Public Affairs & Marketing

This week the Web Team packed up and headed out to Grand Rapids to spend a half-day collaborative meeting with Mighty kicking off our content governance planning and discussions. Content governance is a set of practices related to creating and publishing content that impacts how content is reviewed, who makes editorial planning decisions, and what to do after content is published.

We’ve begun to review content template frameworks, workflows, roles, and content creation and collection methods which will all be key to the success of the launch and ongoing support of the new site.

We’re currently reviewing Design Extensions, which take the design concept we’ve chosen and further build it out into various unique page types and templates. It’s fun to see the design coming to life throughout various pages/sections!

In addition, we wanted to give you a quick update on what’s coming next:

• We are scheduled to kick off Front-End Development on June 2.
• That will last approximately 9 weeks and wrap up on July 28.
• Throughout the month of July is when we will begin the integration with OmniUpdate and OU Campus (our new content management system).

You may have heard us talk about how we’re doing everything we can to make sure we’re tackling this website redesign “the right way.” We know it would be easier and quicker to slap a new pretty design on our existing site and call it good. However, taking a more holistic view of the project by addressing technical systems, involving research, and working on a content strategy is what will set the site up for future success.

A big part of preparing to support the site leading up to and after launch is through content governance, planning, and guidelines. We’re excited to be continuing to work with Mighty on this aspect of our work, which will kick off in May and continue throughout the summer concurrently with front-end development. Here is an overview of what we’ll be working on:

• Content Governance Planning (The “what, when, and who”)

1. Define content creation, editorial, and curation needs
2. Identify clear content roles and responsibilities for content maintenance
3. Establish and document content governance processes and workflows to maintain the quality and consistency of content across the website

• Content Guideline & Workshops (The “how and why”)

1. A content guideline document for our content teams that will inform, educate, and instruct new web content creation and potential content changes to ensure consistency with the Hope College brand and our different audiences. Topics within the content guideline will include: roles and workflow, voice and tone, understanding audiences, writing for the web, content strategy and evaluation, and writing for specific sections and types of pages.
2. A Hope-branded version of the content guideline for distribution.
3. Facilitate a series of interactive web content workshops geared towards content authors, editors, and publishers.

We were recently asked if we will be incorporating parallax effects into the new site. (Check out this amazing example from Sony that was shared).

Our web design partner, Mighty, has definitely discussed and designed for this.

While our new site won’t be as intense as the Sony example, we do intend to introduce a bit of parallax effect when scrolling content. It will be much more subtle to not distract, but our designs incorporate layering, movement over static images/content, subtle animation of elements on scroll, and more–similar to the effect seen on Trinity.edu.

Thank you to the many faculty, staff, and students who have participated in the website design presentations over the past few weeks. We’re happy to hear so many are as excited as we are about the overall design direction of the site.

We know not everyone was able to attend one of the web design presentation sessions. If you or a colleague were unable to attend and are interested in seeing the design progress, please contact us at marketing@hope.edu, x7150, or stop by the Integrated Marketing office located on the second floor of Anderson/Werkman. We’d be delighted to show you what all the talk is about!

P.S. if you’re interested in learning more about the overall website redesign (past and future) see our project timeline.

We are very excited to be moving in the direction of the “Modern” design! This concept is meant to reflect the liveliness and energy of Hope College. The details within the concept uphold the excellence of the college. The academic focus is presented in the photography, copy, and numbers. The typography is modern, introducing a new web font that compliments the Hope brand fonts. The concept’s colors focus on the primary orange and introduce the secondary colors throughout. The photography is meant to show energy, with students and faculty interacting.

Although there is plenty of design work ahead with reviewing and revising as well as design extensions, we’re thrilled to be at such a key time in the process!

Please join us for a web design presentation for faculty and staff on Tuesday, April 15 at 10:00am in Graves Hall Winants Auditorium. Refreshments will be served!

We recently received a question about if and how we were incorporating accessibility into the new site. We’re happy to share that accessibility is a big part of this redesign. We are working to have all of the new design templates W3C accessibility compliant. In addition, we are investing in new back-end tools (through our CMS, OU Campus) that will allow us to validate web pages for Section 508, WCAG, Stanca Act, & BITV to ensure accessible pages to all site visitors.

Our web design partner, Mighty, also will validate all of our code for W3C compliance and they develop using the latest standards. They also keep in mind the structure of the HTML and consider how devices, like screen readers, will use the site.

The time has finally come! We are getting our first look at website design concepts from Mighty.

Keeping in mind that we seek to offer an excellent, interactive web experience for our identified audiences (of which prospective and current students are our most extensive visitors), we chose to explore web designs at three levels: conservative, modern, and aggressive. We requested these concepts with these descriptors:

Conservative: doesn’t divert greatly from 2011 design but improves upon it in notable areas, feels more like a typical college web site.
Modern: continues to reflect higher education design, but diverts more greatly from 2011 concepts.
Aggressive: pushes the boundaries of conventional higher education design, differentiates the hope.edu experience and stands out among college designs and within the greater web design community.

We are so excited with the concepts and we are working diligently to gain additional feedback and choose which design direction we are ready to head in.

We will be presenting the designs to a group of students this week, and we would love to have any and all faculty and staff join us at the below times to see and update on the design progress:

• Faculty: Tuesday, April 8th at 11am, Haworth Center Transmatic Gentex Room
• Staff: Tuesday, April15th at 10am, Graves Hall Winants Auditorium

We’re excited to show off the  design concepts – and this major step puts us that much closer to the larger goal of launching a brand new hope.edu!