The next chapter starts with a better-informed choice.
University rankings, program discovery, and school profiles brought together for prospective students.
Maclean's needed an Education Hub that could carry years of rankings, program guides, and editorial alongside school profiles — without forcing readers to choose between a magazine and a decision tool.
The redesign separates discovery (rankings + program lists), comparison (school profiles + methodologies), and editorial (long-form journalism) so each surface earned its own pattern instead of competing in one feed.
The pre-redesign Education site mixed magazine articles, school landing pages, and ranking tables in a single content river. The refreshed hub gives discovery, comparison, and editorial three distinct shapes that share one editorial system.
The top of the hub stays scannable: the year's university and program rankings surface immediately, with light editorial captions explaining what each list is for.
School profile templates inherit the same header rhythm as the ranking lists, so readers can move from "top 10 reputation" to a specific university page and back without the visual context resetting.
Maclean's editorial keeps the magazine's typography and column structure so the journalism still feels like Maclean's — even when the product surfaces around it lean toward decision-tool patterns.
These are the rules the rest of the hub inherits — from the rankings homepage down to every school profile.
The rankings carousel sets the hub's first impression because it's the most-requested entry point for prospective students and families.
Program-level rankings (Business, Computer Science, Education, Engineering) sit directly under the university list so readers can pivot from school to subject without rebuilding context.
Methodology cards live on the same surface as the rankings, so the credibility of the numbers is one scroll away — not three clicks deep.
Long-form pieces sit in their own typographic system so they feel like reading Maclean's, not a database query result.
The redesign turned Maclean's most-trafficked education franchise into a product students can actually navigate — rankings, programs, methodologies, and journalism share one visual system without flattening into each other.
