Our goal was to give the School of Art a website that would change every day. To attract prospective students, an art school’s website should have as much vitality as the school itself. For current students, faculty and staff, the website should be as much a part of their shared lives as the physical building. To accomplish these goals, we made the entire website editable and expandable by all 200-plus students, staff and faculty. No training is required and contributors use only a web browser and other production tools they are already familiar with. Our custom-built wiki allows visual and textual expression through a system of versatile presentation modules. These create a consistent visual identity for the site as well as an endless permutation and subversion of that identity. We imagined an audience composed of people half from outside and half from inside the school. We thought the most appealing website for prospective students would be one that is useful and well liked by current students.

“It is a bold step for a university art school to leave its website’s content and aesthetics entirely up to its faculty, students and alumni. Art schools are supposed to embrace noncomformity and experimentation, so it is fitting for the Yale School of Art to open its website empty and let it grow organically as wants and needs arise.”
“The wiki format of this site offers a blank canvas for art students and faculty to individuate in fresh, dynamic and expressive ways.”