Focus on Design
Focusing on design is, in many cases, a great way to show off a design school. If you are trying to attract people to come to learn about design from you then it’s essential that you have an amazing design for your website. Have a rubbish website and your visitors will think that you know nothing about design. A great example of a super-stylish design school website is the Instituto Marangoni. The Italian based design institute successfully demonstrates just how stylish it is. The Flash website with a good amount of white space around the video gives it an up-market and design oriented feel. There is a slick Flash Intro with carefully selected fashion photographs. Despite the clear focus on design there is still all of the information that a visitor would need – everything from placements, information about courses and employment opportunities is easily accessible on the website.
Focus on Content
If your website is less specialized than the Instituto Marangoni you may have quite a lot of content to include on your website. Websites that are content heavy do not have to be difficult or boring. The WK School of Interior Design and Decoration skillfully includes all of its content while still having a well designed website. Instead of Flash the website uses HTML web page design and has all of its information clearly demarcated into discrete sections. A great feature is that on the landing page the courses that are starting soon are featured, helping the design school to fill any spaces that is has got free for the coming term. The WK School also features its social media – Twitter and Facebook – so that students, potential students and staff can keep up to date with what’s going on at the school.
Focus on Academia
If you are an accredited college or University then you’ll need to convey this on your website. University websites tend to have to get across a lot of information while maintaining an academic feel. A Design School website has the additional challenge of presenting itself as an institution committed to design. The Rhode Island School of Design website does this well. It blends together an academic feel with a website that feels like a digital portfolio. The web page background images provide a backdrop that shows off some of the best of the design that has come out of the school. Overlaid on this is the content which is suitably placed so as not to completely occlude the images. There are clear sections geared towards Academics, Students, Prospective Students, Parents, Alumni, Continuing Education and a section for their museum. This way of breaking things up is a great technique for any school websites that need to have different sections for different audiences. There is also a focus on social media and news, which helps to keep the content dynamic and fresh.
