philosophy

The MIT home page is an interactive site that informs and actively engages the MIT community and visitors. The spotlight, with a changing graphic that calls attention to the new topic, supports MIT's mission of education and research, and reflects the diversity of MIT itself. It does not represent a single voice, but rather many voices, showing the Institute in a full and evolving way.

We encourage anyone -- the MIT community and the public -- to submit images or designs. This "open-source" design celebrates the creativity and diversity of our community, and we hope you'll take the opportunity to be a part of it in whatever way feels right. That might mean designing an image for the top page, submitting a spotlight request, letting us know about an idea for something you'd like to see, or simply writing to us and letting us know what you do -- and don't -- like. We see this as a natural extension of the same open culture that exults in hacks and invented OpenCourseWare.

As the homepage images change, the border around the page containing the MIT logo remains consistent. This represents the collaboration of the community and the institution, and shows that the Institute as a whole is dedicated to community, learning and human progress.

Each of the five second-level pages also has its own spotlight to showcase the interesting and inventive things being done at MIT. These pages use an enlarged and cropped logo as a background to bring together the categories of life at MIT and to show that MIT is a sum of parts. These pages use color, typography, grid and layout, and the white bar at the top to create a connection to the homepage. Together, the homepage and second-level pages represent movement, institution and community in complementary ways.

The MIT home page team
April 1, 2003