As a part of a new University-wide campaign titled “The Power of Penn,” the School of Arts & Sciences wanted to push the boundaries with a uniquely visual microsite.


Inspired by the work we had done on a promotional website for Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Welcome to the Universe, Penn SAS wanted us to leverage our prior project experience with their department yet take a completely new digital approach to reaching out to alumni, parents, friends, and organizations who support their work.
The site we created takes viewers on an interactive tour of impact stories, organized around six themes at the core of Penn’s powerful reputation for innovation and academic excellence.

We interpreted the existing branding for the initiative, a series of concentric circles composed of multiple dots, to speak to the impact individual contributions make toward the greater good. And we created an abstract dot pattern related conceptually to each of the themes, where the actual motion presented in each custom animation is central to understanding the theme.
While the site is essentially an immersive single-page experience that does not require users to click through content in a conventional manner, all of the stories and themes embedded in the experience form an intricate and extensive web of content. Stories can be shared with alumni and prospects and promoted on social media using unique links according to relevance.
The finishing touches included a social media preview graphic and a short, abstract promotional teaser video created to announce the site as well.