Innovation in College Media » web design

Redesigns 2011: Golden Gate Xpress

Bryan — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 15:27:49 +0000

The Golden Gate Xpress at San Francisco State University updated their web site this semester.

Here’s the new site:

And here’s the old layout for comparison:

The old design was basically similar to what it had been since 2007. The new design gets rid of the left nav bar and adds white space to the top of the page. They’ve also updated the nameplate. Also note the prominent placement of links to their social media channels.

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Redesigns 2011: Blot (University of Idaho)

Bryan — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 14:04:53 +0000

The University of Idaho’s Blot student magazine has redesigned for 2011. Here’s the new design:

Here’s the redesign from 2010, from our post:

Via Madison McCord

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Redesigns 2011: Otterbein360

Bryan — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 15:25:15 +0000

Otterbein360, the combined web site for student media at Otterbein University, redesigned recently, using the Detroit Softworks Gryphon CMS. Here’s the new look:

And here’s a screenshot from Archive.org showing the old look from February, 2011:

I like the lighter look with more white space. The slimmed-down logo also looks nice.

If your college news organization has redesigned their website, send me an e-mail (see the left-side rail for the address) or comment on one of these posts, which are archived under the category Redesigns.

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Redesigns 2011: The East Carolinian

Bryan — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 14:07:27 +0000

UPDATE: As sometimes happens, the Archive.org link was not a recent version of the EC. I’ve replaced it with a more current version – ed.

The East Carolinian at East Carolina University recently redesigned their site. The new site uses the WordPress CMS, hosted by College Publisher. Student Media Director Paul Isom said the staff has already taken advantages of new features of the site: “Using WordPress has already freed us up to do some new things, including live blogging the first football game of the season vs. South Carolina in Charlotte.”

Here’s the new site:

Here’s a screenshot of the old site ~~from the Wayback Machine dated June 6, 2011~~:

Lots of improvements in the new design, which is based on a theme by Gabfire Themes. I do think the header may be a little large, especially with the two decks of navigation underneath. This doesn’t cause problems on a large screen, but someone looking at the site on a 13″ laptop, for instance, would have a lot of screen real estate taken up by the flag.

What do you think?

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Redesigns 2011: Daily Pennsylvanian

Bryan — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 14:33:50 +0000

The Daily Pennsylvanian has redesigned their web site, with a lot of back-end work going into the project. As Eric Jacobs, general manager, wrote:

We’ve moved from our in-house-created Drupal-powered CMS to the Detroit Softworks Gryphon CMS, and we’ve completely redesigned the site. The new site presents more content, more cleanly; it incorporates feeds from our other sites, like our 34th Street Magazine (34st.com), UnderTheButton campus life blog (UnderTheButton.com), and The Buzz sports blog; has a lot more flexible main page layout options (invoked via simple tagging rather than coding changes); better integrates and features multimedia content, features dynamic and interactive content on section pages, and more. It’s certainly the farthest we’ve ever come from being mostly shovel-ware from the print edition. The Gryphon CMS also gives us a high-quality mobile-optimized site for the first time.

Here’s the new site design:

Here’s a screenshot taken from a February, 2011 archive.org crawl (minus the ads):

Online Managing Editor Jared McDonald and Lead Online Developer Kyle Hardgrave were the driving forces behind the new site design, Jacobs said, while working with “a working committee of many of the paper’s editors which met weekly through much of the spring semester.”

I like the new navigation and flag design, and the use of more visual content “above the fold.”

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