Where's the Branding?

A good example of bad site branding.

OK, you have five seconds to tell me what school this is. Go!

Come on, folks! You really need to hit people over the head with your branding. Prospective students are going to look at dozens, maybe hundreds of college and university sites. Yours needs to be clearly identified and memorable.

What school is this? You have five seconds to tell me! Oh...you didn't need even half a second, because the home page screams the school's name. Or at least, it screams the name of the state the school is in.

MECA is a tiny little school with no where near the name recognition that the University of Wisconsin has. They need to make a greater impression with their name and brand that UWisc does - by far! So why hide their name? Dare I suggest that an artist and not a Web designer designed the site? Perhaps that's unfair, but it wouldn't surprise me.