The Harvard Gazette

The Harvard Gazette, the primary news site for Harvard University, was already a successful site but was starting to show its age. When we decided to start a redesign project, we knew we had to stay true to our accessibility-first mindset while adding new and exciting interactive features for our stories and upgrading to a block-based layout system. One of our big goals was to be a model of innovative, accessible, and user-centric content and design. But how would we get there?

We found two great agencies to work with for design and development of the project that helped us navigate the whole process. They helped us keep accessibility in mind and worked closely with our team and our liaison from Harvard’s internal Digital Accessibility team. We transitioned to the Gutenberg system in WordPress and added creative but user-friendly content layout options giving our editors the flexibility they needed to bring their stories to life.

The redesigned Gazette continues to amplify Harvard’s impact and strengthen its community by sharing its news, research, innovations, experiences, and perspectives with those on campus and beyond. The new interactive features like quizzes and “scrollytelling” blocks have really changed and improved the way all users engage with our content and enhanced the ways in which we can tell stories.