Design EDU™

Editor's Comments

The redesign of the Cornell University top-level website (home page, secondary and gateway pages) brings the Ivy League school into the new generation of websites. The site emphasizes elegance over clutter, standards-based design over traditional tables, and content and usability over glamour. Form meets function to create a positive user experience.

Stunning photography on the home page and concentrated visuals spread throughout the site lend a true sense of Cornell life: its students, events, academic disciplines, innovations, campus locations, and activities. Throughout the upper levels of the site, quotes, outcomes and recruitment-focused content are used in parallel with topical news and events headlines. The result? A sense of liveliness and vigor that speaks to students, alumni, researchers, and today's global audience. On gateway pages, content is web-friendly (chunked and above the fold) with featured content leading the visitor and reader deeper into related areas.

The search function provides active returns in multiple areas, including search results from Cornell websites, people, events, units, and facts.

+ Tableless CSS
+ Validates (with the exception of some news headline HTML entities)
+ Accessible to 508

About Cornell University
Once called "the first American university" by educational historian Frederick Rudolph, Cornell University represents a distinctive mix of eminent scholarship and democratic ideals.