Hello world

With a large population of international students and faculty, and research and scholarship efforts spanning the globe, Emory University’s impact reaches far and wide. The Emory Global website was commissioned by Emory’s Office of Global Strategy and Initiatives (OGSI) to be both a showcase of Emory’s presence in the world, and an introduction to international visitors seeking facts about Emory and its hometown of Atlanta.

The website was developed from the ground up by Emory University Communications and Public Affairs (CPA) in collaboration with OGSI. My role was visual design of the website and subbrand elements (save for the Emory Global logo, contributed by CPA’s creative director).

Establishing a global language

Emory Global is a standalone subbrand of Emory University. It extends the building blocks of the university’s main visual identity to form a look all its own. The first step of the process was to create a set of design elements that subtly evoke “global” by taking inspiration from map coordinates and orbital paths. Light blue and yellow were chosen to be the primary subbrand colors, a fresh departure from the main brand’s darker, more formal blue and gold.

In addition to the general-purpose design elements, a family of logos was created to brand Emory’s country initiatives. Vertical lines in the logos are skewed to 23.5º, the angle of Earth’s axis.

Bringing it all together

The subbrand elements were melded with the university’s standard web styles to create a library of custom Bootstrap components. These components were used to rapidly prototype and build website pages for implementation in Cascade CMS. The tone of the design is light and lively, showcasing video and photography by Emory’s staff and scholars abroad.