UNC School of Information and Library Science

Creating a Powerful Platform for a Leader in Information and Library Science Education

Since its founding in 1931, UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science (SILS) has become a leader in the field that routinely produces impressive graduates and innovative thinkers. The school has been recognized with top rankings by U.S. News & World Report and is accredited by the American Library Association (ALA) and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

Considering their position at the forefront of information management, it was essential for the school’s digital presence to reflect the expertise and modern approach that they bring to their students. Thus, they came to us for a higher education website design that would transform their platform into something dynamic, engaging, and intuitive.

Designed With Numerous Stakeholders in Mind

Like any higher education institution, SILS must form equally strong connections with groups like prospective students, existing students, parents, faculty and donors. We worked closely with their team to come up with a unique and intuitive design that would appeal to those stakeholders and others with ease.

Design highlights include a homepage with dynamic ambient video and clickable slides, robust program pages that utilize high quality images and bullet lists, easy-access giving information, and a browsing-friendly course catalog that efficiently organizes important details.

A Distinctive Identity Within the UNC Brand

As a part of the larger UNC family, it was important for the SILS website to be recognizably “Carolina” while also carving out its own identity as a school. We accomplished this by blending iconic campus imagery and high-recognition shades of blue and white with bright accent colors and plenty of SILS faces and voices.

Read more about striking the right balance in our blog post on best practices for higher education website design.

Built to Grow and Scale

Knowing that program information and offerings shift with each semester, we built the site on a flexible base that allows administrators to add new content and update existing pages as needed. In addition to making the site adaptable, the intuitive content management system also positions the site to smoothly scale with the school through future expansions and growth.