LIM is pure NYC. Now their site is too.

LIM needed a new CMS to help them publish content to stand out in New York’s hyper-competitive fashion school scene.

  • CMS
  • Content
  • Creative
  • Drupal
  • Education
  • Technology
  • Websites

The Challenge

A small fashion school in NYC, LIM needed to find a way to stand out.

LIM was getting lost in New York’s glut of fashion schools, but they actually offered something very different from their competition—they are the only school focused on the business of fashion. It gave them a strong positioning, but the website needed a complete redesign to bring that positioning and their brand to life. They also needed a significant functionality upgrade, making it more user-friendly for their content authors and updating from Drupal 7 to the latest version of Drupal 9.

The Insight

It’s better to show than tell.

LIM is a business of fashion school, not a design school. It’s a distinction that makes them unique in the fashion school mecca of NYC, but it was also confusing prospects. This was evidenced in the high student churn rate. Additionally, it was clear that many creative yet entrepreneurial fashionistas were missing out on LIM because they simply didn’t realize what LIM offered. If we could clear up that confusion, by focusing our storytelling around real student and alumni experiences, we knew LIM would thrive.

LIM Media 1

Ideation

LIM is NYC as much NYC is LIM

Just like the school itself, the digital experience needed to tap into the heart of the fashion industry. Genuine NYC attitude, creativity and energy permeated throughout the site. From the UX, to the street-level inspired design to the focus on stories about LIM students and alumni who were making their mark throughout the fashion industry. It wasn’t enough to tell prospects what they could accomplish, we needed to show them exactly where LIM and NYC could take them.

Tech-Focused

ZenSource, Drupal and AWS Cloud, oh my.

As part of the process we redesigned the LIM College site and provided a much more flexible and modern user experience. Authors have more flexible page layouts with a design system of modules and tools to create any type of content. They have tools that will also allow them to scale their site content as their needs evolve. They also have more granular role-based permissions to manage and control how content updates are made.

We achieved this by replatforming LIM College on the latest version of Drupal utilizing our ZenSource Drupal distribution which is incredibly easy to use and provides a frictionless, visual authoring interface with more flexibility. We also migrated them to a secure, scalable and highly performing AWS Cloud for hosting at the same time. As part of the ZenSource and AWS solution, we continue to proactively update them on the latest and most secure version of Drupal 9.

Using Drupal, we were able to develop a modern website with changes that would have a long-term impact.

"I shouldn’t be on video when you do this because I have no poker face. I just have to say that this is so cool!”

Laura Cioffi Director of College Marketing, LIM College

The Outcome

A Fashionable Yet Functional Website

We delivered a new website in the most up-to-date version of Drupal, within ZenSource - helping to solve the problems they had internally with content management and in helping to organize the site and make it more user-friendly. But more than that, we dug in to understand their brand and users, defining clearer customer journeys, and created a more complete, holistic and engaging experience for prospects. No other school navigates their students to the intersection of business and fashion quite like LIM.

And now the next generation of creative, entrepreneurial fashion minds can see the real places the LIM experience can take them.