Brown breaks the mold with their new site
Brown University has introduced a new public beta site to the world that is certain to cause a lot of discussion amongst the edu and even the design community. What is so bold about it is that it steps away from the traditional web site design into something more interactive and minimalist. For higher education there are few sites that try this (maybe because of the large amount of committee oversight) but those that do are often compared with MIT’s homepage whether they like it or not.
It uses javascript to establish an automatic accordion response on mouseover, which could be problematic for some if they aren’t expecting it or have fine motor control issues. It also has a dark background, light text (some people don’t like that very much) which does focus on brown oddly enough.
I like it. They use some elements I have thought about for UW’s 50th refit and I really like the darker background. Given UW’s colours of black and gold I am a little inspired by companies like Lightmaker to give it a try. We did have black background sites about 5 years ago here… they looked good too. Just way too many graphics and spinning logos.
Anyway, have a look at Brown’s test site and let me know what you think…