About Balance

Quick-Start templates are a great option for schools interested in launching a site on an accelerated timeline or for schools who are unable to commit resources to a full-scale Web design project. This guide will help you select the template that best fits your school’s brand and online communication goals.

All quick-start templates are built with onMessage’s responsive Web design (RWD) functionality, enabling the school’s site to scale and reposition for optimal display on each user’s device. The general explanation for how this works is that design elements such as photos or main navigation shrink proportionally from the full width of a large desktop monitor to an iPad display. On devices smaller than an iPad, continually shrinking features would render them too small to read or click, so the system switches from scaling to repositioning.

The repositioning prioritizes elements from top to bottom, left to right, so a full-size design with a logo in the uppermost left corner will feature this graphic at the very top on the phone display. Media query settings in the CSS code are also used to control where items display at various screen sizes. Due in part to these settings, changes to quick-start templates in the design process are limited to logos, colors and fonts, and any requests for structural modifications may incur additional charges.

The Balance Template

An elegant design using space, simplicity, and delicate elements to give your message prominence.

Things to think about...

You can change the background to any color so long as the negative space is preserved and the color works with the rest of the design elements. Even so, lighter colors are best as it can be difficult to read white text on a dark background.
This template works best with a horizontal logo; a vertical logo isn’t out of the question — it would simply increase the height of the top block.
The white space naturally draws the user’s eye to images, so it’s important to have professional-quality photos on all pages.
Avoid fluff and stuff. Streamlining content to the bare essentials will uphold the design’s simplistic appeal and aid usability.
Depending on the user’s device and screen resolution, vertical scrolling may be needed to see all information on the home page.

Blackbaud University

6 Bedford Farms Drive
Bedford NH 03113
Phone: 603-669-5979