Congratulations, Connecticut College!
We love it when a plan comes together!
Congratulations to Jill Grossman, Laurie Schaeffer, Tom Palazzo, and the rest of the College for the successful launch of a new visual design for the main site, as well as a new design for Admission.
Thank you for choosing us as your partner in this adventure.
Waubonsee Goes Live!
Congratulations to Waubonsee Community College on the successful launch of its new site.
The new waubonsee.edu blends visual appeal, solid navigation, and interactive information delivery into a web presence that reflects the college’s community and the Waubonsee experience. Thank you, Waubonsee, for choosing us to help you build your virtual presence!
Oakton Community College Website Goes Gold
Congratulations to our friends at Oakton Community College, whose new site received a gold medal from the National Council for Marketing & Public Relations. We’re proud to have partnered with them to create web presence that effectively serves their multiple internal and external audiences. Beautiful and functional … priceless.
Are you really ready for mobile?
What can mobile site delivery do for your institution? Which audiences are most likely to engage with you this way, and how can you meet their needs? What are the trends in mobile delivery for .edu sites, and how can your institution get started?
Join us for a session exploring the trends and challenges associated with mobile delivery for education institutions today.
Led by Doug Gapinski, a creative director at mStoner, and Susan Evans, director of creative services at the College of William & Mary.
Summer Site Launches
It’s always a thrill to see hard work pay off. Congratulations to our clients Brown University and Flintridge Preparatory School on their new site launches. We’re also glad to highlight the latest launch in our ongoing work with the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, this time for the FIT Library.
MashED Up: Mashups and Higher Education
Doug Gapinski and Laurel Hechanova will be presenting on mashups in higher education at the edUI conference in Charlottesville, Virginia, later this fall.
Here’s an abstract for the presentation:
With the proliferation of gigantic media repositories such as Flickr and Youtube, social media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook, and new ideas about open source data, mashups that allow people to repurpose data on one site for use somewhere else are becoming more and more common.
We’ll look at several examples of what mashups are used for, including changing context of data, resurfacing content, visualization, way finding, entertainment, and more. We’ll even look at how some institutions are using mashups to support their brands. Specific examples will be shown inside and outside of higher education, and we will touch briefly on a couple of common tools for creating mashups.
Welcome!
Our staff meeting was a little quiet this morning, and we realized that it’s because nearly half our team members are rocketing around the country, meeting with clients, and collaborating on some great new projects.
Hofstra Law (Hempstead, NY): Some of the projects we’re most proud of (we’re looking at you, Oakton) have involved working with our clients to find new ways to express who they are and bring their stories to life online. So we jumped at the opportunity to work this year with Hofstra Law on both branding and website redesign. We’ll be helping with admissions communications as well. You can see some of the already-completed video work at http://www.youtube.com/user/HofstraLawSchool#g/u.
Brown University (Providence, RI): Global reputation for excellence? Check. Engaged and engaging project team? Check. Willingness to take risks and look beyond to obvious? Check. We couldn’t be more pleased to have Brown University as a new partner. We’re working with them to redesign the top levels of their website.
University of Chicago (Chicago, IL): Many of our clients are (wisely) focused on admissions communications: how to attract the right students to apply and enroll. Sometimes it’s interesting to take a step in the other direction and look closely at how you can connect with alumni. We’re working with the University of Chicago on a research project right now to help understand the alumni communications landscape among some of its peer schools.
Middlesex School (Concord, MA): We love our independent school clients—George School, Kent School, NMH. There’s something about the spirit of the independent school that inspires passion in its students, its faculty and staff, and in us. So we’re very pleased to be starting a new project with Middlesex, a hundred-year-old school outside Boston. We’ll be helping Middlesex to tackle a website redesign.
Alverno College (Milwaukee, WI): Our work with Alverno College provides us an opportunity to shine a light onto a truly unique learning experience. At Alverno, evaluations are based on work assessments instead of grades, and there’s a focus on group learning and relationships between students and faculty. Our challenge in working with Alverno is to provide insight into the advantages and opportunities that this style of learning can provide to both students and faculty.
Mount Mercy College (Cedar Rapids, IA): We started talking to the team at Mount Mercy in the spring of last year, and right away, we knew they were our kind of people. This is a dynamic, compelling institution with an interesting story to tell, and we’re very glad to have an opportunity to help them tell it. We can’t wait to help them bring their new site to life.
A Great Start to 2010
It seems like just yesterday that we were bidding a not-so-fond farewell to 2009 and looking ahead to some exciting milestones in 2010. Somehow the first quarter of the new year is already behind us, and it’s been a busy one with new clients and go-lives. Before we let too much time pass, we want to congratulate clients on their recently launched sites, and thank them for choosing us as their partner.
Roosevelt University<http://www.roosevelt.edu>: When we first began working with Roosevelt, the university was in the early stages of creating a new identity and marketing campaign. We were fortunate to be part of those research and creative meetings. Being a part of that process gave us to bring a deeper understanding of the university and its community. We refocused feature content around students, using their stories to illustrate the new brand and underscoring the fact that these students are truly driven by Roosevelt’s focus on social justice.
Converse College <http://www.converse.edu>: We worked with Converse College to simplify navigation and structure in order to create a new site that’s much easier to navigate. We also love the fact that Converse wanted the spirit of the college shine through the design and content. It might have been easy to go a little bit more mainstream, but we feel like this site really looks and feels like Converse. It’s a fairly big change, but with a small (and dedicated) team, Converse managed to pull it off.
The American Dental Association <http://www.ada.org>: The American Dental Association isn’t a typical mStoner client, but we found many similarities between this membership organization and the education institutions we often work with. Specifically, the ADA’s site is large and complex, and it must connect with a very diverse set of audiences. The new site balances member-facing information and engaging content for the general public. We worked with the ADA on design, content, and information architecture to ensure that both regular and first-time visitors can find the information that they’re looking for.
Oakton Community College<http://www.oakton.edu>: No matter what the education needs of the individual—just starting out, ongoing professional education, or personal development—Oakton is there. The college’s sense of community and purpose is almost palpable when you’re on campus. We feel the site conveys that same sense of warmth and commitment to each person’s success. The information architecture, navigation, and specialized search features are calibrated to serve Oakton’s very diverse audiences. And under the hood, the CMS implementation and template suite accommodate a broad range of department, office, and unit needs.
The University of Windsor <http://www.uwindsor.ca>: We worked with the Windsor University team to create a main site and templates with a number of stylesheet-driven color scheme options for individual departments. We also created two subsites for the business and law schools that are true to each school’s identity but that remain harmonious with the overall university brand.
Asking the Right Questions, Finding the Right Partner
Sometimes the biggest challenge in your website redesign is just figuring out how to get started. In our latest white paper, we share some insight that might help you through these first steps. For those who need outside help with the project, we’ll also give you some ideas about how to find the right partner for your institution.
If you’re interested in receiving a copy of our white paper, please email our director of business development, Katie Jennings.
39th Annual UCDA Design Competition
The University and College Designers Association announced its 2009 design awards this week, and we’re very pleased to share some good news for two of our web clients! The College of William & Mary received a Silver Award in the overall website category, and Boston College Graduate School of Social Work received an Award of Excellence for the same. The Fashion Institute of Technology, which recently launched a new website with mStoner, also won an award for their LookBook. Congratulations!
