Royal College of Art digital discovery platform 2023
2023 was a year of confluence and change for the RCA. It was both the first year of their newly incorporated one year MA programmes and the final year for most of their two year MA programmes.
The cohorts were split over 2 shows: the one year students exhibited on campus at the Kensington and Battersea buildings from 30th June – 3rd July, and the two year students exhibited at the off-site venue the Truman Brewery from 13th – 16th July.
This presented challenges for the digital platform, with the requirement that all students would be on the same website, but simultaneously accessible through their respective cohorts.
The site is structured around 3 lenses onto the student body: 1. All students grouped by their programmes 2. Students exhibiting at Battersea and Kensington 3. Students exhibiting at the Truman Brewery.
This structure is reflected in the menu and on the 3 landing pages. The programme pages can also be filtered against the 2 cohorts and all of the students. This provides a horizontal in-page navigation enabling the visitor, via one interface, to see (for example) all of the Painting student together or grouped by particular cohort.
Creative agency Flying Object provided the visual identity for both print and digital, with a 3D rendered animation of the RCA crest implemented on the website banner.
AVCO worked on the front-end development, design, UX and editorial back-end.
For RCA2023 we facilitated the editorial process with an editors' website, with easy download of student images for Collection and Theme content.
We also provided programme leaders with a separate website for printing QR code labels for all 2500 students with A5 and A6 size options. The QR codes were widely used at both exhibitions and trigger a link back to the students' online profiles. This gives visitors to the physical shows access to a more in-depth view of a student's work on the digital platform that is simply not possible with the physical limitations of the exhibition spaces.