Cambrian Athletics UI

Overview

The athletics department at Cambrian College operates its own microsite for teams, recreation, events, schedules and game results. Unlike the main college website, the athletics site runs on Presto Sports, a third-party platform with its own templates, components and data-driven widgets.

My role was to establish the visual and UI direction for the site, translating Cambrian’s existing digital language into a platform we didn’t fully control. I created the homepage concept and design rationale, which a Presto Sports designer then expanded across the broader microsite.

Client

Cambrian College

Disciplines

UX/UI Design, Art Direction, Design Systems, Vendor Collaboration

Exploration

The challenge wasn’t simply creating a new visual identity for athletics, it was finding a middle ground where the athletics experience could have its own personality without becoming disconnected from the college’s broader digital ecosystem.

I focused the project around three goals: 1) carry recognizable elements of Cambrian’s primary website into the athletics experience; 2) allow the site to feel energetic and sport-focused rather than like a copy of the institutional website, and; 3) create a system that could work with Presto Sports’ templates, widgets and content-management constraints.

I created the homepage concept in Figma and used it to define the key relationships between the athletics site and Cambrian’s primary website. A designer at Presto Sports then used this direction to develop the broader microsite within the capabilities of the Presto platform. I reviewed the implementation and provided feedback to ensure the resulting experience remained visually connected to Cambrian’s main digital presence.

Denouement – The Untangling

Rather than redesigning the athletics experience in isolation, I identified the visual relationships that made the main site recognizable:

  • Navigation structure and placement
  • Logo scale and positioning
  • Hero image proportions
  • Typography, hierarchy & colour system
  • Card styling & button treatments
  • Corner radius

The final implementation required compromises between the original visual direction and the capabilities of the Presto platform. It retains the core Cambrian visual language while giving athletics more room to express its own character. The result is not a pixel-for-pixel reproduction of the original concept, but a translation of the design system into a constrained environment, giving athletics the flexibility to communicate its own culture while maintaining a recognizable connection to the college brand.