easy compared with attempting to control how personal information spreads on the internet via gossip. Rather than spies or wiretaps, gossip is often gathered by those we trust and spread online by people who don’t understand or appreciate the potential for the damage it can do. In reality, privacy is about much more than concealing wrongdoing.

Internet-based abuse (‘cyberbullying’) and privacy / relationship issues are still massively misunderstood. The complexities of online sociality are probably the biggest ‘generational divide’ between modern teens and adults. To help put it in perspective a bit, here are some numbers…

I HAVE A MYSPACE ACCOUNT!!1!