Duke Launches New Home Page Design
The heart of the new design is a series of rotating images, each highlighting one of nine university themes such as “Knowledge in Service to Society” or “Global Duke.”
Thursday, October 1, 2009
DURHAM, N.C. -- A new online home page design featuring key themes about Duke University went live Thursday on the school’s main website, www.duke.edu.
The heart of the design is a series of rotating images, each highlighting one of nine university themes such as “Knowledge in Service to Society,” “Inquiry Across Disciplines” or “Global Duke.” The images link to pages that illustrate each theme with original videos, feature stories and other material from across the university.
Duke’s new home page also spotlights the university’s growing collection of videos, lectures and other free multimedia resources on sites such as YouTube and iTunes U, as well as campus attractions for visitors.
The navigation has been streamlined and the second-level pages expanded with a mixture of easy-to-use resources and new editorial spaces for stories and other fresh content. Other new features include an improved search engine, an A-Z directory and top-level links to Duke’s mobile and emergency sites.
“We began previewing the new site back in July and have been sharing our progress since then in an online blog (http://dn.duke.edu/dukeredesign),” said Michael Schoenfeld, Duke’s vice president for public affairs and government relations. “We’ve received excellent feedback from faculty, students and others, and have changed some of our plans in response. Overall, people seem to like the site a lot and tell us it does a better job of representing the university’s priorities, programs and spirit.”
Describing the site as “visually rich, digitally friendly and global in spirit,” Schoenfeld noted that “every page has content that is regularly refreshed with photos, news stories, calendar items and other material. Duke is a wonderfully dynamic, constantly changing place, and the new site exemplifies this.”
Visited about one million times monthly, Duke’s home page was last revised four years ago. The redesign team worked over the past nine months to develop the new approach, which uses nearly 150 stories, videos and other editorial assets to illustrate the nine themes.
“We’ve gathered a broad range of material to enable readers to see for themselves how Duke is expanding internationally, enhancing its arts programs and encouraging students to engage with real-world issues, among other things,” said David Jarmul, associate vice president for news and communications. “Two members of our team, Tam Ferguson and Archana Gowda, produced original slide shows for each section, with Duke undergraduates providing the accompanying narration.”
Denise Haviland, director of communications and brand strategy, said the redesigned site will promote university efforts to define and promote a clearer visual identity for the institution. The design incorporates elements of the university’s admissions publications, and meshes with recent redesign projects for Duke’s administrative websites and those within the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences.
“One feature of the new home page is a ‘brand bar’ tool that Duke schools and units can add to their own sites to reinforce Duke’s visual identity while providing their audiences with easier access to university resources,” Haviland said.
Duke’s Office of News and Communications (ONC) developed the site in partnership with the Office of Information Technology (OIT). Three team members -- ONC’s Ben Riseling, OIT’s Samantha Earp and Blyth Morrell of Duke Web Services -- oversaw the technical development and deployment of the new site, which uses the Drupal content management system. Viget Labs, a local design firm, assisted with part of the project.
