Sessions.edu Design Competitions are sponsored by leading New York-based companies and organizations. The Fall 2006 competition sponsor is the Distance Education and Training Council, the global leader in distance learning accreditation.
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Competition winners gain a portfolio piece second to none: the chance to design a professionally-produced project that is used by a leading company or organization. |
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Runners-up will have their work featured in our online design competition gallery. |
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To sign up, complete the DETC Competition Sign-Up form within the Competition
folder in the Student Center. |
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Have a question about the Sessions.edu Design competitions? Email us at competition@sessions.edu. |
Below you'll find an introduction to the client, a summary of the design brief, and contest rules.
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Visit the DETC site to learn more about the organization. |
About The Client
The Distance Education and Training Council (DETC) has been the standard-setting agency for correspondence study and distance education institutions since it was established in 1926. Its purpose was, and still is today, "to foster and preserve high quality, educationally sound and widely accepted distance education and independent learning institutions."
About The Project
This is a visual redesign of the Distance Education and Training Council’s Web site. You will be handing the client a homepage redesign, a template design for the look of the internal pages (which their webmaster will implement across the site) and a fun, timeline treatment using some images from the DETC’s incredible history.
The DETC was established in 1926, and has a history no other accrediting organization can touch. Yet its two main competitors, both established around the 1960s, have Web sites that look more current and modern. The DETC site needs a visual update that will bring the look up to speed with its competitors, while also emphasizing its rich history, a real ace in DETC’s hand. Since the launch of its Web site five years ago, DETC has gone global, and is the lead accrediting organization for institutions all over the world. With this in mind, the site needs to reflect that and look more international, not so “pro-USA.” Right now the homepage makes DETC look like a UN Agency, not an accrediting organization! Also, the images look too obviously like stock photos of “graduates.” To make it more current, evocative, and exciting, images need to focus on showing the students in action, learning and putting their skills to use across a wide range of disciplines.
The current site gives equal emphasis to all the information it contains, but the client would like to give extra focus to a few key elements: the outstanding graduates, one from each DETC institiution (including Sessions!), which DETC announces on an annual basis; the “look up your school” feature for students who want to check on their institution’s accreditation status; the “news” or “recent updates” where users could go to get the latest happenings in the organization, or see the latest DETC publications.
The site needs to target a range of users: Public, State, and Federal agencies, the military, students or prospective students, and DETC members. The site, and the homepage in particular, looks dated now, and needs to be brought into the present time, with type and imagery that looks more current and reflects the interdisciplinary focus of the DETC’s many institutions. But the site needs to show that DETC is accessible to all levels of technology, not just the highest common denominator; the site should not appear gratuitously hi-tech or look frivolous. The goal is to project a legitimate, respectable, confidence-inspiring, high-end public service organization.
Content and Assets: Images and text will be supplied by the client for the homepage and “timeline” piece, as will text to use for the internal template page design. A skeleton html template for the internal page will be supplied by Sessions as an optional aid so you can focus on the more graphic visual elements on the page.
Some visual elements need to stay as they are: The DETC seal on the upper right corner is integral to the organization’s identity, as is the “DETC blue” you see on the background. As long as these two elements appear on the new design, the rest of it is subject to your creative vision: images, typefaces, colors, and layout.
File formats: You have the choice of submitting flat photoshop mockups for round 1, in jpeg format, or doing a full html page design.
