At 11:02 01/11/2001 +0000, Rick Hobson wrote:>More likely they are maintained by "unpaid volunteers" who in order to
>gain some satisfaction from the task prefer to do some of their own
>design. If institutions want to brand all pages then they should provide
>the manpower so to do. Regarding comparisons, it is more likely that
>individuals are comparing their pages with those in similar departments in
>other institutions.
Too right! I think this is a factor that is overlooked with regard to
corporate branding. All departments like to think that they are individual
(shades of Monty Python!) and why shouldn't they? One of the few joys of
doing a dept website for many people (I get paid to do ours...) is the
chance to create something that represents the spirit of the
department. In fact, you could say that is the joy of web publishing for
most people. I reviewed the webpages of other law depts recently for my
site redesign and the ones I rated highly were not technically perfect or
beautifully designed. They were the sites that gave a sense of what the
dept was really like. Corporate branding, if not very carefully handled,
could turn departmental pages into bland, anonymous sites.
Hull's guidelines are at http://www.hull.ac.uk/home/web_guidelines.html and
they basically say we have to put a link to the University homepage and
include the Uni logo. Considerable change is in the wind, however.
Kylie Baxter
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