UNL College of Architecture
Our mission is to develop design professionals who will effect cultural, societal, and environmental change.
The Brand
The University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s prestigious College of Architecture brings together an array of disciplines to address real problems and difficult challenges with innovative and collaborative action. Located near one of the best downtowns in the country and now part of the Big 10, the College is looking to up its presence and vision for how creative, community-focused engagement can add value and give form to all aspects of the designed environment.
Working with Jeff Day, Director of the Architecture Program, and the rest of the faculty, we’ve designed a brand foundation that is both bold and consistent. The visual system includes contemporary typography, limited color palette, and a layered layout approach to highlight student work and reinforce visual concepts.
The collection of print work has included brochures, posters, and direct mail designed to showcase specific programs, events, and other opportunities offered by the College.
The Website
The new website for the University of Nebraska–Lincoln launched in August of 2014. The modern, fully responsive site redesign was led by the University Communications internal team. The site for the College of Architecture was designed and developed within its framework with opportunities taken to showcase the new brand.
The new University site was rolled out with a universal site architecture on the Drupal platform. The early planning phases of the College website were led by youth marketing agency Archival. As prominent alumni in the Lincoln community, the co-founders regularly offer their expertise to help move the College’s brand strategy forward.
A selected team of faculty and admin from the College established the overall direction and crafted the content. The goal for the site was to clearly tell the story of what the College offers its students with degree programs, special initiatives, and unique culture created by its award-winning faculty and hardworking students.
The site was designed to be very clean and open with a consistent type hierarchy, simple content blocks, and clear calls-to-action. And photography played a huge role. Energetic shots from student life set a very collaborative, hands-on tone. We see students from a variety of programs making things with direct attention from the faculty. The site goes fairly deep with several areas having sets of secondary and tertiary pages. The pages were designed around the content and we ended up with a set of templates that consistently present a story to the visitor and are flexible enough for future additions, from visual landing pages to internal pages with lots of text.
Christopher Kollars was brought in to customize the code and implement the site design. Working from design to development, we paid special attention to user flows making sure clear actions were always presented or related content was easy to find. A custom feature built for the College site was the portfolio section designed to showcase high-quality student work. It let’s prospective students see what kind of projects are being created at the College and helps current students start building their portfolio and get them thinking about sharing their work digitally.
This is an extremely exciting time for the College and we’re looking forward to continue building a brand to accompany the progressive vision.
Collaborators
Justin Kemerling: Branding + Design
Christopher Kollars: Website Development
Archrival: Website Strategy + Wireframes
University Communications: Website Architecture + Drupal Development
2013–2015: Brand, Print, Web
More Print:
