SlideRoomBlog

Our team is excited to announce the redesign of SlideRoom Submission Portals, launching early this September. The enhancements are a direct response to your requests and our analysis of usage trends over the last two years. Thank you for your feedback! Not only are they enhanced for better usability, but they come with a variety of new features.

Visit the sneakpeek site for all the details, but here are a few additions:

• Display your institution’s branding throughout the process.
• New directory keeps program choices organized and easy to find.
• Step-by-Step submission process helps to focus on one thing at a time.
• New library allows media to be imported from previous submissions.
• Enhanced capability for larger, higher-quality videos.
• New countdown timer and grace period helps everyone submit on time.
• New dashboard helps organize and maintain multiple submissions.

The Tyler School of Art has been entrusted with hosting the international competition for the Wolgin Prize.  Finalists are given an exhibition in the Fall and the winner receives $150K grant. From their website:

The Prize will be given each year for work that expands creative expression and exemplifies the highest level of excellence and artistic achievement. Work will be considered in painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photography, ceramics, metals, glass and fibers … The Prize will be awarded after a nomination process with international arts experts. Nominated artists will submit materials for review by an international jury.

We are proud that SlideRoom is the technology of choice to manage this competition! With the large number of nominators applying and international jurors needing to coordinate, having a centralized online system is the only way for this process to run smoothly.

Art Business News annouces the growing popularity of SlideRoom for portfolio review:

“For decades, artists have submitted their portfolios via the postal service when applying for art school, grants and other opportunities. However, in the last year, SlideRoom.com has replaced decades of tradition for colleges, universities, art foundations and others that now receive and review visual media with an online system powered by SlideRoom.”

At SlideRoom, we pride ourselves on beautiful design.  We don’t see this as a “surface” veneer, but rather something much more core to providing a great experience.  So, we have updated our site/brand to reflect this priority.  When we started the process of redesigning the website, we wanted an outside viewpoint for how to best communicate with potential clients. To do this, we paid several different designers to make an original concept for us. We wanted to hear what they thought our site should be and why.  Each designer submitted a concept for a new website one week later in any format.

Below is the winning concept design presented by designer Andrew Fitzpatrick. (Click full-screen in the bottom right corner to read the annotations).

The primary thrust of the concept was not the “look,” but rather the Information Architecture and the larger goals of the site.  However, the surface design also gave us a starting point.  Ultimately Andrew did refine the “look” and all the visual assets. But, here are a few basic principles we decided early on:

• Start by upgrading the Logo (the general look of our brand) and build around that.
• The main goal is to show how the system looks and works.
• Within features & benefits, each of our user groups must have their own section.

Later in the design process, we decided to use colorful visual assets to create emphasis, rythym and balance throughout the site. After many interations and focus groups, we feel that the final result achieves our goals and embodies our devotion to good design. We have worked hard to make the SlideRoom system feel luxurious to use, and now our website reflects that as well.

Jeffery Young, from the Chronicle of Higher Education, has just posted a timely article titled “Blackboard Customers Consider Alternatives — Open-source software for course management poses market challenge.” He quotes one IT manager as saying:

“Its service is poor … its behavior toward competitors is overly aggressive, and its fast growth in recent years has distracted it from supporting the product that helped make it a giant in the usually quiet world of college software.”

The most interesting thing about the article is how damaged Blackboard’s brand is.  If a Brand is what your customers say about you, then Blackboard has some challenges ahead. At the end of the article, Adam Finkelstein at McGill University, commented about Blackboard, “Everybody loves to hate their learning system.” That is bad for Blackboard.

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21st Annual Conference
April 30 – May 3, 2008
Hyatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention Center
Denver, Colorado

SlideRoom will have a booth in the exhibitor area. We hope to see you there!

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SlideRoom will be launching a new & improved website with greater focus on description of features and video tours (Summer 08). We are taking this opportunity to improve our logo as well. This process has begun with choosing a typeface that helps tell our story and communicate mood. The above slide show displays some of the initial options we were looking at, with a history of the typeface displayed below. We have chosen to move forward with Garamond Bold, which is based on a very old typeface, but communicates elegance and reliability. (The colors are just placeholder). To view the slide show full size, click on the icon in the bottom right corner which will take you to a new screen, then choose “full.”