Creative Website Design Company

The Brief

Toowoomba Grammar School came to Lava wanting a full redevelopment of its main website. The School is one of the nine Great Public Schools (GPS) of Queensland. It’s centrally located in the town of Toowoomba on a large, visually stunning campus. Approximately 1/3 of the school’s students are boarders, drawn from Queensland, northern New South Wales and the Northern Territory.

Visually, the school wanted to balance its rich history, but with a modern influence. Functionally, the school’s key objectives of the website were: to inform, provide access to services, support operational activities, enable/ support community interaction, and facilitate events such as the School Musical.Lava won the job on competitive tender, which was very encouraging given were providing a service from interstate. From the outset, both parties committed to a strong, ongoing communication process, and well as key face-to-face visits.

Lava’s Solution

The project kicked off with a site visit, to get a feel for school, including its location, facilities and its people. The school was particularly organized, and this helped greatly with the (web)site map planning, and establishing a design brief.

Lava’s design is formal, yet modern, which is achieved through an elegant and structured template with bright bold colours. We used selected photography of the boys, combined with those that showcase the school’s beautiful location, including both historical and ultra modern buildings. The school is very proud of its tradition and colours so we used the school uniform as a textured background for the site. Colour coding is used to easily distinguish the 4 main sections.The site is quite substantial, with approx. 120 sections of content. Custom functionality includes: an animated Interactive Map feature (showing the school in context with zooming), a Multimedia Gallery (housing photos, video & audio), and Interactive Visual Calendar and small e-commerce Shop (merchandise, etc.).

Lava also created a 3G mobile phone version of the site, specifically for Smartphone users. This is a ‘light’ version of the site, specifically designed to service current students and parents (for example, weekend sports schedule, results, etc.). Lava anticipates this site to be used widely, to help parents with navigating to weekend sports events, and also service the school’s extensive network of parents with children boarding at the school. For example, many work on large rural farms, so they are likely to prefer mobile website access.

Lava would like to genuinely thank Peter Hauser (Headmaster) and his dedicated team for their work on the project. Their hospitality, dedication and absolute organization made the project a success, and certainly one of Lava’s most enjoyable and memorable. We’re also very impartial to Queensland’s warm weather!

“The interactive website is ideal for our clientele with 300 boarding parents from throughout regional and remote Australia relying on digital communication. My School management team and I have enjoyed working with you and have felt well supported throughout the project, this being enhanced by our face-to-face communication with your visits to Queensland. The parents associated with this School have given us very positive feedback and I am delighted to recommend your services.”

With best wishes yours sincerely, Peter Hauser, Headmaster