Web and the brand
It’s the first place people go when they want more information about Clemson University: our website.
Clemson.edu serves as the single-most forward-facing communication and is the most highly consumed medium for our institution and, by extension of that, our brand. It’s really important.
While all of Clemson’s Brand Guidelines for visual and editorial style apply to the web as a medium, there are additional, more specific guidelines that should be followed for Clemson’s web pages.
These 4 guiding principles were used when building all the available templates designed in the newly updated brand style.
Accessibility
Clemson University is committed to providing an online environment that is accessible to everyone, including individuals with disabilities.Responsive Design
Our websites should be developed for all screen sizes – from mobile to desktop.Consistency
Our visual guidelines and institutional voice will be phased in and then maintained on all web pages so that we create brand coordination across all print, digital, video and other messaging, as well as across the site as a whole.Usability
We should make it as easy and as intuitive as possible for people to interact with us online. That means we must speak plainly so what we say is easy to understand; we must design intuitively so that our content is simple to navigate.
University Relations’ web services used Zurb’s Foundation as our front-end framework because of the built-in responsiveness and flexibility that it offers. We have specifically developed many of our own modules and widgets for your use within the templates provided. The purpose of this web style guide is to review the frameworks that we have employed and explain how they best support different content features across the site. Please note, Foundation offers a variety of options when it comes to displaying your content and media. If we do not explicitly cover an option that you know is available in Foundation, then you are more than welcome to test out the features to see if it is in fact available in our version of the framework. Our styling should be inherently applied. If you come across a feature that does not have the Clemson Brand styling please reach out to us. We may even consider adding that into our templates to make it easier for you to edit.
Please note: The one specific item available in Foundation that University Relations did not include for accessibility and usability reasons is Orbit or any type of carousels. These do not meet our web content accessibility guideline standards; therefore, they should not be used on any Clemson.edu pages.
