Visual Communications Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 1,047 visual communications schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 841 visual communications schools have some social media presence, having accounts on at least one of the three major social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. Of the schools that have a social media presence, the greatest number, almost 94% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 68.3% of the 1,047 visual communications schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 10.5% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Black (6.7%), blue (5%) and yellow (4.4%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on visual communications school websites.

The colors used on the websites of the largest visual communications schools in the nation, are as follows:

1. Arizona State University: grey 34% and white 4.5%
2. Miami Dade College: white 10% and blue 2.9%
3. Ohio State University - Main Campus: white 30% and grey 3.4%

Font

The largest number, nearly 40.6%, of visual communications school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on visual communications school websites include Verdana (29.4%) and Helvetica (6.7%).

The largest visual communications school's websites use the following fonts:

1. Arizona State University: Arial
2. Miami Dade College: Arial
3. Ohio State University - Main Campus: Helvetica

Social Presence

Exactly 582 visual communications schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 445 YouTube channel subscribers. The visual communications schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 113,180 subscribers
2. Harvard University: 28,331 subscribers
3. Carnegie Mellon University: 16,128 subscribers

Exactly 680 visual communications schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 1,671 Twitter account followers. The visual communications schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Harvard University: 69,704 followers
2. Indiana University - Bloomington: 27,945 followers
3. Arizona State University: 24,295 followers

Web Metrics

Although all visual communications schools have websites, only about 20% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 80% of visual communications school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The visual communications schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Blue Ridge Community College: 6,741 broken links
2. Harrisburg Area Community College - Harrisburg: 4,597 broken links
3. Vincennes University: 3,603 broken links

It is also interesting to evaluate the number of HTML and CSS validation errors on visual communications school websites to get a sense of the quality of these sites. The visual communications school websites with the cleanest websites, i.e., least number of HTML and CSS validation errors are:

1. Pima Community College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
2. Gavilan College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Monterey Peninsula College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

The visual communications school websites with the greatest number of HTML and CSS validation errors include:

1. University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point: 0 HTML validation errors; 1,213 CSS validation errors
2. Bergen Community College: 178 HTML validation errors; 869 CSS validation errors
3. Lake - Sumter Community College: 62 HTML validation errors; 864 CSS validation errors