Responses by Oskar Radon, web developer/designer, Matthew Bowers, lead creative and Lisa Radon, communications manager, Pacific Northwest College of Art

Background: Collaborating with Owen Jones, the new website for the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) inspires prospective students (and their parents) by telling the stories, the experiences and the work produced in the many fine art and design programs at PNCA. Throughout the process, we kept coming back to the touchstone of wanting users to be able to see themselves at PNCA.

Highlights: The site leverages our 2017 brand platform and logotype refresh; it’s bold and vibrant, a position that is both ambitious and approachable. The site also takes advantage of great photography to showcase student work, student life and our facilities. And we’ve added new content to highlight alumni outcomes and in-program opportunities.

Challenges: While the audience is primarily young adults and their parents, the site needed to work well for more senior audiences, including our donors and those who attend our many public events.

Favorite details: The integrated blogs for our eleven undergraduate and six graduate programs, allowing each to more fully tell their stories and also building out the possibility for the integration of video into the site.

Navigational structure: The dropdown navigation delivers a lot of information quickly and lets the user find out information within a click or two. We developed an “Info for…” overlay that helps users quickly find what they are looking for.

Technological features: The site is built on Craft with custom HTML, CSS, Javascript and the Twig template engine for PHP. Craft has baked-in functionality (including its completely customizable page builder) to support modular ways of building and modifying a site and deep customization. Craft also has a simple interface for the many users across the institution that will be blogging through the CMS.