3 Things - Notre Dame University
by Dave Lowe
In August 2007 Notre Dame redesigned their web site. In this 3 things Dave Lowe tells us what he likes and doesn't like about that redesign.
3 things Dave likes
Consistent and Adaptable Header
The header is very clean and offers great utilities for navigating the site. Additionally, it's flexible for sections that have a different body background. Very nice.
Color scheme
I really like the way the school colors are brought into the design in such a bold way. The yellow on blue, especially in the header, is striking and different from the norm.
"Quick Look" Content
Making up a term here, but on the prospective student site there's a well-designed interactive feature that gives answers to some key questions. It's very friendly and works well.
3 things Dave doesn't like
Color scheme
The yellow is used so much — links, headers, textures — that it starts to become overkill. I wish there were a third color, or maybe just a light blue, that could be used in some of these areas. I'm also not a big fan of the toned down body text color; I'd prefer more contrast.
Footer
The footer feels like an after-thought, sort of thrown together. The spacing between the address and 'About This Site' is crunched, and I would have liked a more liberal line height. The font size also seems disproportionate to the body text. A different link color might be nice here too.
Consistency
This is a huge political challenge for almost every university so I don't fault Notre Dame's web team, but the design disparity between the new redesigned pages and the rest of the nd.edu site is just so jarring. Especially when my eyes are used to reading light blue text on a dark blue background, switching to a glaring black-on-white page like the search results or the President's page, or the Notre Dame band... well it's quite painful.
About the Author
Dave Lowe is a web developer for the Design Studio in Integrated Marketing Communications at Biola University, and co-owns a web design company called Blue Rocket Studios. He occasionally finds time to blog at davejlowe.com, and every so often actually gets away from the computer. Here are a few sites that Dave Lowe likes. |  |  |  |  |
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