Yesterday, a post by web designer Luke Stevens inspired me to do a little poking around and grab some screen shots of a variety of college media web sites. Below the fold, a sampling of sites from last night. There are 2006 online Pacemaker winners, and a smattering of sites I added. In short, an entirely unscientific sample of 21 sites. Clicking on the image will take you to the site. (UPDATE: I’ll probably add more to another post if anyone’s interested. As with any utterly unscientific sample, some good site designs are liable to be left out. If you have a suggestion, drop it in the comments)
I didn’t do nearly the investigation Stevens did in his research, but hopefully this gives you an idea of what some sites are doing with their design. Good sign: several sites are integrating larger photographs in their design. Could be improved: still far too many navigation elements down the left “rail” on most site. Caution for others: These are some of what I’d consider the top end of college news sites. Not nearly enough sites show this level of layout.
on Dec 5th, 2006 at 7:15 pm
What do you think of http://www.collegian.psu.edu? We’re in the middle of a redesign and reorganization, but we did phase in our new home page this semester and started doing breaking news updates.
on Dec 5th, 2006 at 9:46 pm
http://bsudailynews.com
We welcome your comments, as well!
on Dec 6th, 2006 at 11:24 am
I’m digging the Badger Herald (first time I’ve been there). Clean, not too much on the page, and clear typography.
on Dec 6th, 2006 at 10:17 pm
[…] Compare and contrast: online college news sites (tags: web design news) […]
on Jan 17th, 2007 at 8:23 am
[…] For comparison, here’s the earlier piece on U.S. college news sites. And before we get started, I have to send a big shout out to Mark Hamilton who provided me with a list of sites to check out. There are obviously many more Canadian news sites out there, and I hope to get to some more in the future. If you’re familiar with some Canadian schools who have online sites, reply in the comments. […]