I was given the opportunity to create the landing page for the 2015 MICA Graphic Design MFA cohort. The goal that I set out to achieve with this year’s website was two-fold:
- Stay in line with the general minimal aesthetic of the previous years’ designs, and keep the focus on the designers rather than just the projects.
- Expand on the previous years’ concepts by also including additional components such as project imagery, longer descriptions, and links to the designers’ portfolios.
Working with classmate Lolo Zhang to capture headshots for each designer, I asked each student to provide an accent color—generally a color important to their thesis project—which would be used as a background for their headshots as well the accent color on their overlays.
The website features portraits of each student. Hovering over a portrait will change the student’s name to their project title as well as switch out the portrait to a secondary portrait. Clicking on an individual will open an overlay that holds the links to their portfolios, thesis websites, thesis books, as well as features a subtle background image of their thesis project. Through a little custom Javascript, I created a feature that would enable a student to link directly to their overlay, as well as enable easy arrow key navigation when the student overlay was open.
