OCAC is the only certified crafts college in the U.S. Its Web site, in conjunction with a major rebranding effort launched concurrently with the college's centenary celebration, does a great job of  looking back while keeping an eye on the future.

It’s a modern, all-Flash application with a heavy emphasis on photography to show the materials and process of making art. Much deeper than it first appears (it contains about ten times as much information as its predecessor), it's a clear artist-friendly experience up front, carefully balanced with information about programs, important dates and registration forms.

The seamless, elegant experience also features site-wide search, deep-linking, a sophisticated events calendar for the college galleries and slideshows for student and faculty work. There are also videos, an interactive campus map and an area for creating/sharing a digital painting.

• Ziba Design created the new identity system that the site is based on.

• A single SWF engine loads XML instructions that define everything about the site including the styles, page layout, menu and which external assets to load.

• All of the text-heavy sections have an accordian-style navigation that identifies what each page is all about without the need to click in.