Around August of 2023, I was entrusted by the University of Malta to design, code and host a website for the Faculty of Media and Knowledge Sciences: maks.mt

Below is a short rundown of the project’s timeline.

The process started out with meeting the client and understanding their request. In their brief, the MAKS faculty was requesting a one-paged website that connects current and prospective University students to the faculty’s various online platforms.

As I inquired further, I started to learn that University was missing out on a critical demographic in its online marketing: 14 to 16-year-olds enrolling into high school, who are not sure which career they wish to pursue (and by extension, which University course they’ll want to study for).

After further discussions, I went on to create some rough sketches for maks.mt on Figma. Given the young target demographic, I wanted to ensure that the website struck a balance between creating an eye-catching layout with lots of movement and vibrant colours, whilst also conveying the rectitude of an academic institution.

Next up came the creation of some mockups: an opportunity for the client to be able to accurately visualise how the final designs will appear across different devices. These mockups take into consideration the client’s comments on the previously designed rough sketches.

With the mockups being approved comes the most challenging part of the project: coding. The website was coded from scratch in HTML and CSS - not only resulting in a tailor-made, optimised website, but also saving the client money in the long-term (since hosting can be done with a cheap service provider of their choice).

maks.mt's index.html page (the home page used by web browsers and search engines) only runs a 100 lines long! Furthermore, it is written in a way that makes it very simple for non-technical people to modify.

Finally, I compiled all the technical details about the website in a neat documentation booklet, providing simple step-by-step instructions on how to modify and upload changes to the website onto the hosted server.