The University of Brighton’s Faculty of Arts has used MySource Matrix CMS to create a colourful and dynamic new website, more in tune with its ambitions for future growth.
Download the University of Brighton - Faculty of Arts Case Study (pdf)
The Organisation
The University of Brighton Faculty of Arts was founded in 1859. Its reputation draws on a long history and tradition of international art, design and fashion alumni and associates, though it is, at the same time, modern and dynamic.
The Challenge
The real challenge was to fit all of the Faculty's functional requirements into an image-rich site – something befitting a 150-year old leading Arts facility. It would need to be far more than a web brochure for undergraduates but somewhere to communicate its diversity, strengths and variety of activities. In addition, there would need to be space for showcasing the University's theatre and gallery and its internationally renowned research and education and conference provisions.
Michael Wilson, Project Manager, University of Brighton Faculty of Arts, added: "Being a public sector organisation, it's also important that we do as much as possible in-house, reducing the reliance upon development companies for small changes. You can't achieve this unless you can make design and architectural changes yourself."
The Solution
With a hefty chunk of experience working with other universities, arts and historical venues, Squiz were quick to understand the Faculty's brief.
Michael confirmed: "Thanks to MySource Matrix, we now have a well-organised and flexible system that gives us what we want and is easy to use right to the core. We are using our support package to learn more about how to do things ourselves. Often Squiz will set something up that we can continue."
He identified some key achievements: "We spent a lot of time scoping our new Course Finder. It allows students to search for courses of interest by different criteria. I designed some mock-ups and Squiz delivered it spot on."
He continued: "The Squiz team used the banner display box to preserve continuity within the site and built in other elements nicely, such as our student work pages. We were then able to take this provision and develop it. Now we have a central listing area that pulls in all the student work from the site, and a front-end editing system so staff can supervise their own students to log on and put images onto their own pages."
He finished by saying: "Squiz empowered us so we ended up with a flexible, functional, neat system that is easy to use. They were very keen to please throughout the project and MySource Matrix was attractive from the start."
