Kutztown University

Gorgeous. Rich and evocative. I really can't fault it. 10.

Congrats to my alma mater for getting it together. The Communication Design dept finally has a site that lives up to their talent. Great job Skybased. Huzzah!

Yes! I can finally link to my school's site without needing to provide any caveats!

This is a beautiful site, the watercolour/collage design is outstanding. The only gripe I have is with the no-flash message - I think it either needs to be more obvious and clear (if flash is _really_ required) or more subtle (if it's not vital). At the moment it falls between.

Incidentally, I don't have flash 8 and still thought it was great.

Very nice. That about sums it up. Very nice. :-)

Really nice, I saw it in the Public News-section yesterday. Did you pick it from there, or was it submitted? Back to the site; what I don't like is the text under each main-list item, it's too small. I'll give it a nine :)

I went to school with these guys and they're both very talented individuals. Being one of their first collaborated design sites (they also relaunched www.theflux.tv) I'm very pleased to see the response they've received and hope that this is the the beginning of a lucrative career for them both. Props that Kutztown's Communication Design department finally has a site the showcases the true potential of it's academic teachings. A marvelous achievement.

Wow, that's very nice and appropriate for the faculty it's in. I've often been surprised and underwhelmed when I visit a university's design faculty page and never understood why no one really took the time to make it appeal to their audience -- design and illustration students!

I just love this collage effect and the seamless Flash integration on the front page. Bravo!

Wondered when this 'work of art' was going to make it on a showcase site - it's a shining example of what can be achieved when you combine good markup with creativity.

It looks like a combination or urbn.com and js maria's site.

The site is absolutely stunning! It is very rare nowadays to be completely blown away by the style, creativity and design of a website, but Skybased has pulled it off! I am looking forward to seeing their future work. I know who I'll be contacting the next time I need some freelance work done ;)

I love that fact that this site seems to break away from the traditional looking css sites out there. A beautiful site with some very cool small details. Well done.

amazingly good looking

Very very nice, the only thing I dont like is that "punk" style text, but the rest is very very pretty.

A rare and beautiful site. I love the use of the unique illustrations, the overall atmosphere…very nice.

To my mind a monospace would have fitted nicer to the grungy typeface. But the rest is just gorgeous and inspiring.

a book is a book and a website is a website!

although the designers did an amazing job of imitating a real book visually, I think there is something wrong with the current trend to imitate "real world objects" in new media. why should I look at a book on my screen?

I think it´s possible to transport the feeling and aesthetics of a sketchbook without literally displaying a book.

will clark managed to communicate the feeling of "coffee house", "latte", "croissant" with just the right colors and background patterns – no metaphor necessary: http://www.mojojava.net/

I'm seeing this on the front page: "This area contains Macromedia Flash content, which needs the version 8 plug-in or higher. Please download the latest Flash plug-in for free by using this link." Or rather I'm just about seeing it. Unfortunately the error text is nigh on unreadable over the background.

The rest of the site is beautifully executed though - must have taken a hell of a lot of work. Nicely done peeps!

Yepp, it would be nice with a fallback-image of the upper header at the front site.

Great! Beautiful! It's a new quality! This pictures are from univerity's students?

thank you to all for the kudos as well as the constructive criticism!..it is extremely helpful for us to hear your feedback....

as per Jeremy and Olly, the no-flash message has been reworked to improve its clarity...thanks for the input....

lucbach, we did all the illustrations ourselves for the site, they are not student work....

matthias, i hardly think there is anything wrong with rendering 'real world objects' in new media...seems like an issue of pure personal preference...given your thoughts, one could argue against the use photographs as well...clark's images of coffee beans and cups imitate real objects just as our book does....

to me, blurring the lines between media often generates the most unique results, as you have the ability to borrow from the strengths of each...which in turn, helps keep each form fresh and innovative....

thanks again...!

I first saw this site about a week ago and the first word that came to mind was "wow".

Nice job with the sub page body background image that meshes well with the book-content area. Nice typography as well. I'm pretty picky but this is one of my favorites. Nice work.

Flash intros, popup windows... while the design is gorgeous and it may be compliant, it's an HCI nightmare.

Maybe I'm missing something here but this site just reeks of 90's webdesign ideas that (for a very good reason) were dumped. While very creative, I couldn't stand to stay on the site for more than 5 minutes before I got frustrated using it.

I like that a lot.

Excellent graphics and great coding, but I didnt view it with flash.

And Im glad I didnt. Why bother with flash when you have imagery like that.

Well implemented expanding menu aswell, these arent the easiest to implement well.

Top job IMO.

I like it because it breaks that ever-present 2-column 3-column or (new) two row (top light, bottom dark) CSS/standards blog layout that is so common today (my own included).

The site has a retro quality to it that I like. You can also tell that lots of love and time went into it.

Thirdly, it is also not a site intended for a broader audience's daily reading. It serves its purpose very well which is, I would think, to first and foremost attract new students and to represent the university.

Very nice.

Amazing. As an artist and former art school graduate, a web designer, and a developer immersed in the world of web standards ... It's awesome on every level and really gets my creative juices flowing.

Beautiful and orginal. Wow.

My son absolutely loved it here so much that he signed up for their Masters Program.

the flash and pictures are well entegrated

good job!!

I actually wish my school (which is a design school) would actually design such a beautiful standards based design. Our school site still uses frames.

I first saw this site about a week ago and the first word that came to mind was "wow".

Nice job with the sub page body background image that meshes well with the book-content area. Nice typography as well. I'm pretty picky but this is one of my favorites.

Keep up the good work. Greetings

brescia