New University of Sydney website

05 Jan 2010 in University by Enoch Lau | 3 comments

When the university launched its rebranding last year, I was quite pleased: a glossy brochure explaining the kind of image the university wants to project to the public, a new logo, new momentum for change on superficial and deeper levels.

Now it’s all ruined. Take a look for yourself (click to enlarge):

Yes, this is the new University of Sydney website template. I kid you not. A generous person might call it “functional”. A less generous person might… well, let’s leave this blog G-rated. It’s grotesque. It has all the charm of a late 90s website. It carries none of the personality that the university aims to project, and all of the air of design-by-committee and oh-look-I-learnt-css-in-24-hours. There’s no warmth; the design alienates.

For bonus marks, it even displays in Arial on a Mac.

(For comparison, here’s a screenshot of the website as at 5 January.)

Related posts:

  1. New University of Sydney logo
  2. Forwarding University of Sydney student email
  3. GPlates
  4. Crave Sydney
  5. University of Sydney Graduate Destinations Report

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  1. Dan’s avatar

    Dan on 14 Jan 2010 at 4:22 AM

    It is god­damned atro­cious. It’s increas­ingly appar­ent we went to a third-​​rate insti­tu­tion, and it shows up in everything they do: the qual­ity of edu­ca­tion, the qual­ity of facil­it­ies, the rela­tion­ship between the gov­ern­ing bod­ies of the uni and the stu­dents, and now the barely-​​tepid effort they put into their website.

    Who the hell thought it was a good idea to have the logo jut­ting out to the left? what is this meant to rep­res­ent? That if you want to achieve some­thing, Sydney Uni will jump out of left field to block you?

    Why is there is logical grid or spa­cing to effect­ively man­age the masses of inform­a­tion? Why is it so boxy? Why is the typo­graphy so bad? All-​​in-​​all it looks like some “designer” spent a couple of hours trawl­ing the 1990s inter­net for some “cool scripts” and hacked together a Frankstein’s monster.

    And this is after a very prom­ising brand­ing pitch­book that actu­ally looked like it was going to unify the hitherto haphaz­ard brand­ing strategies. I’m really dis­gus­ted. I fully expect Sydney Uni to have slipped down the rank­ings in the next dec­ade, all the while fun­nel­ling massive amounts of cor­por­ate money into its coffers.

    Reply

  3. M2’s avatar

    M2 on 12 Feb 2010 at 3:36 PM

    I want to get this tem­plate!
    Could you send me the one?

    m2​.​legend@​gmail.​com

    Thanks!

    Reply