Blog Post

Retro Portfolio: MA TESOL at MSU

The MA TESOL (Master of Arts, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) site for Michigan State University was built to be an online brochure providing information to students enrolled in the program and prospective students not yet enrolled.

As the site was an informational site, it had to be built to be very expandable. To help accommodate this, the navigation was built as a list of links down the left-hand side of the page. At the time of the site’s launch, I had pared down the topics in the navigation to six links to follow the “Rule of Seven” but after the site was handed over to the client to administer the list of links grew to over ten.

Because the site focused on information in text form, I tried to make the layout graphically interesting without being distracting. I used curved lines wherever possible rather than straight edges to get the page an interesting flow. The site’s navigation followed the curved image that appeared along the left-hand side of the page, rather than just following a straight line.

The only part of the site that used straight edges was the “Upcoming Events” box that appeared on the home page. There, the straight edges and bright color caused the box to pop off the screen and draw attention to the important information inside it.

A view of the MA TESOL home page. Originally the menu was limited to abide by the "Rule of Seven" but that didn't last long.
A view of the MA TESOL home page. Originally the menu was limited to abide by the “Rule of Seven” but that didn’t last long.

The above text and image were copied directly from my original portfolio as I imported it over to the blog. It was not updated for re-publishing. This project launched in February 2004.

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