The Royal Scottish Academy of Art & Architecture Website Re-Design

The Royal Scottish Academy of Art & Architecture in Edinburgh were in great need of a new website. Their current website had not been updated since 2003, and was not relevant to current needs.

The existing site did not fit the model of the modern market. Visually it was fixed to a width on screen of around 800 pixels. In 2003 the site would have fitted a smaller browser window quite nicely, but currently most displays average around 1240 pixels in width. Therefore the previous site did not fit the bill.

The Audiences

Importantly the new website needed to meet a collection of requirements for the many, varied users.

1 / The general public who would be using the site to learn more about upcoming exhibitions and events, but also to learn about the history of the RSA and its members.

2 / A communication platform for the members of the Royal Scottish Academy, some of which had no online presence.   The website would provide them with their own promotional space.  This would enable them to highlight their principal practice and the mediums in which they work, but would also provide each member with online gallery space.

3 / Active artists who would like to apply for awards with the Royal Scottish Academy needed to be addressed. The process of award application would provide the artist with the ability to complete an online form where they could provide details of themselves and upload either imagery or videos of their work.

Additional Requirements

In addition to the above, The Royal Scottish Academy of Art & Architecture provide a fantastic archive for exhibitions and events that stretch back to 2003, while also showcasing current and up-coming exhibitions. We needed to bring these to life and make these accessible for all website audiences.

While the RSA has a large collection of members, both active and honorary, it also boasts a huge back catalogue of collections and archives. The members and their work date back 200 years.  The current website visualised only a small range of the vast collection, this needed addressing.

Generate UK were proudly tasked with the design and build of the RSA website back in 2012.

Delivery

Generate UK designed and built a WordPress website for the RSA, ensuring it was completely manageable by different team members of the RSA, but also ensuring it was fully responsive and to allow every web feature to work across devices and platform and provide a better customer journey for all users.

The new RSA website went live late last year, to much praise from both the RSA team and the members the website promotes.

THE RESULT – CLIENT TESTIMONIAL

“I worked with Matt and his team on developing and delivering our organisation’s new website. This was a large and complicated project which sought to encompass our wide-ranging activities and services and involved a number of different stakeholders who all fed into the development of the project.

Generate UK were always very professional, friendly and eternally patient in guiding us through this process and we developed a good working relationship over the duration of the project. They did a great job of building the site to our specifications, were always very accommodating of our requests, and pulled out all the stops in fulfilling the various nuances required across the site. It has been a pleasure to work with Matt and his team and I have no hesitation in recommending Generate UK.”

Alisa Lindsay // RSA Programme Coordinator