University of Leeds

The University of Leeds had undergone a rebrand in 2023, but was yet to fully roll this out across all of its platforms and communications. In 2025, the university set out on a digital transformation programme, to not only apply the new brand to the website, but also to re-evaluate and reimagine content, journeys, experience and technology.

The existing approach to developing and managing the web estate was reactive with no agreed web strategy, resulting in unclear and complex approaches and processes, and poor user experience that fails to ‘sell’ the university to its users.

The brief aimed to apply some of the new visual language and learnings from research to a new homepage design in the first instance, bringing the value proposition to life through dynamic content and features that engage multiple audiences.

The brief and completed research were clear and well rationalised, so I could hit the ground running with an engaging design workshop outlining key factors for student recruitment, and considerations for features of the homepage experience. Together with client stakeholders, we dived into the goals of primary audiences to better understand their needs before analysing the existing homepage content and structure alongside other institutions, and conducting some initial content prioritisation activities.

With a lot of thought and background to the decisions made around content, I presented an initial structure showing sections aligned to themes and the value each adds to the page. This provided context to desktop and mobile wireframes that would go on to inform a page concept.

The concept itself took the visual language established through the 2023 brand project, incorporating colour, space and motion in a way that was previously lacking. I produced an animated hero video to showcase the brand and student experience at Leeds, and added gentle interactions and scroll triggered effects throughout the page design to engage users and enhance the overall experience.

The homepage concept was put in front of students once the design work had been completed and received an overwhelmingly positive response.