The goal was to create a site that appealed better to prospective students.

The College of Arts & Media (GCU CAM) is the creative college at GCU, promoting innovation and play. The college consists of programs in performing arts and digital media, with 17 different degree programs.

GCU CAM's previous website did not showcase the creativity and innovation that the college values so it needed a refresh. The home page started with news articles, upcoming events, and moved on to resources. This version of the site was a lot more focused on providing necessary information for current students. GCU CAM wanted to reach more prospective students and the site was not doing that very well.

For this redesign, I researched several other design & arts college websites and made notes of what worked well. The sites that stood out incorporated more interactive sections on their sites, as well as full-screen designs. The previous GCU CAM site had large margins and was a more basic layout, which we aimed to change.

With research completed and a direction chosen, I started the wireframing process. My goal was to clean up the hierarchy and messaging to provide new students with a better overview of the college. I experimented with several different layouts, implementing the boxy, grid-based layout that I had seen in my research.

After creating and refining the wireframes, I designed out the comps in Figma. I ended up scrapping the border outline as seen in the wireframe because it became too cluttered. Instead, I relied on an implied line with consistent padding to tie everything together.  

Once the comps were approved, I built the site out in Webflow, making it fully responsive at desktop, tablet and mobile breakpoints. I set up several CMS collections to input the degree programs and staff.

I collaborated with Landon, a videographer, and Megan, a motion designer, to create interactive elements like the hero video and the play illustration.

Throughout the project, I was asked to explore and push ideas further, culminating in the final product. Along each step there were minor critiques but the majority of the design stayed the same.

Dr. Craig Detweiler, Dean of the College of Arts and Media, had this to say about the site, "The website refresh looks amazing! Bravo to you and your team-it really pops! It has so much depth and highlights so much in an accessible and pleasing way."

GCU's College of Arts and Media needed a website refresh and I am so grateful for the opportunity to provide that. Implementing CMS collections and adding countless interactions and animations proved to be a fun and satisfying challenge. I look forward to doing more work in this nature.