Ashland University
Ashland’s webmaster approached AscentDG about re-working the main content section of their “Student” page. They wanted this page to be truly useful for currently enrolled students and, based on the feedback the school had gathered, the current page did not fit the bill. This was a unique exercise for us design-wise as our canvas was confined to a small space in between the University header and footer. The Ashland web team handed over the usability study information and we got to work.
They liked the design so much they asked us to work on their forthcoming social media portal which was designed to aggregate content from all the major social media sites into one constantly updating page. We were asked to use more edgy technology into the design so we built our design around the jQuery Masonry plugin (by David Desandro). This plugin would take content elements of various sizes and fit them together like stones or bricks.
Last, Ashland asked us to shrink their site. Since web-enabled phones have surged into the mainstream and are now common-place around the college campus, Ashland asked us to create a special template targeting mobile devices. Distilling the full site down to pocket-size was a challenging but fun project. You must strip away all but the essentials while maintaining good continuity with navigation and key branding elements (graphics & colors) in a tiny space. Did I mention we love challenges?