Sector(s)
About the project
Context
Kingston engaged Numiko for a full website rebuild, including extensive discovery research, new designs that draw upon a concurrent rebranding project, and the implementation of the Drupal content management system.
Challenge
Kingston University had a clear vision for what it wished to be known for. The Town House Strategy envisages Kingston University being recognised as a sector leader on future skills, giving graduates the skills that forward-looking businesses will seek out.
The new website needed to reflect this strategic focus, conveying to prospective students that Kingston University stands out for employability and its valuable connections to industry.
Our approach to Kingston University’s new website embraced this point of differentiation and ensured it was woven into every aspect of the design.
Approach
Kingston University’s new website reflects its ambitions to be the UK’s leading university for future skills. The design is extremely clean and clear, cultivating a sense of professional rigour. Design decisions like the minimalist black-and-white colour palette and the use of right angles over soft corners make it feel precise and confident.
Micro-interactions such as the hover states on images and buttons add dynamism to the design and lend it a refined feel. The ‘up and rightward’ arrow symbol is used across several touchpoints, including on the menu, on buttons, or as an image overlay. This arrow subtly evokes progression and development, just as ‘up and to the right’ on graphs denotes a growing metric. This is a nod to Kingston’s focus on developing the in-demand skills that businesses need, making its graduates highly sought-after. In the same vein, the button design on key calls to action uses Kingston’s speech bubble motif, deliberately cultivating a sense of conversation and dialogue.
Results
The results showed a 34% increase in page views of 'Future Skills' content and a 15% increase in engaged sessions.
Why Drupal was chosen
We selected Drupal for this project because it gives Kingston University's web team genuine control over the website without locking them into rigid templates or requiring constant developer support. Its modular approach means editors can build and adapt pages using flexible building blocks, responding to new needs as they arise while keeping the site's design consistent. The modern editing experience — with intuitive tools like CKEditor 5 and the clean Gin admin interface — makes content management straightforward, even for non-technical users. Drupal's granular permission controls allow precise management of who can do what across the team, which is essential for organisations with complex governance needs. Security is robust, backed by a community of over 118,000 active developers who continuously work on access control, encryption, and protection against attacks. And because Drupal scales effortlessly to handle millions of visitors and tens of thousands of pages, this project's website can grow with the organisation — without the hefty licensing fees of enterprise alternatives.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
