Liesbeth Smit

We encounter them too often: unattractive team pages with holiday snapshots and boring bios. But your researchers are doing all the work, so we say it’s about time to put them in the spotlight they deserve! With this guide, we will help you take better profile pictures, design an attractive team page, and write interesting bios for your consortium members. Let’s get started! Should you create a separate Team page? If you do not want to showcase your research team on a separate page, you can just create a team section on your About page with a list of names and research roles. However, we think it’s a nice touch to create a team page with a bit more information about the people in your research department or consortium. We like to give navigation menu items a more interesting name, so let’s call your team page “Meet the team”, “About our researchers”, or “Get to know us”. What personal information do you put on a team page? The information in your team profiles should be relevant for the website, but it also shouldn't be impersonal or boring. That’s why it's good to try to include a bit of creativity, and maybe include a personal quote, your favorite food, or another fun fact about someone. This really makes a team page come alive. Here are some items we often include in a profile page: Full name with your titles - but leave out the impersonal initials.Role within this research group - e.g. Project manager, Early Stage Researchers (ESR), or Senior researcherPersonal quote - e.g. “I think we should pay more attention to mental health” or more quirky “I always share my cookies with my co-workers”Expertise keywords [...]

Vague websites with hidden menus, confusing sliders, irrelevant stock photography and long texts that no one wants to read… And many websites are stuck in the 90s with introductions such as “Welcome to our website”. We think you can do better! We’ll share our best practices so you can make your website & homepage useful and inviting to your visitor. Your homepage is the summary of your website On your homepage you want to summarize who you are, what do you, what you offer and why it’s relevant to the visitor. Because the homepage is not a unique page with a specific topic, you can give a short impression here of what can be found on the rest of your site and entice people to dive further into your website. But be aware that nobody is going to spend hours browsing your website if they do not know who you are and why you’re relevant to them. Questions your visitors always want to know Who are you?What do you do?What problems do you solve?Is the information on your website relevant to me?Why are you the right person for me?How do I know I can trust you?What should I do on your website? With these questions - and their answers! - in mind, you can make sure your website content is relevant and useful. Questions to answer on your website Who is the main audience for your website? Who do you want to reach primarily, and who could benefit from your knowledge?Who are you and what is your main end goal or mission?What do you do, and what don’t you do?What problems do you want to solve? (From personal problems to global problems.)How does the information [...]

"I want a logo!” With these words every logo design process starts. But this isn't enough for a designer to develop the new logo for your website. It helps to know what type of logo you want, or, at least, what your preferences are. Here you find the different styles of logos so you can tell your designer what type of logo you prefer. Logos are not what you think they are Most people think a logo should include an element that shows exactly what the company is about. If you're a bakery it should include a picture of bread, if you're a hairdresser it should include some scissors. This is an old way of thinking about logos, and it's particularly bad when we talk about logos for more abstract concepts or scientific studies. Usually, the more abstract a company, initiative, or research department is, the more cliché the logo becomes. Can you imagine the Disney logo to include Mickey Mouse and a dalmatian as an icon? Or the Philips logo to include a collection of light bulbs? Or a research study about vaccines including needles and blood in their logo design? A logo can be just a good font in a color that matches the style guide! Nowadays, when I design logos for websites, I often do not design an image anymore and forgo the entire logo design process. This is because search engines and screen readers cannot read the text in an image, so they skip the text when browsing a website. This is such a shame. So for one-page websites, or website where I use big gestures, I usually use a very large font for the company name to make it stand [...]