A project I worked on with the University of Salford has recently gone “live”. Last year I was invited to pitch concepts for a new brand identity, VIP web pages and email templates for the University’s Hobsons Connect system.
The brief was to create an exciting contemporary brand and online materials that would engage the University’s prospective students and work with the current corporate identity.
After winning the pitch I started the project by looking at a number of similar offerings, studying trends in the way other Universities delivered content to their students.
After some careful research, planning and sketching I created the “mysalford” concept based on the idea of creating, storing and engaging with small chunks of information.
The mysalford logo carries a strapline of “my uni, my way” which changes to “my future, my career” for the postgraduate audience. There is also a slight variation in the colour scheme for each audience.
For anyone not familiar with VIP web pages, they are dynamic pages that are created based on the information selected from a web form. The student picks the subject areas and information they are interested in and when they log in to their VIP page that’s exactly what they get.
I made the content easy to read by splitting it into small sections and moving the most important information into a tabbed section at the top of the page, complete with a student case study and video content from the University’s YouTube Channel.
The rest of the additional content is split into two columns. The left column for the dynamic content and the right hand column for links to Facebook and a news and Twitter feed. The footer contains links to all the University’s social media networks.
For the email templates I created a number of easily editable HTML templates including two-column and postcard versions. These were created and then tested using Mailchimp’s Inbox Inspection feature.
John was able to interpret the brief and provide a really attractive proposition. We are now using his designs as part of key communications to prospective students.
Helen GhalyUniversity of Salford
