New Hampshire Institute of Art Website Design and Development

MESH interactive was engaged to develop an entirely new website for the New Hampshire Institute of Art. The Institute, having been established in 1989, was looking for a firm that could not only execute a technically advanced site, but could make their vision of a contemporary art school a reality. The client was very active in determining some brand details such as color and type, but provided very little direction regarding organization, structure and functionality—relying heavily on MESH’s expertise to guide them through the process. The Institute also needed assistance in increasing interaction with prospective users.

There were a number of challenges when developing the solution for NHIA. First, the internal client users were not proficient in managing and developing websites, so the end product needed to be maintainable entirely by a non-technical staff. The site administrators had many things on their plates, and the site needed to fast and easy to update.

In addition, the site needed to accommodate an unknown number of faculty users (upwards of 100), who varied from semester to semester. Faculty needed to be able to sign up/into the site, complete a robust and professional profile, and create—on the fly—a standardized, animated portfolio—also without technical know-how.

Lastly, we needed a creative solution for displaying both student and faculty artwork enrollment information, and technical materials in a way that was fresh AND compliant with accreditation requirements. Building off an existing open-source CMS, MESH worked with NHIA’s team to develop a plan, solution, creative use of artwork, and technical implementation to insure success.

The project ran about 6 months, and MESH’s solution included:
Organization of information into discreet areas for different users / audience types
A completely custom solution to allow Faculty to sign up with the website, build out individual profiles, and publish dynamic, animated galleries of their work
Home page animation
Ability for site admins to create new pages, new galleries, new forms on their own
Standardized quick links and enrollment opportunities on every page

Easy to use, dynamically generated art galleries
Social Media integration
Site-wide search
Dynamic calendar of events
Robust enrollment user forms
Variable imagery generated on the fly on page backgrounds (page refresh)