Realign/adjustment of Brock.dk - educational institution site
a large website (uncoded) project by symbiotisk

Creative brief

The buyer added updates to the brief. Read them.

Business Name

Niels Brock

Do you have a desired website screen size?

We’re aiming for a wrapper similar to the current one of 965px, but it can be extended up to 990px

How many pages do you need designed?

This is a realign. Meaning we'll be using most of the elements from the current site. However we need: 1. New Home Page 2. Overview template ( one grid but several different looks) 3. Subpage template in two-columns (again one grid several looks).

What is your industry?

The educational business. We sell educations, courses and training. We operate mainly within the mecantile and business sector, but also sell courses in e.g. IT.

Describe the target audience for your website design

Our target audience spans widely from the 15-year-old who’s about to chose which type of high school to attend, to the 20-year-old who’s looking for higher education, to the adult who’s looking for training and courses. We want different types of looks for the different audience types on the site.

Our first audience are young people who have to chose either high school or a mercantile education. They’re heading out of Junior High, which in Denmark means they’re about 14-15. This audience needs a young and cool look, but still something serious.

Our second audience are people looking for courses. They’re typically between 30 and 50. In reality they consist of two groups. Group one are the business types who expect a professional and stylistically clean experience, while the other group consists of people with less education who don’t in the same way identify with a corporate look. A serious slightly conservative look is important, however it shouldn’t get too boring.

Our third and final audience are young people aged 20-30. They’re looking for mercantile or business studies, and they’ll end up working in a store or in an office. Their needs are closer to a new and modern style rather than a serious/conservative one.

What 3 things would you like to communicate to your audience through your website design

That we’re a serious, well-established place to study.
That we’re a modern institution.
That we provide professional and high quality educations.

How is your company different from your competitors?

We’re an old school with traditions, but at the same time we focus on keeping on track and with the times.

The Niels Brock brand is well known and strong in Denmark.

Also we work closely with the business sector and have a strong focus on internationalisation.

What website design styles do you like?

We’re looking at sites that have a strong modern feel to them, but who are not afraid to take chances. We definitely like good use of typography and photography.

Sites that use larger typefaces and Google Web Fonts. We’re thinking 16px for body copy.

We like sites that have a strong feel to them without being too white and extremely minimalist. For instance we’re not afraid of seeing good elegant use of background textures.

We’re also big fans of clear consistent use of color. Good solid palettes are a must.

What colors do you want to see in your website design?

Surprise us! We have 7 main sections for the site, and each section will need it’s own “identity”.

What colors do you NOT want to see in your website design?

Orange, Cyan, Pink, Grey, Purple, Yellow. At least not as to how they’re used now.

What adjectives should best describe your website design?

Modern, business-like, open, cool, serious, international.

What content must be included in the website design?

IMPORTANT: This is a realing of the site. Not a complete overhaul, so we’re not looking to add too many new design elements, but…

Home Page:
We’ve included a quick and dirty wireframe for it. We’d like to use *only* a slider on this page. No flash elements like now.

Menus:
The small menu at the top remains (but you can redesign the “Populære genveje” button).

The main navigation menu should be buildt as a dropdown menu with seven main points. Check the pdf with the menu structure.

Also our logo can be the one used in the NB_forslag_online_0512.pdf

Overview template:
We’ll need 7 different ones for these, but they’ll use the same grid. So only the basic color identity or background texture etc. should be different.

The content they’ll contain is similar to this: http://www.brock.dk/uddannelse-paa-niels-brock/...

Sub page template in two columns:
Currently our sub pages use three columns like this: http://www.brock.dk/education-at-niels-brock/vo...

However the left column is either redundant or poorly placed. We’d like to use a larger column for the content area while keeping the right column for either a sub-menu or features.

The right sidebar needs a much more consistent design than the one we have right now.

Again these sub-pages need to correspond to the section they’re in.

The icons on these subpages need a serious redesign. We’ll need about 20-30 for the final design, but if you make 3-4 to give us an idea this should be fine.

We’d also like to see some good uses of blockquotes, pullquotes and photos.

Do you have additional requirements or links you want to share?

We want to see better use of modern type for web. This means using body copy of around 16px and possibly google web fonts.

Take a look at the content here: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/07/16-p...

We also like sites like http://dailymaersk.com where both type and color work very nicely together to make something very legible on screen. http://vogue.fr is another good example.

Aditionally we’d love to see much better calls-to-action on our site. Better use of buttons to guide people to sign up for courses both in the sidebar and the bottom of the text like on http://www.itkurser.net/index.php?/Kurser-og-ud...

Also we’d like the option to include a featured ribbon at the top of the site for optional promotions. This ribbon can be sitewide or only on the homepage. (Have a look at the wireframe pdf).

We’re put up some variants of our logo here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/x7lneqxa6qxzcrp/xnLv... - If you’re really cool, you’ll use the one from page 3 in the NB_forslag_online_0512.pdf ;)

Our recent annual report uses some red boxes for pullquotes etc. You might find that inspiring.
http://www.brock.dk/fileadmin/user_upload/brock...

And here are some photos that you can use:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/kc9938ezjuk1od8/xarS...