Higher education clients often ask us for guidance on content management system (CMS). They are wondering if they should work with a web development company that offers a proprietary CMS system, a commercial CMS system, or an open-source CMS system. In this blog post, I’ll define the three types of systems: Open Source CMS Systems […]
Thoughts from Abu Noaman
The litmus test for greatness of a web design agency is how well it can operate in tight spaces. We were recently asked to create miracles in extremely small spaces, within the constraints of pre-existing templates and CMS for Carnegie Mellon’s Masters in Software Engineering program. Yes, we redesigned their logo, rewrote the critical copy, […]
Elliance serves brands the way Carl Jung served people. We help find meaning, communicate essence and create forward motion. In the mid eighties, after reading the collected works of C.G. Jung, I embraced Jungian thought because it resonated with me. A decade later, I founded Elliance and combined my rational training in computer science with […]
Elliance was born out of two confluent currents. The first was my desire to combine my two passions: my love for analytical computer science which I developed during my years at Cornell and Carnegie Mellon; and my other love for mythology, folklore, psychology, and art which I have cultivated over a lifetime. The second current […]
I saw Spielberg’s movie “Lincoln” over Thanksgiving weekend. Wonderful screenplay by Tony Kushner and amazing acting by Daniel Day Lewis, Sally Fields and Tommy Lee Jones. I was struck by the parallels between Lincoln’s strategies for consensus building and the branding work we do for Christian colleges. To me, Lincoln was brilliant at holding tension […]
Entrepreneurs are famous for creating companies from the depths of their souls. Business from the inside out if you will. But symbols take on a power of their own when they resonate with deeper mythological forces in the collective experience of humanity. And that is what happened in our case. The beginning of my love […]
Coming to the US as an international student is a big decision. It’s a decision that foreign students rarely make on their own; the decision typically involves parents, grandparents, extended families, teachers and school counselors. Instead of asking what website features should be built to facilitate this important decision, let’s try to answer the underlying […]
Popular digital strategies for recruiting international students include multilingual websites, active participation in indigenous social media portals, and international SEO. Since everyone is talking about them, I decided to go on a hunt for some unusual ones. Here are a few interesting ones I uncovered: 1. International Scholarship Contests. We ran one to promote Carnegie […]
Social media is increasingly important in creating brand awareness, generating inquiries and at improving yield (the percentage of accepted applicants who choose to signal their intention to enroll by paying a deposit). Recruiting international students from emerging economies is vastly different from recruiting students from US & Europe in four important ways. First, they are […]