We’re committed to creative restlessness, and to nonstop design innovation.
There’s a sameness to much of what we know as the “higher ed web”— even the most popular of university site designs often seem to be cut from the same cookie cutter. Some of this is for understandable reasons— there are common needs and concerns that many schools share. But we also feel that some design firms bring a set of preconceptions to higher ed projects— assumptions that will tend to guide designs toward predictable, uncontroversial, easy-to-approve choices. We work as hard as we can to avoid bringing preconceptions of this nature to our work, and we believe our portfolio reflects that.
We don’t believe in design for design’s sake; one thing Web design and architecture have in common is that their final products have to be used by diverse communities in unpredictable conditions. Web sites must be easy to navigate. But that ironclad predicate aside, we believe that there is still room on the Web for new ideas, new interfaces, new ways of communicating. Finding space for beauty and innovation while accommodating the practical needs of a higher ed community is the primary challenge of our work, and our greatest inspiration.
In the end, our job is to create beautiful, functional Web pages that tell honest stories— and to make sure our designs are sustainable, lasting, and innovative without being trendy.