WANTED: Study Abroad Program Website Design

Tufts-Skidmore in Spain

This overview is for the design and development of the Tufts-Skidmore Study Abroad Program in Spain, a study abroad program sponsored by Tufts University and Skidmore College that is located in Madrid. The Madrid campus is the main center, however there are two "campuses", one in the heart of Madrid, and another in the nearby city of Alcalá de Henares. Both campuses should be referenced on the site.

The goal of the website is to organize and distribute information about the program for prospective students and parents, and for administrators, to serve as a knowledge base for current enrolled students, and to be a live blog where students can publish news, reviews, articles, and photos and videos.

The site will be mainly composed of static informational pages with an events and news section that will be updated daily/weekly (and we are considering WordPress to run the CMS). There will also be a blog section (Noticias de España / News from Spain) where students can publish articles, reviews, and photos and videos. There will also be a FAQ section where students can search a FAQ database and view FAQs based on different topics that can be administered by the program staff. We will provide the Tuft-Skidmore in Spain logo and we expect the site template to match well with the logo’s color schemes.

The site will be primarily in English but the live blog will be in Spanish.

The target audience for this project is currently enrolled students, administrators, prospective students, and parents of current or prospective students. The site should appeal to college aged men and women who are interested in finding out more about study abroad and living in Spain.

The purpose of this site is three fold. The main purpose is to get students interested in coming to the program by showing them what it offers. In reality, that is the most important function this site serves. The second is to be an information resource for current and prospective students. The third is to provide current students a publishing platform for articles, videos, and essays about being in Spain (they are required to submit one essay or article per month at least).

You will be designing the home page which will be used to create the header/footer/sidebar for rest of the site.

The site should feel engaging, visually stunning, and alive. It should draw people in. Use the color scheme of the logo but feel free to go further as well. We don't want the color red to be overused as it tires the eye. We are looking for a design that has consistent navigation and a home page / landing page that contains constantly updating information taken from the news, events, student articles, photos, and FAQs. The design will likely be translated into a WordPress template.

The home page should be filled with relevant information about the program, but we do not want a "texty" home page. Photos should be promiment. Site designs should be optimized for 1024 width browsers and we are not worried if the design goes down below 768 height.

Some photos from the current program can be used in the site and found here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/sanchez…wedEvents#
http://picasaweb.google.com/sanchez…2009TUFTS#

Reference Sites (NOT necessarily for design):
http://www.barcelonasae.com/
http://www.middlebury.edu/sa/spain/madrid
http://www.tufts.edu
http://www.skidmore.edu
nyuad.nyu.edu

We will need the design in layered Photoshop PSD with the layers clearly organized.

See attached files for Logo, and design brief that lays out the site navigation and structure.