The College of Saint Rose
Beauty with Expression
The College of Saint Rose has a depth and breadth of academic offerings more akin to a university and defies conventional liberal arts offerings with strong science, business and creative programs. Yet their online presence was built on an outdated CMS, it was challenging to navigate and did little to reflect their character. The recently launched Saint Rose website is the gorgeous new face of the college, expressing its passionate hardworking and dynamic community
Launch the ProjectImproving the Discoverability of Programs
A strong and diverse group of academic offerings deserves prime real estate. Now they take center stage with a very user-focused homepage program finder. Additionally, the program finder design allows for a curated presentation of eight "featured” programs which gives Saint Rose the opportunity to highlight previously buried academic programs.
Exploring the School Through Photography
Fastspot believes in the immediacy and effectiveness of communicating with photography. To express many aspects of Saint Rose’s character (from the location and facilities to clubs and events), we employed immersive photo galleries in many places throughout the site, each using a vertical scrolling gallery feed that feels contemporary and allows for intuitive user exploration.
Highlighting Success Stories
When selecting a school, prospective students or their parents want to know what they’re getting for their investment. Saint Rose alumni have a rich history of success, and a prime objective of the redesign was to tell those stories. To that end, we made outcomes a large part of the site's information architecture in order to display the wealth of stories that demonstrate the exceptional value that Saint Rose offers.
Form Follows Function
With an eye toward usability, we streamlined the information architecture and content strategy to prioritize actionable and decision-focused content while avoiding navigational rabbit holes and sparsely-populated pages.
Better Articulating the Brand
The website redesign was an opportunity to refine and extend the College's existing brand standards. Design consistency was cultivated with new typography and functionality providing inspiration throughout. Flexibility and extensibility were also primary objectives allowing Saint Rose to bring sites outside of their main site into one beautifully modern ecosystem. The results honor their nearly 100 year legacy while simultaneously feeling like an entirely new visual language.
Pushing WordPress Further
In order to allow for flexible page layouts within WordPress, we used Advanced Custom Fields. This gets rid of strict template layouts and gives editors the tools they need to make beautiful and dynamic pages. The next challenge to solve was allowing specific faculty and staff access to edit specific content. We solved this issue by using the advanced access manager which provided a granular permissions system.
GALLERY OF DESIGNS FOR THE NEW strose.edu
Project Scope
- Discovery
- Information Architecture
- Design
- Content Strategy
- Front-end Development
- CMS Implementation
Project Details
- Responsive Design
- YouTube
- Social Media Integration
- WordPress CMS
