The last time The Varsity’s website was redesigned was in March 2015. The world was not in the middle of a pandemic, people still called each other instead of texting, and obviously — dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
We’re now excited to introduce a new design of thevarsity.ca. This project, spearheaded by our 2019–2020 web developers, Stephanie Zhang and Kevin Lu, is the result of more than a year-and-a-half’s worth of work, involving several stages of planning, design, and coordination.
Countless hours were spent on things like homepage layout, general aesthetic, author pages, and more. With this redesign, we hope to make thevarsity.ca more accessible to our readers. You can now more easily sign up for our Monday Briefing newsletter, check up on the latest events in-and-around campus, and learn more about a writer at the bottom of their article.
In the event of a major story, we will also have the ability to rapidly change the layout of our homepage to highlight our coverage.
We are still making fixes and adding features on a rolling basis, so stay tuned — there is more to come.
It’s no question that we’re in the age of digital media. According to a 2017 Pew Research Center study, a clear majority of people get the news on their mobile devices. With this redesign, we’re reaching our audiences where they spend a sizable amount of their time — online.
This change is a significant milestone in The Varsity’s digital history. In 2019, we won the Canadian Community Newspaper Award for Best Campus Website, and in 2020, we were named a finalist for the John H. McDonald Award for Best Online Media. And just a few months ago, we launched our first digital-exclusive magazine, SPINE.
I’m proud of the work we’ve done this past year, and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for Volume 141.
— Ilya Bañares, Volume 140 Managing Online Editor
