Endless Hours of Typographic Fun

Ok, so I'm back to post on another site I found that made me smile.

FontPark unites the nerdy type-lover in all designers with our recent western fascination in all things asian, and our inherent desire to create and play.

Enter the site to see rapid combinations of chinese characters morph into typographic illustrations. Stare in awe, vote for your favorite, or try your own hand at it. All I can say is: fabulous.

Study Abroad

In spring the VP for Academic Affairs at SPU contacted the web team at SPU and asked for us to create a dynamite website for the study abroad programs at the university. They were in the process of bringing together all of the programs under one coordinator and wanted to consolidate all the information into one place.

The Mazz Squad had the privilege of getting to research and present our ideas for the site and they went over very well. A couple weeks ago I really started to dive in and crank on the site. My student workers jammed and our Hope and Allie from our copy edit team did a wonderful job. The site was finished on Thursday, after almost 90 hours of design, in time for the accreditation team to view it. So far it is getting really good reviews from faculty staff, and most importantly students.

The site has some cool features I am proud of including integration of Flickr Flash photo albums andPictobrowser photo feature, Google Maps API, clean CSS (thanks to Jason Herman's help), strong navigation, clear hierarchy, and beautiful photography.

View the site: www.spu.edu/studyabroad

Happy Anniversary Ciara!

Happy 1 year Ciara! 

Yes, that is right, Ciara has been with us for one year! She has come so far and is a valuable asset to the UC Web Team. 

Be sure to thank her for all her work!

Defining the Designer of 2015

Starting the school year again and meeting with this year's spuAIGA board reminded me of what a sweet resource AIGA is (how could I forget?).

So, I've been browsing their site today, and came across this set of articles. I want to look at it more closely, but it looks like it might be helpful in both directing student designers in what skills they should be developing, as well as directing student groups and professors in fostering that kind of learning.

Defining the Designer of 2015

University Ministries

In Autumn 2007 I redesigned the University Ministries Website to coincide with the transition of Campus Ministries transitioning to University Ministries.

It was a fast process, I had to turn it around in less than two weeks and the end result was pretty cool as I got to incorporate some great design elements from my colleges in the UC print department.

This Autumn 2008 I got the opportunity again to  make some fun updates to the site. Since last year I set up a stronger style sheet, I was able to roll out some major changes in just a couple days. This newest version incorporates some wild design elements I adapted from Brian Glassco's print work for them.

I stuck to my design rules I set up[ for the web, but I also had some fun by changing out the background with a a small repeating star pattern  gif and I also edited a local version of the global style sheet so that all the reds became hot pink, reflecting the new print direction.

http://www.spu.edu/um

Flickr action!

Flickr: SPU General

Flickr: perkins.center

Flickr: seattlepacificalumni

Flickr: SPU Global Education

Flickr: SPU University Ministries

Flickr: Multi-Ethnic Programs

Inspiration

Check out the photo work from Kim and her fantastic blog: Seattle Daily Photo.

You can also check out her photostream on Flickr.

Sea Pac Pass Email

Recently the university has acquired a new campus card strategy and the UC Web Team created a website and email campaign.

View sample email for returning students.

Parent e-newsletter

We just launched the Autumn 2008 issue of Parents and Families In the Loop. This issue is special because we are debuting some great new efforts by the university to be more sustainable.

View the e-newsletter.

40 Creative Design Layouts: Getting Out Of The Box

Great new article by smashing magazine.

"Over the last months we have seen a strong trend towards more individual web designs. These designs often use realistic motifs from our regular life as visuals. However, apart from visual design elements one can also get creative with the layout of the site – its structure and the way the information is presented and communicated. To provide you with some ideas of how exactly it can be done, we have been collecting examples of creative design layouts."

Check it out.

SHS Dean's Giving Circle

We launched the School of Health Sciences Dean's Giving Circle!

www.spu.edu/shsgiving

Campus Card Services

We launched the first Campus Cards Services site:

www.spu.edu/campuscards

Seattle-Tehran Poster Show

So, apparently there was this really sweet poster show at Bumpershoot.

But, it'll be shown again elsewhere on Sept. 4th.

I checked out the website and it looks amazing-- it's a show displaying posters from Seattle and Tehran (Iran) side by side.
What a really sweet idea.

But, don't take my word for it. Check out the website yourself.
Seattle-Tehran Poster Show


I had no idea there was such cool design coming out of the Middle East.

Bookstore Email

Rolled out the bookstore email

No Golds for CASE 2008

View the awards

Creating a bible by hand

I recently read this story about a group of theologians and artists creating a bible by hand, the first time in 500 years!

eduStyle Award Winners

The Winners were announced at the eduWEB Conference July 21-23 in Atlantic City, NJ. Best Overall Web Site goes to Ball State University.

Best Redesign site goes to Biola University.  Best typography goes to UC Berkeley - Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Welcome to our friends at INKgroup

Special web welcome to our print friends in University Communications, Inkgroup.

Check out their blog

The John Perkins Center has a Facebook page

http://www.facebook.com/

Robert Noyce Scholarship

Our task was to create a first time website for the Robert Noyce Scholarship that appeals to potential scholarship applicants and current scholars at the graduate and undergraduate level. This site will be used by community college counselors and professors, SPU counselors and professors, and students looking for financial aid.

The Robert Noyce Scholarship program, named for the co-inventor of the semiconductor and co-founder of Intel, is a partnership grant from the National Science Foundation for science, engineering, technology, and mathematics (STEM) majors.

The program aims to meet the growing local and national need for better-qualified teaching professionals in the STEM fields. The program also seeks to channel these teachers into local districts with high-need students.

www.spu.edu/noycescholarship

Inspiration: 8 Bit Music

Feeling like you work with pixels too much? Be inspired by what you can do with simple 8 bit music like what we grew up with on Nintendo game soundtracks. Check out all the new music coming out:

www.8bitpeoples.com/discography

Student Academic Services

Well we did it! 43 hours of design work later, we finally launched a new SAS website. This is the first time the site has been enhanced since it launched last decade, or at least that is my impression. New features include a very enhanced FAQ called "Get Answers" which breaks down the hundreds of questions prospective students and current students have into simple categories and then has a very clean and custom Spry Ajax effect of an accordion answers.

View it now: www.spu.edu/sas/

School of Theology

We just launched a new School of Theology website! 57 design production hours later we are live with a whole new site.

The dean of the School of Theology, had the following to say:

“This is a great site, and I want to thank you for the excellent way in which you listened to our needs and executed it in a timely fashion -- given all of the other tasks that you have before you! Please give our deep appreciation to your entire staff. It is a blessing to have such tremendous folks to work with.”

Undergrad Update

We have enhanced the website with content from etc magazine. We have added the My 2 Cents column from each issue and linked it to a corresponding counselor biography page as well as plugged it on the front page and staff page.

We have moved!

Well we moved! That is right, we are located in Upper Weter now.

We are very happy with our new space. We can now work together without all three of our chairs colliding, but we miss our friends in Lower Weter. Come stop by and say "hello". 

My World is live!

Check out the awesome gallery of stories and photos. Thanks to Julia and Melissa for all the hard work.
www.spu.edu/myworld

Noyce Scholarship Wireframe

Ciara created a nice wireframe for the Noyce Scholarship. It can be found on the Pre Production server only available at this time on campus.

View wireframe PDF

Political Science and Geography Site is Live

We bailed the Political Science and Geography department out of a very old and static site into a template that is flexible, easily editable and up to web standards. Say goodbye to Io (moon).

Credit goes to Melissa for most of the work and the great image at the top of the template.

http://www.spu.edu/depts/polisci/

Updates Updates - UM

We now have the Spring 37five awardees up!

SPIRL Summer update

New colors for the SPIRL site.

http://www.spu.edu/depts/soe/spiral/

Web Redesign Project Blog

Web Redesign Project Blog is now live, but no real content in it.

Also the frame for the redesign site is in place on pre production server, viewable from on-campus only.

Busy Summer indeed

The Mazz Squad has been working hard at meeting fast deadlines left and right, trying to keep up with the heap of projects. The student workers are taking off end of week for a summer break. Melissa will be gone for most of June and Ciara is gone next week so we are trying to roll out what we can now before this week ends.

Most are currently working on a cool feature for etc magazine and a section called My World. We are going to be creating a My World gallery that shows the photos and the short stories that are featured on the inside covers of the mag. From here on out the etc magazine editor Julia will be extending the stories online and they will be directed from the magazine telling them they can view more.

For the most recent My World my idea was to find out what an average game day is like for and SPU Orange Man and add a photo gallery from the shoot.

View a My World page and photo gallery

School of Theology

Most recently we presented wireframes of the new website for School of Theology. The site needs to be able to market to potential grad students for the new Master's programs as well as inform incoming freshmen and current students. The site also needs to be able to serve the school in promoting the new CBTE, Center for Biblical and Theological Education, which will one day have it's own comprehensive site.

View the School of Theology Wireframe (PDF)

Parent e-newsletter

We are getting faster and faster and rolling out the email newsletters.

This last one Ciara and I rolled out in about 3 hours, not counting testing and all the work Reece put into writing it.

http://www.spu.edu/depts/parents/email/20080530.html

Orientation/Welcome Week

We just recently launched the Orientation/Welcome Week website including an awesome teaser video created by the amazing David Rither in ITS. 

Another one hits the dust...

Multi-Ethnic Programs site is up and running.

Perkins Center Blog is up!

Tali from the Perkins Center sent an email on Friday morning asking for a blog so he can communicate with his contacts all over the world. In a matter of hours I customized a blog and connected it to the server so we can host it.

I had an issue with the comments not working correctly but I had to catch a flight on Friday night, so as much as I hated to do it, I had to finish the project when I got back.

With some tweaking today I was able to get it all up and functioning.

View it here: www.spu.edu/depts/perkins/blog/

New Things...

We completed the New nav for reslife. Previously the old site's nav was not working on a Mac. We replaced the legacy javascript with really clean css and simple include files.

(now Safari users can see it...)

Spring enewsletter for alumni is now live!

"Seattle Preview" invitation

We heart eventbrite! Here is the admissions event that we customized using this invitation site. The design reflects the print campaign postcard...

Study Abroad site design PDF

Well the Study Abroad site design PDF is viewable now.
I have added in colors and photos and Hope has had me update the text.

View the Design PDF

View the Wireframe PDF

Sites Worth a Look

http://www.statsaholic.com/
Compare site traffic of up to 3 sites.

http://www.quantcast.com/top-sites-1
Stats on site traffic, audience, affiliations, competition, etc.

SPFC OrgPsych videos are up!

Well we are finally live with posted videos for OrgPsych.
They are all now on YouTube as well.

http://www.spu.edu/depts/spfc/orgpsych/videos/index.asp

Creating A Successful Online Portfolio

Sam emailed us a great link to helpful tips on creating an online portfolio.

New Flickr account for MEP

Check out the new Flicker account we made for the Multi-Ethnic Programs page

BittBox

http://www.bittbox.com/

This site seems to keep up with the trends.

New Office Set up

We will be moving in May or June upstairs into our own space.

It will be really nice to spread out a bit. Right now we have three people in a cube.

Upper Weter represent!

Office of Academic Affairs is live!

47 hours of work and a lot of clean up of old, old code, we are now live with the new Office of Academic Affairs site. Credit really goes to Ciara for all the work of converting the site over and designing the site from the wireframe to launch.

View the old and new screenshots

http://www.spu.edu/depts/oaa/index.asp

edustyle nominations

Here are the top nominated college websites:

http://www.edustyle.net/awards/ballot.php

Orientation/NSA Email

Ciara cranked out a nice email template for  Orientation/NSA.

Busy Summer ahead

We have some great projects in place for this summer like redoing the campus map, brand new UC Communications site, more content development for etc and Response as well as big site launches for School of Theology, Study Abroad, Multi-Ethnic Programs and more.

Jamming!

We are so busy!

We just updated some major stuff since the last post. Here is a sampling:

• etc Spring 2008 is live!
• Orientation/Welcome Week 2008 is live!
• Multi-Ethnic Programs has a new landing page
• Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts event has a landing page
• Office of Academic Affairs in just moments from going live
• SPIRL Summer Institute now has an updated front page
• Admissions has all 3 Admitted students emails finished
• John Perkins Center has a new email template
• Fine and Performing Arts Scholarship page and application form
  

We are working on

• wireframe for the new Study Abroad site
• new School of Theology site
• new site for Political Science and Geography
• new Student Academic Services site
  

Much more to come. Stay tuned...

Pixel Awards

I was browsing through the Pixel Awards

pretty sweet.

Here's some I liked:

henrik bulow

-- does a good job of really highlighting what it needs to (the photography), and does a great job of maintaining a minimalist design even with the use of flash.

loop select

-- like the graphic look. Unfortunate that they had to stick the sponser logos in there, but I guess form follows function.

And, then, here's the Green Winner for Bryan:
ecommunity

37five awardees

New listing of 37five awardees. Created by Ciara and KT Barnes.
This is an impressive list that shows all the organizations SPU has given money to through 37five!

www.spu.edu/depts/um/37five/awardees.asp

Spring 2008 Response Online

We are live with the newest online version of Response Online. This time we had great help from both student designers Ciara and Melissa. Melissa was able to jump right on her first day and tackling all 135 images for the site.

We added in several photo slideshows as well as at least 8 online exclusive stories, edited by our online editor Hope.

Total recorded hours from the Mazz Squad total around 57 hours!

Check out the cool cover featuring Professor Laura Lasworth's paintings

View Spring 2008 Response Online