branding

One of the work related newsletters that I still subscribe to pointed me to a new web page for a group that I’m familiar with. We are completely unaffiliated, but their mission is still a part of me. I checked out the site and it’s very professional. It’s an attractive WordPress layout incorporating web fonts and the best of responsive design. I’m sure that if I ran it through a validator it would do as well as wordpress allows. It would do equally well on WebAIM’s WAVE.

It’s exciting seeing new work like this, since it wasn’t always this way. Refreshing, actually. Now the site looks as professional, and professionally done, as some of the top web sites I visit. In fact, it’s so well done, it could stand in for many of them. It has the same DNA as most, with only a few hints at sterility.

I no longer am involved with their people or their business, and I have no particular right to an opinion. I do feel strongly, though, about Penn State. I still feel connected to the community. I think that comes from the fact that it has a small town college feel about it regardless of its enormous budget and international reach. It has alway maintained a strong local character. It’s the future in your own back yard. Everything about it is recognizable as family. It makes me sad to see traditional family bonds break with new generations. Maybe that’s something I need to get used to. When I was employed, or at least for the first 10 years of my employment, I advocated strongly for the use of local images, local illustrations, and local talent. All of these local things help to establish those traditional family bonds: the things that identify us and speak to the richness and quality of a personal experience. And that personal experience is a lot of why someone might want to engage with Penn State. Along with advocating for that local feel, I tried to dissuade colleagues from clip-art and stock photography. The image on this groups page is gorgeous …and it’s stock photography- shot in the Shenzhen Library in China. Is it obvious? Likely not to the regular viewer, but to me? Clearly; nothing about it says Penn State. If the designer had found the picture and used it as a way of giving art direction to a student photographer, it would have served a wonderful purpose: A photo of a happy Penn State student using digital resources at the Pattee Paterno Library. Or the Blissell Library at New Ken. Or the Lartz Library at Shenango. Or the Montague Law Library. Mont Alto’s Library. The Alumni Library. The Engineering Library. Special Collections.

Perhaps several of the universities in the Big Ten will use this same image? That way it might take on a family feel. Unless the PacTen uses it, too. And Albright. And Bloomsburg. And La Salle. And Kutztown.