SCAD



__**INTRODUCTION**__

This website is for the Savannah College of Art and Design, SCAD is a private university with campuses located in Atlanta, France, and now in Hong Kong. The website is clean, makes good use of photography, and effectively condenses large amounts of information that will suit various target groups. The audience for this website are potential students, current students, teachers, alumni, parents, and potential investors or interested public.

__**INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE**__

The index page makes use of two navigation bars: one that sits at the top of the page, and one that can slide on and off the screen. The other pages use the traditional drop down menu.
 * Navigation**
 * [[image:Screen_shot_2010-01-10_at_1.18.51_AM.png width="363" height="229"]][[image:Screen_shot_2010-01-10_at_1.23.32_AM.png width="366" height="227"]]

Content Structure** The content is organized by a 2 column grid structure, and makes heavy use of photos and imagery. Contacts, News updates, events, and links are placed on the sidebar.

__**VISUAL DESIGN**__

The website has a modern and clean interface, and makes use of visuals over text. Each page features lots of white space, strong photography, and is structured with a clear grid. The design uses mostly black and white for the text, but allows the photography to give the website colour.



__**USABILITY**__


 * Accessibility:** The website does make use of some flash player and java applets, so it is not completely accessible.


 * Effectiveness**: The site makes good use of white space and grids to ensure that all target audiences can read and understand the content. The focus on photography and clean typography help in making the website more interesting and different than most corporate websites. However, the interface is still lacking in personality.

__**REVIEW**__

This website is a good example of a modern, clean interface that effectively organizes large amounts of information into easy to read and digest categories. The design suggests a more corporate atmosphere with the typography, colours, and overall layout. An improvement to the site might be to use colours or some form of visual system to indicate hierarchy. However, my biggest problem with this website would be the lack of personality or distinction in the overall identity. The site could easily be mistaken for a website for a corporation, museum, library, etc. This lack of unique personality may be intentional as SCAD has campuses in 3 different continents, but I still think that something can be done to the website to showcase more of their student work and highlight the talent in their college.

__**RESOURCE**__

http://www.scad.edu/