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10 Best Prep School and College Websites

Posted on 14. Oct, 2009 by bmackler in Inspiration

Good educational websites share much of the same desirable practices as commercial websites.  They need to be user friendly, easily navigable, and use appropriate fonts, colors, and other design elements.   Sadly, many schools have decided to take the easy road and duplicate standard layouts and functionality, as if they were all taken from one template…never thinking out of the box. You’d expect the sites to be better than sites for online schools, but some are not! They completely miss the   They completely miss the opportunity to make a great first impression.

Below are a list of some of the best school and college websites that get it right.  It doesn’t hurt that a bunch of them are art schools.

Neumont University

Good use of white space, simple navigation and interesting take on the Flash Cover Flow floating icons

Neumont University Website

Savannah College of Art and Design

Would anybody expect less from SCAD.  Great use of flash on the homepage that seamlessly combines video, images and audio, topping it off, it loads very fast.  Go inside to find clean simple pages that are easy to navigate

Savannah College of Art and Design

University of Notre Dame

Solid layout helps control the amount of information and make it not look overwhelming.  Flash loads slowly but once its there serves as a nice navigation tool

University of Notre Dame Website

Phillips Andover Academy

Site has great design touches, good images and concise layout.  The background textures give alot of depth to the page.

Phillips Andover Academy

Latin School of Chicago

Even though I normally don’t like all flash homepages, this site pulls it off.  Homepage has great rotating images, easy navigation and good background textures. Once you get inside to the content, the layout is clean, crisp and uses the space well.

Latin School of Chicago

Biola Undergrad

Creative design for a school.  Good illustrations blended with images.  Can never overstate the need for a simple and easy to use navigation.

Biola Undergrad

Fairmount Private Schools

Very clean and open design.  Easy to navigate and find the information you are looking for.  Overall the site has a very welcoming feeling.

Fairmount Private Schools

Boston University

Good use of white space, open layout

Boston University Website

Ringling College of Art and Design

Site has a wonderful industrial look.  An overall intriguing design is enhanced by great background.

Ringling College of Art and Design

Loyola Marymount University

Great use of Flash/Image rotation on homepage.  Good use of color.  Navigation is great and content is laid out in a clean and clear way, making it very easy to find what you are looking for.

Loyola Marymount University Website

Tags: best of the web, Inspiration, websites