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College Football News is an excellent resource for college related writing and predictions. The work that is written for CFN is regularly featured on FoxSports.com and in The Sporting News. Unfortunately CFN has been plagued by a consistently bad design since I first visited in 2000. Even recently CFN re-designed their site, but the result was less than Ideal and leaves new readers wondering if they have landed on one of those websites that hasn't been updated in half-a-decade.
Here, I will discuss a redesign and re-branding strategy for CFN. The primary purpose of CollegeFootballNews.com is to serve as a landing page for College football enthusiasts so they can read smart original articles written about College Football.
Let's look at their target audience:
- Males 18-55 (skewed to 18-25)
- College Educated
- Middle Class
- Regular visitors to SI.com and ESPN.com
- Probably play at least one fantasy sport during the year
- likely follow one team and conference closer than others
This is the action oriented crowd. They wear team jerseys and paint their face and body when they go to a game. They never miss a game that's televised, and buy a 6-pack for the event.
Graphic Identity
The first thing that needs to be addressed in the graphic identity. The color scheme, while well intentioned seems to be a hodgepodge of colors that very mildly relate to each other, but completely ignore their logo's color set. Similarly the logo lacks any sort of personalized style, it is a clip-art football with some generic type layered over the top of it and needs some attention.
For the logo I definitely wanted to add a somewhat more stylish interpretation of what makes football so fun. After a few quick sketches, I decided on a classic motif of a silhouette of athletes participating in the peak moment of the sport. I chose the moment of a pass being caught while the receiver and defender are in mid-air. I also wanted to update the typeface and integrate the graphic and type better. So I chose a font that echoes the rounded corners of the main graphic and laid it into the graphic.
Colors
I think the current site has some promise in the colors, but they could be turned up a bit for more drama. I envision the color scheme reflecting a piece of American sports tradition: a cold glass of beer. The rich colors and contrast from a rich lager are at the same time familiar to the audience and project a feeling of natural down-home warmth. No football game is complete without a few beers, nor is any fan site. I'll augment the warm golden tones with some red and blue, pulled from popular beer labels and signs seen in sports bars.
Website
For the actual site, I think the current design has some things going in a positive direction, but uses it's space in a seemingly random fashion. Users have no idea where to find the info and commentaries they a coming to the site to read. I'll clean it up by providing a clear masthead and navigation. I'll also move the search box from the bottom of the page up to the top so users can find what they are looking for.
I decided to go with a 1024x768 compatible design, in 1998 it might have been appropriate to design for 800x600, but now that cnn.com and espn.com have gone to 1024, I think it's safe to upgrade. (Aside: oddly enough, this site is designed for 800x600 viewing).
I start off with the masthead, dropping in an ad at the very top of the page is standard, and any way to integrate it into the design just serves the design better. This is where I will use the site colors most dominantly, it is the first impression, the piece of the page that sets the tone. In addition to the logo and navigation, I also decided to place a search box in the masthead so users who are looking for something specific, can find their way there quickly. For the main content area, I split it up into 4 columns, the widths were devised using approximations of the Golden Ratio. To the far right I've placed two tower type ads that should draw enough attention to be effective, but away from the content enough to allow easy reading to the content.
The footer contains a copyright statement and repeats the links found at the top of the page for easy navigation and accessibility.
