Themes:

Art Center is world renown for its design excellence, shaping students to become professionals and leaders in the future. With this in mind, the theme will focus on leadership, strategy, creativity and practice.

Attitude:

The design approach will be professional, intense, polished and experimental.

Concept:

We will convey the themes of leadership, startegy, creativity and practice in the field by looking at what makes them possible: the place, the people, and the work.

Competitive Positioning:

http://www.risd.edu
http://www.interaction-ivrea.com
http://www.cranbrookart.edu/2d/site/main.html
http://calarts.edu/
http://www.schoolofvisualarts.edu/

Research:

http://www.interaction-ivrea.com:

The Interaction Design Institute Ivrea site has a very well categorized site. We found the site easy to navigate and quickly find information within two clicks. They present relevant information when necessary, and also nicely highlight the work of the students, alumni and faculty. They also make it easy to read about the people who make up the institution, which we think captures the heart of the institute.

http://www.cranbrookart.edu/2d/site/main.html

The 2D Design site at Cranbrook has an very individualistic approach to their site. Their site is a completely different site than the cranbrook site. The 2D design site highlights the students, and this is great way to get insight into the type of work and opinions held by those attending the institution. This influenced our decision to feature student profiles alongside each program.

http://www.risd.edu

The interior pages of RISD’s site are fairly easy to navigation. All of the navigation remains above the fold. This influenced our navigation-design, as ease of use was one of our primary goals in redesigning the Art Center site.

http://www.marines.com

This site combines flash and html well, using each one for its strengths. This site is engaging, and provides an easy to use overview, as well as additional links and information about the marines. We used this site as inspiration as a way on conveying a great deal of information, in an way that is easy to use and understand.

http://www.fork.de/00_Home.phtml

Fork design also combines flash and HTML for their site in an effective way. We studied their approach to templates and information design as a possible inspiration for the way we approached the Art Center site design.

http://www.macromedia.com

We spent time navigation Macromedia’s site to see how they organize their large amount of content. Again we found a successful combination of using flash and HTML to manage and convey their information. They also have a very strong design template system that enables them to highlight main and related information effectively.