The University of Texas at Austin asked Funny Garbage to design a site about its Landmarks program. “Landmarks is the first initiative in the university’s history to develop a collection of public art with a clear curatorial vision. Three Landmarks initiatives are under way to beautify and unify the campus and to build a cohesive collection of public art.”

The challenge was to provide information about Landmarks and the artwork that is on public display at the university. It was important to be consistent with Landmarks’ clean, minimalist identity, and to show the art online while creating a desire to come view the collection in person. Making the site easily updatable was key to maintaining public interest as well as keeping current with the ever-growing collection of public art.

Careful thought was given to the information architecture of the site. It was important to show what exactly the Landmarks project is, in a clear and accessible way. A slideshow on the homepage and an interactive virtual tour were the cornerstones of the site. Clean, organized navigation leads the user to extensive information on the various artists and initiatives, as well as educational resources and visitor information.

To keep the home page fresh, FG created an elegant slideshow and a style guide for creating future slides. As new art, initiatives, or news arise, the Landmarks staff can easily create new slides for the home page and keep the site up-to-date, using the style guide and templates provided by FG.

As the Landmarks project grows, so too can the virtual tour. The structure put in place by FG allows new location points to be added to the map as new art is added to the collection. Every point on the map reveals a corresponding image and description, with links to the site’s detail pages for more information. Users may also listen to or download audio tours of the campus-wide exhibition.

In 2012, Funny Garbage launched a new iOS mobile app for Landmarks which is integrated into the The University of Texas app. Funny Garbage built a new infrastructure for the app that integrates into the existing container app, pulling data from Landmarks’s Drupal CMS, greatly reducing the number of steps in the workflow of updating the app’s content.