Coming soon: U of I branded Wordpress themes in P.I.E. and cPanel

One of my favorite things about our brand design is its focus. It concentrates on the fundamental aspects of the brand – things like color, typography, iconography – and trusts its users to build upon that foundation. As a result, we get consistency where it's important, while leaving plenty of room for people and organizations on campus to express themselves in their own way. 

For some, though, that level of freedom can be daunting. Sometimes you don't have the resources to make all the necessary design decisions. Sometimes you just have something to say and you need a space to say it that's easy to set up but still feels like part of the university.

That's why I'm so happy we're working closely with communications and web specialists from all across campus, who have been brought together by organizations like the Illinois Web Advisory Group and the Website Implementation Guidelines Group. They’re taking our new brand identity and making general purpose themes for popular content management systems like WordPress and Drupal, then working to make them available across our publishing platforms, in systems like P.I.E. and cPanel. The goal is to remove as much friction as possible between the person with something to say and the means to share it with the world.

You'll get a chance to see the first result of this work on October 1, when we release the first version of our WordPress theme, available for download or instant use on P.I.E. and cPanel. A Drupal theme is coming soon, and we're reaching out to developers who work in other content management systems to bring these designs to their platforms.

Check back here soon for more updates, look for presentations at November's IT Pro Forum, and get in touch with us if you're interested in contributing.