Sneak Peek | Academic Branding & Blog

This design sneak-peek is for an academic organization's branding and blog.  I'm really enjoying the challenge of creating an online environment that is not only highly functional and organized, but also visually uplifting, optically soothing, and far from the unfortunate, ubiquitous boring-ness that plagues most liberal-art centered academia.

My primary (aesthetic) concern for this project is balance: I know the staff and teachers will expect something professional and fairly restrained, while the students (who will be the ones actually using the blog) need an engaging design that keeps their interest and is simple and intuitive to navigate.

So to meet both needs in the middle, I'm going for an elegant, relaxed look with a color palette of subdued greys and blues, jazzed up with an energetic pop of aqua.  To keep the design relatable for the students (without being gimmicky or childish - ugh!), I've used a handwritten type face for the logo and header, and a couple of bold graphics like the world map (shown above) for the translation tool.  
This is just a sneak peek, as this project is currently in-progress, but you can see the rest of my design projects over here at the studio.