Sector
EducationWhat we did
Creative Web Design & UI, Web Development, SEO, Mobile Site, WordPress Customisation & Training
Telling the individual stories of several of Oxford’s most distinguished colleges.
One of the most distinctive and special features of the University of Oxford is its college system. Oxford’s colleges are small, multidisciplinary communities, each with their own students, fellows, administrative staff, libraries, accommodation and facilities. Each college therefore has a unique history, personality and identity.
Over the last few years we’ve been lucky enough to redesign and build new websites for several Oxford colleges, building our portfolio over time through successful launches and positive word-of-mouth.
For each separate project, we set out to communicate the narrative of each college in a way that is original, modern and authentic to the specific character of their individual institution.
Read more about what we did for each project below.
Mansfield College
Mansfield College is a welcoming, egalitarian college, with an emphasis on community, diversity and world-class teaching and research.
They came to us with a brief to create a website that would showcase that they are an institution where bright minds from the widest range of backgrounds benefit from transformative educational experiences. We therefore set out to create a striking website that boldly reflects Mansfield’s vibrant community, inclusive ethos and dedication to academic excellence.
Leveraging their distinctive new brand, we created a lively and eye-opening web experience. The homepage landing design is immediately engaging and immersive: as each visitor scrolls they pass through a window which mimics the shape and experience of going through one of the famous doorways into an Oxford ‘quad’.
We developed a variety of flexible layouts and custom landing pages to allow the College to showcase the voices of their community in a unique and engaging way, putting their people at the centre, and inspiring the next generation of Mansfield people to write their own stories into the history books.
It’s been a real pleasure working with TWK. We gave them a really tight timescale for when we wanted to launch, and they didn’t let us down!
Thanks to their exceptional creative expertise and super responsive account handling we now have a modern, fresh and exciting website to be proud of that truly showcases what Mansfield College is about.
Jane Waghorn – Head of Communications, Mansfield College
Worcester College
Worcester College is a forward-looking college with respect, excellence and community at its heart.
Worcester came to us with a brief to highlight and centre their unique sense of ‘place’: their beautiful buildings and wonderful gardens (the finest in Oxford), a place of inspiration and learning, and ultimately a place which students can make their own.
We set out to communicate the duality of the history and modernity of Worcester in multiple ways. Firstly, we utilised both a serif and san serif font in combination to help showcase the two sides of its identity, as well as recommending a colour palette which balances more traditional colours of dark green and red with more fresh, contemporary colours of light pink and light green.
Its welcoming and friendly nature is reinforced by rounded edges and buttons and smooth transitions, where content feels like it opens up organically to the user. In doing so, we created a website that captures the true spirit of this vibrant college.
The website serves as a point of contact for the entire student life cycle – from prospective and current students to alumni – while also serving the college’s strategic priorities such as research, collections, fundraising and commercial activities in order to drive maximum engagement across all their objectives.
It was a pleasure to work with Gemma and the TWK team on our website redesign. From our first meeting, they understood exactly what we needed and consistently delivered creative ideas and solutions throughout the project.
The team at TWK made the whole process seamless and exceeded our expectations at every turn. Everyone is delighted with the final result and it’s made a real difference to our perception with external audiences and engagement with internal audiences.
Nathan Stazicker – Communications Manager, Worcester College
Linacre College
Linacre College is a centre for learning and research exclusively for postgraduate students and academics.
Consisting of a student community from over 50 different nations – with the majority being new to Oxford – Linacre is modern, global, and progressive.
As a postgraduate-only college, we discovered that the content requirements differed from those of an undergraduate college, which typically have a focus on courses, access & outreach. Our research identified that the Linacre website needed to effectively communicate its supportive and inclusive community, and how they provide the specific support relevant for post-graduate research and education.
The project included evolving Linacre College’s brand identity, and we introduced new fonts and refined the colour palette, cohesively aligning them with the college’s modern values and progressive ethos.
Central to our site design and build was the creation of an interactive Web GL globe – a dynamic feature designed to showcase the diverse and global community of Linacre College. This innovative element served as a storytelling tool, allowing the stories of students to take centre stage. The globe not only visually represented the college’s international reach but also provided an engaging platform for users to explore and connect.
The new design received extremely positive feedback from the college community, and became a true reflection of its ethos and values.
Thanks to all the team for all their hard work on the new website. It looks fantastic and we are very proud of the final result.
We’ve received lots of positive feedback from staff and students and it has exceeded our expectations.
Rhiannon Roche – Communications Officer, Linacre College
Somerville College
Somerville College is dedicated to providing a space to think, a place to belong and the chance to become exceptional.
Somerville was originally created for women when universities refused them entry, and, despite now admitting both women and men, the college’s character is still defined by this history, with a distinctive balance of fierce intelligence, progressive values and empathy at its core. Accordingly, we created a bold and dynamic digital platform that articulates the college’s distinctive ethos within the Oxford ecosystem.
Introducing several new, brighter secondary colours to help give the site a livelier and more youthful look and feel, we gave prominence on the homepage to Instagram and Twitter integrations and the college event calendar to help showcase the vibrant life within the college.
Additionally, we helped to spotlight Somerville’s focus on its people past and present by building a directory not just of current fellows and staff but also a historical one, so that pre-eminent Somervillians could be discovered and explored. To help drive perceptions of a culture of empathy and community, we chose to hero current student experiences by building in places through the site for student testimonials and quotes, which click out to longer form pieces and advice and write-ups of personal experiences.
We’ve loved working with TWK. The project management has been impeccable throughout, with the perfect balance of support and management.
TWK is additionally bolstered by the excellent in-house team of creatives and developers, all of whom worked tirelessly to deliver the final product, with which our students, Fellows and staff are all delighted.
Matt Phipps – Communications Manager, Somerville College
