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A digital brand for a historic institution

Goldsmiths, University of London is a leading voice in the arts, humanities, social sciences and computing. Famed for their creative approach to teaching and research, the institution maintains a global reputation for excellence in the arts and design. The University recently embarked on a complete overhaul of their visual identity. To support its launch Only were tasked with designing the best university website in the world.

Branding
Digital

Goldsmiths, University of London is a leading voice in the arts, humanities, social sciences and computing. Famed for their creative approach to teaching and research, the institution maintains a global reputation for excellence in the arts and design. The University recently embarked on a complete overhaul of their visual identity. To support its launch Only were tasked with designing the best university website in the world.

Brief

Goldsmiths, University of London is a leading voice in the arts, humanities, social sciences and computing. Famed for their creative approach to teaching and research, the institution maintains a global reputation for excellence in the arts and design. The University recently embarked on a complete overhaul of their visual identity. To support its launch Only were tasked with designing the best university website in the world.

Approach

We started by mapping the range of informational possibilities, considering the message, who it was for, how it would be accessed and where it would be seen. Our aim was to create a series of patterns to support each content type. Patterns would use components of the brand toolkit in unique and interesting ways; expressive elements for inspiring content; readable elements for informative content; and oversized elements for signposting.

Outcome

The redesign reduced bounce rates by more than 40% across key student recruitment pages and supported an increase in page views of more than 300% across news and comment articles, helping the University to showcase excellence in academia. The design won Gold at Heist 2016, received Special Mention on Awwwards and CSS Design Awards and has been shortlisted for two BIMA Awards.

Testimonial

Matt and team were fantastic to work with. They were creative, focused and unfazed by our challenging brief. They took on our site design just after we had refreshed our brand toolkit, and this was to be the first major application of it. Their striking design helped to realise all we were trying to achieve with our brand refresh – communicating our distinctiveness and long history of creativity and new ways of thinking.

Liz Hutchinson, Director of Communications & Campaigns, Goldsmiths, University of London