As University faculty, students, and prospective applicants have known for over a month now, brown.edu has undergone the digital equivalent of a botched plastic surgery. Many assumed the new site was a joke; I know I laughed the first time I saw it. And on August 21st, when webpagesthatsuck.com listed brown.edu as the “daily sucker,” the rest of the world started laughing too. But the reality is that there is nothing funny about this website: as the digital face of the Brown University community, its deficiencies devalue the investment of time and money that every student here has made. It is more than a disgrace; it is causing tangible damage.
While not wishing to dwell on the obvious, I feel it important to briefly sum up the major complaints about the website. As stated earlier, brown.edu is the digital face of the University. As such, it needs both to serve those who are already here, as well as to welcome those who are not. The current design fails in both regards. Important information, which should be intuitive to access, takes conscious escort to find. Whereas the old website presented news, facts about the University, and attractive pictures of the community, the new site hides all but a single picture, which it encases in a small box. Thus, rather than drawing the reader into Brown, it visually tucks the University away. Visit yale.edu or princeton.edu for comparison, and you will see exactly what I mean.
Beyond this, the site is aesthetically repulsive. The text “Brown University” appears in a small, unassuming font above a set of sliding text boxes. An equally meek looking and low resolution image of Brown’s shield is the only other visual relief from the dismal mud-brown background color. And the site links, which are contained in the sliding boxes, will actually move away from the mouse cursor when browsing between categories. In web design, simple and intuitive is generally best, and Brown’s website is neither of these. Rather, its gratuitous animation forces users to think and work to find the content that they need.
How did Brown’s website get this way? The story is not one that Michael Chapman’s office is eager to tell. Chapman is the Vice President of Public Affairs and University Relations, who oversaw the site’s creation. In a September 12th article in The Brown Daily Herald (“New Brown.edu Not Sliding by Unnoticed”), he says, “Our goal was to create something functional, as well as bold, new and different, that would reflect the spirit of the University and generate a sense of discovery about Brown.” Responding to questions about the quality of the site, he says that responses from the feedback form have been “mixed,” and he refuses to reveal the cost of production.
Chapman’s claim that feedback regarding the website has been mixed is correct. At the time of this writing, there have been over 600 feedback forms submitted. Of these, the ratio of negative to positive is slightly greater than 25:1. Which, technically, is mixed. I think, however, that most would consider this a rather poor showing. Why Chapman has chosen to ignore this feedback is anyone’s guess. His claim that “it will take time to get used to the site” is
becoming almost laughable as the weeks go by and the negative feedback keeps coming in. And even were his claim true, the fact is that prospective students looking around at fifteen or twenty different colleges are not going to take the time to get used to anything. Nor should they need to.
And then there is the cost. While I do not have a precise figure, I know with certainty that Brown sent an installment of $50,000 to Pentagram during the summer. Even if this is all that Brown paid (and I am reluctant to believe that there were not other installments), $50,000 is ludicrous. A good quality, professional website should cost perhaps $15,000. And brown.edu is neither good nor professional. Chapman claims that the website reflects the “spirit of the University.” I am inclined to think that an extra $50,000 in the financial aid coffers would have reflected it somewhat better. Especially given the final product, such wasteful spending is inexcusable. So where did all of this money go? The answer is to a design firm called Pentagram. To be clear, that’s design firm, not web design firm. The portfolio section on Pentagram’s website, which can be found at http://www.pentagram.com/en/portfolio.htm, contains a resume as widely varied as a “100 years of Harley Davidson” book, packing boxes for golf balls, street signs, and even the gate information screen for United Airlines.
But while several members of Pentagram’s team have designed websites in the past (MIT’s website is perhaps the best known example), the art director of Brown’s site is relatively inexperienced in the field. Lisa Strausfeld, who graduated from the University in the early 1990’s (http://pentagram.com/en/partners/lisa-strausfeld.php), has only a single credit to her name that I am aware of: cravath.com, designed for Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP.
Not surprisingly, cravath.com bears a number of striking similarities to brown.edu. It contains flashy scripting and animated text, superimposed over a dark, single-color background (in this case, navy blue). It is modernist and conceptual, a visual novelty. And, perhaps most significantly, it is completely inappropriate for its role—that is, unless Cravath, Swaine and Moore decide to give up their lawyer jobs and form an indie-rock band. While Ms. Strausfeld and the rest of the Pentagram stay clearly are talented as artists (those golf boxes look damn good), visual art and web design are substantially different skills: brown.edu is all the proof that we need.
Like cravath.com, Strausfeld’s brown.edu is inappropriate for its intended role. Community portal websites for universi-
ties need to be “down to earth”; that is, they need to engage users in such a way as to make them comfortable. They hould feel like home, right away, as indeed they are the digital home for the entire community, as well as the first impression of the community for those considering whether to join. For a site with this role, artistic pretension is profoundly counter-productive. And in the case of brown.edu, even the art itself is lacking.
Exacerbating this problem, it appears that there is little that Brown’s own staff can do to fix these deficiencies, as Pentagram sees the design of brown.edu as its intellectual property. Strausfeld has sent letters pressuring Chapman’s office to undo even the most basic and necessary functional changes, such as brightening the text to make it legible (Pentagram had a darker color), or centering the layout (Pentagram’s original design had the sliding text blocks locked to the left of the screen, which was as strange as it sounds).
Even if Brown’s staff were free to update the home page as they see fit, I do not know whether the design could be salvaged into something better. At this point, I would just as soon see us cut our losses and return to the old (and, frankly, perfectly good) design, or else spend a few thousand dollars with a real web design company. And I believe that the administration needs to seriously consider whether retaining Michael Chapman as the Vice President for Public Affairs is in its best interests.
