Clinton College
Clinton College is an excellent college located in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Founded in 1894, Clinton has a long and prestigious history of serving traditionally underserved students as an HBCU, providing a quality education with low barriers to entry.
The Project
Clinton College’s website and brand needed a refresh, so they came to us to help. Our task was to rebuild the website with new video footage, photos, and professional design work. We also assisted Clinton in refreshing their brand and messaging in order to effectively market to prospective students.
Brand Update
The first step in this project was to update Clinton’s brand. Their existing branding guide was strong and provided guidance for our update, which aimed to show Clinton as a college that’s open and accessible to anyone with the motivation to pursue an education.
We removed the border on Clinton’s logo and added open space and the suggestion of motion, illustrating that Clinton College is an institution with open admissions that’s always moving forward.
Input Sessions
Before designing Clinton’s new website, we facilitated input sessions with key stakeholders organized by Clinton College’s staff. We met with faculty, leadership, and students to hear what they wanted for the new website.
Faculty and leadership emphasized ease of navigation and editing, making sure information was organized and easy to find. They also wanted to be able to easily add new content and programs. Students focused on the prospective student experience, and wanted the website to immediately offer value to people who may be thinking about attending Clinton College.
Throughout these input sessions, four main “selling points” of the college kept appearing.
- Clinton College is an amazing place to be
- Clinton College offers excellent academics that lead to successful careers
- Clinton College is open to everyone
- The Clinton College Golden Bears athletic programs are exciting for students and non-students alike
Videography & Photography
From the beginning, we knew that professionally-shot video and photos would be a key element of Clinton’s new website, making pages pop and feel alive. We made multiple visits to Clinton College and filmed students and faculty in order to display the student experience as soon as users landed on the website.
Web Design
Using the updated brand and incorporating the input we received from key stakeholders, we designed the website to be modern, easy to navigate, and appealing to potential students. We focused the website around the four main “selling points” listed above, and featured the key conversion of scheduling a tour across multiple pages.
To more easily display the significant amount of content on the site, we added “mega menus” instead of traditional, all-text dropdown menus. These mega menus allowed us to cleanly display a large volume of information under each menu item.
This project was an amazing experience. Working with the wonderful people at Clinton College made the process simple and efficient, and having the opportunity to visit the campus multiple times to meet with the people who call it home was an immense privilege.
