Student Portfolios Shine in the York AMPD Redesign

York University's School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD) enlisted Evolving Web to help redevelop and redesign their WordPress website to make it easier to navigate and provide a fresh, unique visual aesthetic. They also partnered with Evolving Web to create a ‘Spotlight’ feature for their main website that will allow each student to showcase their work with a professional portfolio.  The project focused on developing a unique visual identity for AMPD that was creatively distinct yet aligned with the York University brand narrative. 

York University is a public research university situated in Toronto. It is Canada’s fourth largest university, with around 55,700 students, 7,000 faculty and staff and over 325,000 alumni worldwide, as well as 11 faculties and 28 research centres. York University's School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD) stands out for its dynamic range of programs in the arts and design, offering students an immersive educational experience that encourages exploration and specialization in their chosen fields.

The project focused on improving content findability for prospective students and creating a more visually exciting visual identity appropriate for an Arts-oriented school. We were also tasked with creating a new way to highlight student portfolios, with the goal of empowering students to showcase their work professionally and giving them a boost at the launch of their artistic career. 

The challenge was to create a dynamic website, worthy of an arts and media school while remaining within the YorkU parent brand guidelines. We were limited by the YorkU component library and digital experience hub as basis for the design, requiring us to work with the available modules for the design and find new ways to show the creative and dynamic design sought. We also had to create a website that would accommodate the range of artistic endeavours undertaken by AMPD students in the fields of Arts, Media, Performance, and Design.

The website was built using York University's WordPress install profile, employing the standard theme and component library provided by the University. To create a visually stunning site that reflects the arts and media school's identity, we expanded the component library, enabling more design variation and a better balance of visual and text elements on each page. This new design adheres to York University's brand guidelines while offering a fresh look that resonates with AMPD's artistic and dynamic nature. Furthermore, we enhanced the content architecture to make it easier for prospective students to navigate and find appealing content, addressing the challenge of AMPD's diverse departments and artistic disciplines..
We also created a 'Student Spotlights' feature on the new website which serves as a student portfolio platform. Students can upload media related to their artistic achievements, and the website is flexible enough to accommodate the wide range of art forms undertaken by AMPD students. Student Spotlights categorize portfolios by department and graduation year, enhancing the navigability for potential employers so they can discover emerging artists.
 

Our work included:

• User research including questionnaires and surveys, a user journey workshop, and a visual design workshop, with participation from 75 staff and faculty, as well as students and other representative users
• Creation of new WordPress components on top of the existing “York U modules” (their components library)
• Student Spotlights, a streamlined interface for students to showcase their academic and creative achievements
• A way for students to manage their profile information and artistic works or portfolio pieces through a customized publishing workflow and interface for tagging content
• An automatically generated layout for each portfolio page that adapts based on the number of portfolio pieces and allows students to reorder the content to alter the focus point
• Filters for potential employers to navigate student profiles to find suitable candidates
• Incorporating a set of filters that act as a yearbook on the Spotlight feature, allowing users to see all the portfolios for a graduating class
• Well-structured data for any future needs like reporting or archiving etc.
• Imagery that conveys movement and passion, resonating with the vibrancy of the arts and design community, while placing the student work front and center
   

The AMPD website's redesign, along with the Spotlight feature, significantly boosted York University's online presence in the arts and design education sector. The new  brand expression captures  the school’s values and unique traits. This brand identity, along with the developed personas and user journey maps have also been employed  as part of the School’s overall communications and marketing strategy
This project inspired the York U brand’s evolution, with the University incorporating branding elements and components from the AMPD redesign into the York U platform, expanding the options for all of the university.