These design schools stand out for their sophisticated aesthetics and designs with an impact. They are excellent examples of how important it is to create a website that speaks to your product, mission, and personality. Potential students and curious visitors alike will be impressed by the way these schools have translated their teachings into real-world design, grabbing attention and rising to the pack above other education options.

The Art Institutes

A moving gallery of images, drop down menus, and colorful icons create dynamism against a sedate web page background color on The Art Institutes website. The web page template used is clean and crisp, yet always made more interesting through colorful accents, small details, and crisply designed fonts. Here is a website that has made navigation easy, but yet retains its visual punch.

The Fashion Institute of Design and Marketing

FIDM’s bold red and orange color scheme and bubbly graphics pop off their web page. Yet theirs is not just a peppy surface; rather, an array of interactive options, from career quizzes to virtual tours of the school, as well as links to social marketing sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr, makes for an informative and vibrant user experience.

OTIS

OTIS’ primarily grey and white web page background, which is paired with contained accents of primary colors, adds up to create a website that draws attention by putting the focus on the students’ design work itself. OTIS’ website highlights their media, with each section boasting videos or a rotating digital portfolio of artistic and event images.

Parsons

The Parsons web page looks simple enough, but gains attention for its bulletin-like format, varied use of fonts, bold color, and dynamic graphics. Scroll your mouse over the top banner and it will ripple in a ribbon effect. Links change colors and key words on the academics page bounce gracefully about in a grey box, rather than remaining stagnant. The chic result looks like a magazine, but yet also actively engages the viewer.

Pratt

Rotating images, rollover effects, and fading in and out images are attractive features that come together to create a website for Pratt. A collection of “video vignettes” offers an interactive media element, while links from one section to the other gamely suggest alternate routes of navigation throughout the website.

The Rhode Island School of Design

A full screen rotating art portfolio greets visitors to the RISD website, with images announcing new projects, events, and achievements. Creative use of color in boxes and throughout lists, as well as shaded rollover effects and a text box that moves against the static web page background images, are sophisticated design features. A strong web page template makes for information that is easily navigable, yet retains its visual interest.

Savannah College of Art and Design

The most dynamic design used to create a website on this list, SCAD’s Flash website opens with an impact. A transparent overlay invites viewers to skip directly to their area of interest and showcases a moving ribbon of images. Move on to the homepage and a full screen, high quality image packs a visual punch. Connections to social networking sites, links embedded in the text, an interactive and exceptionally organized information round out the great web page design.